Thursday, January 2, 2014--This is the day when everybody is supposed to go back to school or work. But The Boy's college classes don't start again until next week. I know there's nobody at the radio station, so there was no point of my going into town. I just stuck to my desk. Working.
Mary Ann finished an onion soup she started on a couple of days ago. She made the stock with oxtails--a good start. There's so much gelatin in those things (which are, in case you didn't want to think about it, the tails of cows) that they make a great soup base. The best, in fact.
But the big challenge in making onion souip is that the onions must cook by themselves in the pot for at least a half-hour. I usually let them go about forty-five minutes or--if it's a big batch--even more than an hour. Without the onions turning a distinct brown (tan isn't good enough), the onion flavor isn't there.
Well, she must have heard me preaching that gospel before. The soup was very good, with big chunks of the oxtail meat rising to the surface now and then. I ate two big bowls of the stuff, using a special mug designed to be part of a complete kit for chili makings sold by Tabasco. Low and wide cups like this hold more (and cool the soup faster) than high-standing cups.
Back to work. A big rainstorm came through, the vanguard of what is promised to be the coldest wave of winter yet this season. That means I'll have to work on the house insulation this weekend. The Cool Water Ranchhouse is made for summer.
