Soup of the evening, beautiful soup

I'm pretty sure I've written here before about how much I hate to cook, but I don't think I've written much yet about how much I love to cook. Finally, a new topic!

The condensed version: I never really learned how to cook because I saw cooking as a chore and a drudge. Whenever I thought about it, I would say to myself either "I don't know how to cook," or "I don't like to cook." Then, I hooked up with a man who loves to cook – nay, LIVES to cook! – and by a long process of education, am realizing that 1) I actually do know how to cook, and 2) sometimes I even enjoy it.

Today I add to that list: 3) I'm actually getting to be kind of good at cooking! Or at least, I can now make things I like, and I'm not just talking about buttered toast, brownies and steamed vegetables (the holy trinity of the first 40 years of my life as a cook).

It's actually gotten to the point that sometimes I even read food blogs. To me, these go in the same category as knitting blogs, crafty blogs, photo blogs ... a place to look for inspiration, but only in very small doses, lest I come to see own efforts as lackluster and amateurish, and get discouraged, and go back to eating all my meals in restaurants. Actually, one of the cooler things about learning how to cook good things is that now, restaurants are not the only place I can go to get something healthy, satisfying and delicious. On more than one occasion recently I have interrupted myself while contemplating what and where to eat ... by suddenly realizing, "I kinda want to make my own damn dinner tonight!" Shocking!

Like this soup I made last night. I was in the mood for mushrooms, and there was a big jar of stock left over from the chicken we'd roasted earlier this week. A quick stop at the grocery store on my way home from work, and a half hour later I was sipping the steaming fragrant broth of my new favorite:

Spicy Mushroomy Chickeny Soup of Luv

Stock: Take one big roasting chicken and stuff a bunch of garlic and lemon slices in between the skin and the meat. Roast on a bed of carrots, celery and onions until the skin is crispy and golden and the meat thermometer tells you it's done. Take off the meat, then put everything that's left in a stock pot with enough water to mostly cover it, and boil until the bones start to come apart. Strain into jars – that's your stock. After it cools down, scoop the fat off the top. You can use it by the teaspoon to add a little flavor to your dogs' food – they love it! But a little goes a long way (according to the vet).

Soup: Chop up a bunch of carrots, onions and Shiitake mushrooms, and saute them in a little olive oil until they start to smell good. Heat some stock gently, until it melts, then taste it – if it's too strong, add a little water until it tastes right to you. Put in the vegetables and some of the chicken, if you have any left. Bring everything just up to a simmer, to heat everything through. Then you can add fish sauce (if you like fish sauce), chili flakes or chili oil (as hot as you like), and coconut milk if you want to do a little Thai thing. Stir it all up and taste it again. When you're happy with the flavors, drop in a couple of big handfuls of chopped up bok choy and some chopped green onions and fresh cilantro and stir those in. Then squeeze in the juice of one Meyer lemon and stir it up again. Then, put it in bowls and sprinkle some more cilantro on top, or a little toasted sesame oil if you like that too.

Okay, so the directions aren't so precise ... But hey, it's my first cooking blog entry ever! And the soup is ever so yummy. It's pretty, too!

Now I really need to get a better camera.

P.S. I just had a very interesting meeting at work ... the upshot of which is that I am supposed to be getting a new job title soon – Creative Director! That would be a nice thing to have on my business card. Heck, it would be nice to have a business card, period!