Friday, January 16, 2009

Educating Avid

This book has been with us forever. Purchased second-hand, it's a 1977 printing of a 1930 classic.


My favorite for a winter day is any soup you can make in ten minutes.

Can a soup be prepared in ten minutes? Certainly, if you follow the guidelines. The longest part is bringing the water to a boil. But that time doesn't count. ~ Edouard de Pomiane (there are twenty soup recipes in this little book.)


A joke from a jokebook I purchased in Ireland (some local guy was selling this booklet of jokes and stories he'd collected over the years.) I'm very big on buying all the local author offerings, and so I have a lot of little religious books, 'history of the area' type books, fairy lore, and local guidebooks that tell you how to find Holy places like St. Brigid's Well, The Hidden Dolmen, St. Kevin's Holy Stone. I'm very fond of these books.


I'm still reading the books I mentioned in my last post.


Please do enjoy a bit of a book related clip from Educating Rita

8 comments:

JGH said...

So how DO you make soup in 10 minutes?

Enjoyed the Irish joke! Reminds me of an epitaph on one of our Halloween tombstones:

Here lies my wife.
Here let her lie.
Now she has peace.
And so do I.

R.L. Bourges said...

Love the illustrations in the Edouard de Pomiane book

Soup in ten minutes? Mais, bien sûr !

The coffin joke reminds me of another of the same ilk, this time from the Auvergne (whose inhabitants are typically stereotyped as being very close to their 'sous':

the local doctor is called in to certify the death of the nonagerian father. The family is gathered around as the doctor holds the tiny mirror the man's lips, gets no sign of clouding, he starts writing the certificate, reading it off aloud; "I, doctor so-and-so hereby certify that monsieur such-and-such is deceased ..." At which words the nonagerian says: "but I'm not dead, I was only holding my breath so as not to disturb you." To which his daughter-in-law replies: "Be quiet, old man, the doctor knows these things better than you do."

Ah, family ties...

Avid Reader said...

Here are soup recipes from the book: (I left out the instructions on how to crush garlic.)

Garlic Soup
2 cloves of garlic
1 bay leaf
1 Tbsp. olive oil
2 cups boiling water
Salt and pepper
2 egg yolks
Stale bread or toast

Crush the garlic ...put the garlic into a pot with the bay leaf and olive oil. Pour boiling water into the pot, add salt and pepper, boil for 8 to 10 minutes.

Place your egg yolks in your serving bowl and stir in a half ladle of hot soup. When mixture is smooth, add the rest of the soup. Drop 4 small pieces of stale bread or toast into the soup and serve. If there are two of you, you should both eat this soup.
because if one of you doesn't, he will be obliged to enjoy the other's company from across the room after dinner.


Tomato Soup
2 cups water
1 heaping Tbsp. tomato paste
2 Tbsp. finely ground semolina
Salt
4 Tbsp. heavy cream

Bring the water to a boil and stir in the tomato paste. Add the semolina, stirring constantly. Salt the soup, and let it boil for 6 minutes; then add heavy cream and serve.


Cream of Mushroom Soup

2 cups beef stock (or bouillon)
1 Tbsp. barley meal
3 heaping tsp. dried mushrooms
4 Tbsp. heavy cream

While the beef stock is boiling, put the barley meal into a bowl and dilute it with a little cold water. pour it into to stock stirring constantly. Add the dried mushrooms, an let the soup boil for 10 minutes or better yet, 15 minutes; please forgive me. Strain the soup into a bowl and throw away the mushrooms. Add the heavy cream to the soup and serve.

Barbara said...

I make a garlicky ravioli soup with lots of fresh dill and ginger most every day for lunch. Start to finish it takes 10 minutes. Not much longer than it would take to heat up a can of soup, but it tastes a lot better!

Coffee Messiah said...

Graphics are real nice ; )

tut-tut said...

When all is chaos, soup is just the thing.

tut-tut said...

Did you hear about the 83 year old woman who talked herself out of a speeding ticket by telling the young officer that she had to get there before she forgot where she was going?

tut-tut said...

Oh, I meant to say this was sent to me by an 85-year-old . . .

My Classic Fiction Book List -Partial List

  • Austen, Jane: (Complete Works)
  • Balzac: Cousin Bette/ Eugenie Grandet / Cousin Pons
  • Best Russian Short Stories
  • Boyle, TC: Short Works
  • Brennan, Maeve : Short Works, 1 Novella
  • Bronte, Emily, Ann, Jane (Complete Works)
  • Brookner, Anita ( Complete Works)
  • Cather, Willa (Complete Works)
  • Chekov: Short Works
  • David Copperfield (Dickens)
  • Dickens:A Tale of Two Cities
  • Dickens:Great Expectations
  • Dickens:Nicholas Nickelby
  • Dickens:Our Mutual Friend
  • Dickens:The Old Curiosity Shop
  • Doyle, Roddy (some novels, memoir)
  • Drabble, Margaret (4 Novels)
  • Drieser, Theodore (Complete Works)
  • Fitzgerald, F.Scott (Most Novels & short works)
  • Hardy, Thomas (Complete Works)
  • Hemingway, Short stories
  • Hemingway: The Old Man in the Sea
  • Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises
  • Hugo: Les Miserables/Hunchback Of ND
  • James, Henry: Daisy Miller
  • James, Henry: In The Cage
  • James, Henry: Portrait of a Lady
  • James, Henry: The Golden Bowl
  • James, Henry: What Maisy Knew
  • James, Henry: Wings of a Dove
  • James, Henry:The Ambassadors
  • James, Henry; The Bostonians
  • Kerouac: Dharma Bums
  • Kerouac: On The Road
  • Kerouac: The Subterraneans
  • Kerouac: Tristessa
  • Lardner,Ring:Short Works
  • Larsen: Quicksand
  • Lewis, Sinclair: Arrowsmith
  • Lewis, Sinclair: Free Air
  • Lewis, Sinclair: Main Street
  • Lewis, Sinclair: The Job
  • MacGill, Patrick (Complete works)
  • Mackin, Walter (novels)
  • Maupassant: Short Works, novels
  • McGahern, John (novels of)
  • McNulty, John (Short Works)
  • Norris, Frank: McTeague
  • O'Brien, Edna (3 Novels)
  • O'Donnell, Paeder : Novels of
  • O. Henry
  • Potok, Chaim (4 novels/1 non fiction)
  • Salinger, JD : Nine Stories
  • Salinger: Franny & Zooey
  • Salinger: Raise High the Roofbeams
  • Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye
  • Sinclair, Lewis: Dodsworth
  • Sinclair, Lewis: Elmer Gantry
  • Sinclair, Upton: King Coal
  • Sinclair, Upton: The Jungle
  • Steinbeck, John: Sweet Thursday
  • Steinbeck: Winter of our Discontent
  • Steinbeck: Cannery Row
  • Steinbeck: East of Eden
  • Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath
  • Theroux, Paul (3 Novels )
  • Toibin, Colm: (Novels of)
  • Tolstoy: Anna Karenina
  • Tolstoy: Short Works
  • Turgenev (2 novels)
  • Twain: T Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi
  • Vonnegut: Early Works (1950s-60s)
  • Wharton, Edith: Novels of/Short Stories
  • Women & Fiction (Edit. Cahill)
  • Zola, Emile ( 10 novels)