The migraine is over.
Last night, whilst trying to deal with the pain having maxed out my meds, I concentrated on an idea that I have had ever since I saw the recipe for roasted broccoli soup. You see, I have wanted to make a broccoli cheese soup and started wondering if I could cobble a recipe together from the recipe I found and the cooking experience I've gained.
The recipe I created is a bit of a dance, because you roast broccoli, garlic, bell pepper, and onion. Each of those roasts for different times and each are seasoned/prepared differently. Originally I tried to do them all in one oven and wrote the recipe with that direction, but all else but for the broccoli roasts best at 400 degrees and I believe broccoli roasts best at 425 degrees. So, at the last minute, since the broccoli roasts the least amount of time, I used my second oven for it.
Here is my Roasted Broccoli Beer Cheese Soup. I happen to think that it turned out rather well. However, I am a bit worried about its freezing capability. You see, I did not simply use the base of the Roasted Rutabaga and Parsnips Beer Cheese Soup, but instead simply started from a béchamel sauce. Perhaps it is merely a texture issue, but it seems this is a bit more cheesy and less smooth than the other cheese soup, so I am just not sure if it will freeze successfully. I suppose I will know in a few days, when I break down and have another serving.
Here it is in a bowl, but the lighting is bad. It is a MUST to serve the soup with sourdough bread. Good thing that I bought two loaves the last time I was at The Fresh Market and froze the second one!
Grating 24 ounces of cheese is exhausting. That, really, is the reason I didn't just use the other cheese soup base. That one has you grating 32 ounces of cheese.
Amos sure did make short work of pre-cleaning my soup bowl. So, I know that I have his stamp of approval.
When I was at the grocery store, I spotted Cholula® Chipotle Hot Sauce. I used that and ground chipotle pepper instead of the canned peppers in the adobo sauce. I really like using the latter, but whilst I use all the adobo sauce, I usually only use three of the peppers. I dislike getting rid of them when I am done cooking. The chipotle hot sauce smelled like the canned peppers. I guess that is good ... given that I know absolutely nil about hot sauce.
Lowe's has been running these helpful commercials. One of them is about burying banana peels in front of each of your rose bushes to feed them potassium and guard against pests. I dutifully bought three bananas and started eating them. I am two bananas in, but realized that I actually have four rose bushes and the one on the side of the garage probably needs at least three peels for itself given that it is as high as the garage and is wide as a third of the length of the garage. So, when I fetch prescriptions at the end of this week, I need to remember to pick up a few more bananas.
I eat the banana.
Fetch the trowel from the garage.
Bury the peel.
And then water it in.
The other helpful Lowe's commercial I have seen is to fill your tub with water before you caulk it so that you won't have cracks. I am hoping Lowe's runs other helpful household and garden commercials. They are 15-second animations that repeat once to make up a whole 30-second commercial. I think that I have only seen them on Hulu, but I could be wrong about that. They might be on CBS.com, too.
[Just look at that lush GREEN grass!]
My tulips are blooming. I wanted to wait to take a photo until the pink ones opened, but the yellow ones at the back are about done. I do not know where my puree ones are. Maybe they got tired of Amos tromping through the tulip bed. We've had the strongest words ever this year, once the tulips started appearing and Amos started his tromping. Amos finally gave up his walk through the bed, but he daily "waters" the tulip closest to the back steps. Despite his attentions, it is blooming. The thyme below it, however, has died.
The Charlie Brown crabapple tree is blooming. I thought I remembered it being light pink. Wasn't it???
My Easter lilies are about eight inches above the ground now. I haven't seen any blooms starting to come up in the daylily leaves, which is strange, because they are usually almost done before my Easter lilies get around to blooming.
All the daffodil bulbs that I relocated sprouted. Each clump of eight has at least one bloom. So, I think that next year I will have a more balanced blooming in each clump. I thought I had emptied out the mammoth rose bed on the side of the garage, but there are three humongous clumps of daffodils left, each about 15 inches across and very dense. I plan to dig them up and relocated them to the side of the house outside the fence once Firewood Man has killed off the remaining Snow on the Mountain ground cover in that bed ... the pernicious, irritating stuff.
I started the annual migration of porch plants from the solarium to the front porch. Trying to be more sensible, I plan to move them over the course of three days. Today, I moved all the succulents. Sadly, I lost a few strands from my glorious String of Pearls. I plan to try and root them!
I also moved the Wandering Jew baskets out to the front porch and then watered them. Following some advice I read online, over the winter, I let them go 4 weeks between watering. I also cut off the growth even with the bottom of the basket, which meant three trimmings after the first one. Finally, about 4 weeks ago, I gave them some Osmocote when I watered them. Even though I watered them again on Thursday, I watered them again once they were hung up outside. They have gotten slightly pale, but I am hoping they will lush themselves back up with all the fresh air and soft light.
I am exhausted. But Amos is now a stinky puppy dog, having raced up and down the stairs as I made my first leg of the plant migration trek. He also jumped up on and down from his most beloved bed in the solarium each time we were in there. And, for good measure, he supported my endeavors by running around in crazy circles whilst on the carpet in the hallway upstairs. He's a Nutter, my Amos!
So, I plan to take a wee little nap and then lather up my fluff-ball with some lovely lavender shampoo. Actually, I plan to strip the bed, lather myself up, put on my pajamas, lather up Amos, and then collapse into the GREEN chair. I am fervently hoping that rotating through my sheets (instead of botanicalizing my bed once more) I might find that missing compression sock. They are just too expensive for me to have lost one in the laundry!
As a final offering, if you are one of those weird people who actually likes onions without having them be puréed, here is a recipe I found for Herb-Roasted Onions when I was Googling to learn the proper way to roast onions. ICK in my book, but perhaps DIVINE in yours.
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