There's Nothing to Eat!

By Daddy

Las Vegas — I needed one last medication to last through the end of April. I may have mentioned that The grocery store, the pharmacy, the bank, and the mailbox are located in the same place. So when I do venture out, I can hit everything up at the same time. As I was checking out the meat aisle, I over heard a woman telling her two toddlers: "There's nothing to eat!" The toddlers of course went into hysterics. Not the best of parenting skills.

While it was true that there wasn't a lot of meat, and it was a limited selection, I noticed packages of pork meatballs with a dozen good sized meatballs selling for $1.50 for 16 oz. I knew that it was time once again for a soup. So I went to get the ingredients.

First I needed the "Trinity" the base of most American soups. Carrots @$1.29/bunch, Large Onion @69¢/pound, Celery @$1.49/stalk. That's all you need to for the basic soup when added to stock that I make every time I cook a whole chicken or a backed ham. However, you can buy cartons of chicken stock for about $2/carton. My store also carries large green onions three for 99¢ to add a bit of color, small carton of Baby Bello mushrooms for $3 for chewy goodness and a clove of garlic for 33¢ to keep the vampires away. Total cost: just about $9.00 for a weeks worth of soup.

Daddy's Pork Meatball Soup

I cook my soups in a six quart crock pot because it's really hard to go wrong and the keep warm setting will keep it at just the right temperature for days. A medium size pot is fine, the object is to simmer the soup at a low temperature. I started my meatball soup early this morning: A quart of the pork stock, two quarts of water. I then chopped up the carrots, onion, celery, and four cloves of garlic into small chunks. (remember that the large bulb is not a clove it's a "head" or "knob" you want the individual segments.) Throw in some spices (salt, pepper, rosemary, tarragon, thyme) the last three are mostly for the aroma so can be omitted. Turned the crock pot on to the low setting for the longest period of time it has (10 hours in my case) and walked away.

When the onions are no longer floating on the top, it's the signal for the finishing touches. I took the pork meatballs flatten them into discs then and cut them into quarters, and shaped them back into small balls and dropped them into the soup, Cut up the mushrooms and added them. This afternoon I expect to have a rich full flavored soup that'll probably need some more salt but other than that it should be a done deal

I'm currently "sheltering in place," and only going out when I absolutely need to. This week that includes one trip to the wound doctor and another trip to the mailbox to pickup a delivery and to deposit a check once it arrives. Thank-you for your concerns, I'm being extremely careful not to overextend myself as I'm in the high risk group. Another soup in the plan for late in the week, this time a beef stew which is just about as easy to make as the pork meatball soup. Please be careful out there as we're still weeks away from the peak of the coronavirus.

I'm coasting until about the 19th. To all those that have donated, Thank you! Any help is appreciated. Here's a link to the How to Donate Page