The Soup Guy

Last Thanksgiving, when my Dad came, he made lots of different soups. That's pretty traditional in a Polish household (though I didn't really know that until I went to Poland). In my Dad's family, that's the way it always was, so he had many years to practice throwing things into a broth and making a delicious soup out of it all. Well, about the third bowl into the soup fest last year and Brian decided that soup is easy to make, tastes great and should become his newest hobby. ha, ha

He tried a few times after my Dad left and everything was a little bland, or too spicy, or not enough something, and then the soup fever died down a little. Knowing that "winter" was coming and the FEVER would probably hit again soon, one day I happened upon a soup recipe book while standing at the Walgreen's checkout line perusing the checkstand offerings. The book was $4.00 so I thought, why not?

That book is inspiration and contains so many different yummola soups! The first one Brian made was the chicken and rice soup which uses rotisserie chicken (who can argue with that?) and delicious spices. This soup made a believer out of me, even though Brian thought it was "just okay."

Look at this soup!!!! Just okay?????????? No way. It was so good, I didn't even add SALT and I always add salt. I think the best spice in it is tarragon. Who would have thought that tarragon was the spice of the gods? There's also petite peas (petit pois) which I didn't know would be such a great addition to soup!

If any of you have any great soup recipes, send them to us and let us critique them. ha, ha We're enjoying the cold so much more now.

Halloween fun!

What fun would Halloween be without carving pumpkins? None at all (for Brian)! Actually, we held off carving until the very last moment this year. Last year, I'm thinking, we had mushy pumpkins by the time Halloween rolled around. This year, they were fresh and tough (to carve that is).

Brian completed the bulk of the job. However, he let the kiddos dig in with their hands, but he used a utensil. That's what I call cheatin' (if you ask me).

Look at those ooky guts. The kiddos actually were scooping it out to start with (until they got grossed out by the texture).

W0uld he dare? Nope he didn't. But the shot was good so I'm using it.

Caitlin was a "bat" this year. She chose her costume (though we had a few fights about some of the other bat costumes she wanted). What is up with the skimpy costumes for kids? Next year I'm going to encourage the cutting two holes in a sheet idea and wearing a ghost costume. We got Cody's costume from our babysitter Carol. It was a little big on him, but Cody liked it all the same.

Here's a close up of the jack-o-lanterns. Brian tried to make a friendly faced one and a scary faced one, but I'm not sure either of them look frightening. One looks more cross than anything. On the front one, the eyeball popped out, so it looks almost crazy. Ha!

We decorated the walkway a little bit more than usual this year. However, that netting for a spider web is harder to work with than cotton with maple syrup on your hands.

I made the ears for Caitlin because she didn't think people would realize she was a bat!

We took them around the neighborhood and made sure they were good and tired before they filled their little Halloween bags up. (Thanks Grandma Diane!) We had fun though and our teeth are not rotting out of our heads, so it's all good.