Started with a meal plan and the agreement with the youngest that soup would be good to make.  Add some twitter conversation to get me to write it up:

olive oil, White Yam, purple top turnip, carrot, celery, onion, parsnip, 3# butternut squash, 1 cup red lentils, garlic, ginger, and spices.
— GeWilli (@Ge_Willi) November 25, 2014

I use big caphalon pot to make the soup in, and just cook it all in at once. Starting with the celery carrot and onions first with the olive oil. I think that's a very important step for the soup making. Lots of people just put them in raw, but I feel that getting them in there first over some dry heat with the oil intensifies and deepens the flavors and overall the whole satisfaction of the soup. This could be vegan if you skip the fish sauce (and just use more soy sauce). I don't use stock with this soup because it doesn't need it. You most certainly could use a chicken stock or but making a veggie stock in a blended soup like this, with these ingredients doesn't really add anything. You don't need to blend it i suppose, but if i wasn't going to blend it i'd have to be very careful about the order of adding things and the size of the dice. Here since it will be made smooth (really how it should be eaten, and the design of it anyway) you just need to get the veggies cut up into roughly the same size peices. And yes you have to use the celery. Well no, you don't you can pretty much do what ever the hell you want, you won't taste the celery but you'll notice something will be missing if you don't use it.

Okay enough with the pre-amble. Here ya go:


3 stalks of Celery, sliced thin and pluncked into the pre-heated soup pot with a good 3-4 or more tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.

Got those sizzling,
then in went two big carrots, peeled and diced up

one sweet onion

a couple tablespoons of Organic Shoyu sauce

Then two medium to small purple top turnips diced all up

One peeled and diced parsnip

One smallish white Yam, peeled and diced

keeping the heat high and stirring pretty frequently...

Peeled and diced a 3# Butternut Squash (cleaned the seeds to pan toast in olive oil and serve as garnish)

Stirring a bit.

Spices went in now: turmeric (1-2 teaspoons), garam masala (less than 1 teaspoon), 1-2 tablespoosn of dried basil... a few splashes of fish sauce (just under teaspoon by eye).

Mix...

add four small cloves of garlic cut in half.

1/4 cup of organic seasoned rice wine vinegar...

cook till the vinegar is mostly reduced (by smell)

Add a bunch of water - how much? Not sure, but maybe a gallon?

then I put the ginger in, a 2 inch long bit of organic stuff peeled and sliced thinly

finally 1 cup of very well rinsed red lentils.

Cook till everything is soft, then using an immersion blender make it all smooth. Add salt to taste (needed a bit)

serve with toasted squash seeds (and sprinkle some cayenne pepper on top if you're me).

heddwch
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to open up dashboard and type a bit over lunch.

First up, i'm sick. I missed supercross cup this year for a couple reasons, family, being run down, not being given entry that i felt obligated to show up and collect (DFL>DNF>DNS), and just knowing i needed downtime.

Lowell took a surprising amount out of me and last week ground me down even further. So instead of taking up my good friend on an offer to pick me up i headed to the movies with my oldest to watch the latest of the Hunger Games movies in the theatre. It was very entertaining and well done, we both enjoyed it very much.  My only complaint would be that I wanted to see the whole thing, part 1 and 2 at the same time. I can sit still for 4+ hours watching something like that. No Problem.

The only problem really wound up being getting home around 10:30 and being WAY overstimulated and unable to sleep for a looooong time. Talk about another nail in the coffin, or curtain in the sickward. Got up the next morning way too early for soccer game #1 of 4 (the last three were 30 min indoor jamboree things at Gillette). And continued the spiral of exhaustion and over taxing myself physically. Sure maybe getting the Flu shot mid-week was a dumb idea, given the precariousness of my physical state, oh well.

Sure enough Saturday night I started feeling not so good. Validating the choice to stay home and not go to Anthony Wayne Rec area. Sunday I was full blown sick. Monday a bit better. Today a bit worse.

And of course I'm all signed up to race at Baystate. Here's to hoping for some magic legs, or at least enough legs/conditions to hang with Kyle Smith and who ever else joins us. Field is super light this year. Costs are way up for it too, and they added a $10 late fee/early discount depending if you want to be positive or negative.  Lots of people who knew about the date but never checked the Bike-Reg page are pretty pissed right now.

Round about back to the top, talking with the youngest about dinner plans for a couple days we'd decided on burgers, hand cut sweet potato fries, carmelized onions and roasted brussels sprouts for dinner sunday night and Monday? Soup. Grandmummy soup. Good bit of nice stuff in it, in theory should help boost the immue function, or if not at least not contribute to my current clydesdale status. Tonight? not sure but i'll probably fall back on a simple savory meaty tomato sauce over some whole wheat pasta...

One thing I did last night was attempt (out of curiosity) to get the primary ingredients into a tweet.

olive oil, White Yam, purple top turnip, carrot, celery, onion, parsnip, 3# butternut squash, 1 cup red lentils, garlic, ginger, and spices.
— GeWilli (@Ge_Willi) November 25, 2014

and I did

It worked...  I lead in saying just add water and salt and you've got the soup.

I'll add the rest of the details in a separate recipe web log post though.

I still haven't cleaned the bike from Lowell. Or my shoes. Skinsuit needs a couple more washes/soaking to get the rest of the oily spots out. A good reminder of why you should use natural fibers when cleaning oil based stuff and synthetic when dealing with water based.

I've ridden now three times since Lowell. Once last  monday in the insanely shitty weather. 40 min on the trainer on Saturday, maybe not good idea but it seemed like it at the time. And then yesterday in the crazy downpouring rain and insane wind. Of course today is over 60°F and i could have ridden with bare knees and I'm driving.

All the driving. None of the riding and no training. Makes for an interesting Cyclocross season. But on the one hand it is fueling the motivation to make next year a good year. That and Fatmarc sort of unknowingly threw the gauntlet down. Next year. Next year.

I say that now, but there's no real good way of predicting if next year will be like this year or not. BUT the spring is going to be very much like this fall and I'm gonna have to figure out how to get on the bike more, for lots and lots of reasons. That and I think I need to figure out what this secret VO2Max lunch workout is that Solobreak has been doing this year. He's fast again.

Watching the Sven video, being interviewed by someone with an agenda to get more coaching clients (at least that's how mustache kid's questions came across - fortunately that annoyance was completely overshawdowed by Sven's brilliance) was motivating.

Just need to bottle up all this motivation and keep building in a positive direction. So much sad and negative stuff around, happening now. Not easy to keep  positive and keep from falling into a depression. But doing so much better this year.

I have been sucking at blogging, sucking at bike racing but I'm having fun and they are both such an intrinsic part of who I am that they'll always be there in some form or another.

Ramble about over I guess. I'll see about getting the recipe written up now.

heddwch
G