Soup Chef!

New Years Eve was supposed to be memorable. To keep this short, it wasn't. I was thinking about memorable New Years Eves. The one I remember the fondest was 2000. For many months people were forecasting terrible things happening. Planes were supposed to fall out of the air, trains were supposed to get misdirected and ram into each other, and stop lights were supposed to malfunction and then cars would get in pileups. Y2K was going to be the end of the earth since computers were not going to tell if it was 2000 or 1900. I was with my entire family in the living room watching tv. The three girls, my wife and I watched the new year unfold in Australia, nothing happened; China, nothing happened; Britain, nothing happened. We no longer feared that Y2K was going to be the end of the world, not that we really feared anything would happen really. It was fun. We had sparkling cider at midnight and then went to bed. That was the last new years eve I spent with the whole family, not another new year's eve was spent with any of the kids since then. During the day I did something I didn't do all year last year, I made soup. I haven't made soup for a long time, but since I started my diet I need to. My soup is the secret to the diet. My soup is wonderful! My daughter always asks me to make it, she likes it so much. I had a female friend visit me last night and she was hungry, so I gave her a little. This lady is VERY picky, but she loved my soup. It always makes me happy when people ask me the recipe, and they always get upset when I tell them I just put in all the spices next to my stove. It's true, I just put a little of this and a little of that. I take 4 hours to cook my soup, and it is cheap, and it lasts me for a week, and I cook it again the next Sunday. The background of my soup is kind of interesting. I have a very good friend that is a general manager of a hotel. She is one of a wonderful lady and runs a very very nice hotel. I used to teach in her hotel for a while. I taught the housekeeping staff English enough to be able to greet the guests and answer their questions. I also taught the maintenance staff. The maintenance staff was the most important, did you know they were the ones that manned the walkie talkies during emergencies? So, it is important for them to speak English! This manager was talking to me a few days before Thanksgiving. She asked me what I was going to have, and I told her I always cook turkey, even though there is only one person eating it. She said I should make soup with the carcass. I laughed and told her I was a single man and don't do much in the kitchen. She said she was a single woman and she didn't understand why just because I was a man I didn't do much in the kitchen. She explained to me that one reason that she was such a good hotel manager was because she had a background in working in the kitchen. She made sense, it was true that her hotel kitchen was marvelous. The manager then told me how to make soup, boil the turkey for 2 hours, until the meat fell off the bones. Then put in potatoes, onions, garlic, and carrots (Sarah doesn't like cooked carrots so I don't do that any more) and some spices. I had some spices next to my stove that someone used once and put those in. My soup was GREAT!! I learned how to do the same thing with chicken, I take off the skin first. If you are lucky, maybe I will offer YOU some of my famous soup! Happy New Year!!