So, my mom was a really big proponent of eating meat with every single meal.
She didn’t like fresh vegetables except for corn on the cob and cucumbers. To be fair, she only like cucumbers when they were thinly sliced and put on a massive caravan of mayonnaise and smooshed in between two slices of white bread.
Wait.
I liked
She was also fine with tomatoes and lettuce (ice berg) on hamburgers.
That was pretty much it.
So, when I had Emily (my kiddo) and I was reverting to my vegetarian ways, my mother FREAKED OUT and would legit drive 2.5 hours to visit us just to cook roasts.
My favorite cookbook was Horn of the Moon, which was a vegetarian cookbook written by Ginny Callan who owned Horn of the Moon restaurant. I didn’t see the cookbooks until after the restaurant closed or I totally would have tromped to Vermont and sobbed, hugging this woman, who I sort of thought as my vegetarian food savior.
Anyway, one afternoon my mom called and asked me what I was cooking.
“Creamy Green Bean Soup,” I said.
And she said, “Sweet Mother of God, Carrie. What is wrong with you? You don’t do that to green beans. Are you trying to die?”
So…. Yeah…
Here’s the recipe adapted from Horn of the Moon.
Yes, You Can Do This With Green Beans – Creamy Soup
Adapted from Horn of the Moon
The calorie estimate is probably high.
- 5 cups water
- 1.5 lbs green beans (chopped into 1.5-inch pieces (6 cups))
- 5 tbsp butter
- 3 whole onions
- 1 tsp thyme (dried)
- 1.5 tsp dill (dried)
- 2 whole bay leaves (I never have these)
- 3.5 tbsp white flour
- .5 cup heavy cream
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 cup milk
- dash dashy siracha (to taste. )
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Curse out your mother for harshing on your soup as you boil 5 cups of water in a big pot.
Add cut green beans to water once the water boils.
Return the water to boil, cover.
Lower the heat to simmer and let it simmer for 30 minutes.
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Write a poem about your mother.
Realize that whenever you were little and drew your mother would declare, “Nobody in this family are artists. Not one of us has a lick of artistic ability.”
Realize you would rather be an artist that a writer.
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Let this sink in.
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While you are despondent over the course of your life as a writer not an artist, melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a bit pan.
Once butter is melted, saute the onions and herbs until those onions are a light brown.
Realize you should be drawing this right now instead of writing about it.
-
Once the onions are done, add the contents of the pan to the green beans and water. Turn the heat off of the green beans and water.
Let everything sit a bit because it’s super hot – much like your temper right now.
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Puree about 3/4th of that green bean mix.
Use a blender.
-
Put the pureed mix back into the soup pot.
Throw in bay leaves.
Bay leaves would be fun to draw, wouldn’t they?
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Wonder if your whole life is a lie and you should have been an artist instead of a writer.
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Write a poem about it.
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Melt the rest of the butter in that pan you’d been using before.
Add flour to melted butter. Use low heat.
Stir it until it gets a light brown color.
Find cream. Whisk that into the butter and flour.
Add one ladle of soup to it.
Do this two more times then pour all of that back into the soup.
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Add salt. Add pepper. Add milk. Add hot sauce. Taste it. Adjust it to what you want it to be.
Wish you could adjust your parents’ beliefs about art and family proclivities the way you can adjust soup taste.
Simmer on low heat.
Simmer for 15 minutes.
Use this time to sign up for art class.
As you know, these weekly recipes are my attempt to getting the family to eat more food without meat. And I always put down their verdicts.
Man Verdict: You know what would make this perfect? Ham.
My Verdict: Have you been communicating with my mom in the spirit world?
Dogs’ Verdict: Ham or bacon. Either would be okay. You could drop some on the floor, you know. That would be nice.
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