Eh, people win, people lose

I made some moderately disappointing soup yesterday, ALTHOUGH, as the picture above demonstrates, Ernie did eat his whole bowl.

I swear there are a thousand recipes online for something similar so I’m not crazy for thinking it might be good. It was kielbasa and a ton of kale, some carrots and parsnips (normal folks would add garlic and onion) and potato. Oh, and a can of white beans. I’m not really supposed to eat a lot of beans due to their high levels of fodmaps, but I can have a few here and there so I thought I’d give it a try. Canned white beans as canned beans are lower fodmap than dried beans (fodmaps like to leach out into liquid). I added a dash of red wine vinegar, some red pepper flakes, smoked paprika and salt and pepper. The carrots and parsnip gave it a bit of sweetness to balance all that out. I must say, the broth (oh, I used a mixture of boxed chicken broth and water) was absolutely heavenly. The kale was great, the other vegetables were good. I didn’t really see the beans but my stomach well knows they shot their little fodmaps into the broth. The flavor though…tremendous. That said, the pieces of kielbasa tasted like, well, waterlogged kielbasa. I had initially thought of dicing it fine and crisping it up a bit which is what I should done and then kept it til the end to put on top. All the recipes I looked at specified just slicing it. I’m thinking I’ll maybe go through it and pick the sausage out and then puree things a bit. If the kielbasa looks ok maybe I’ll dice it and crisp it us as I was originally thinking. What does this mean? Trust your instincts.

I tried to watch the Grammy’s last night. I think I lasted about an hour and a half. Then I went into the living room and laid on the couch to read. I drove Ernie crazy by shouting random comments and questions from my perch in the other room. At one point I said, “How’s the show going?,” and he said, somewhat tiredly, “Eh, people win, people lose.” I thought that was freaking brilliant. Words to live by. I laughed and laughed. It amused me so much I wrote it down so I wouldn’t forget it.

I was so pleased to see that Peter Cooper was honored during the In Memorium section. Bittersweet, bittersweet, bittersweet.

I found out recently that a friend is moving to Nashville from DC. I was thrilled because Nashville is an easy drive from here. Not that we’re doing much driving these days but we will again. I swear. I started planning a perfect weekend, we’d go see Tim Carroll at the 5-Spot, our beloved Jon Byrd at Dee’s, see our friend and then other friends like Fats and Kristi Rose and Peter Cooper and then I just stopped. That’s right. There will be no Peter Cooper. Peter Cooper is dead. I felt utterly crushed and shocked all over again. To paraphrase Peter’s pure and eloquent words in Johnny Cash’s obituary, “Somehow, Peter Cooper is dead.” It is still hard to wrap my head around it. It doesn’t seem real.

So. Let’s see. People win, people lose.

The soup was iffy (lose) but Ernie ate a whole bowl (win).

Peter Cooper is dead (lose, lose, lose) but he was my friend (win).

John O’Neil is moving to Nashville (win).

OK.

Onward to more wins and losses, people. Onward.