Wednesday, January 19, 2011

The Fruits (Vegetables) of Procrastination

(Herbs are vegetables, right? Or vegetable-like, anyway? Good.)
Greg's parents are here this week. This is a wonderful thing. I hardly ever have to wash dishes and apart from meeting some very basic needs of the little ones, the only thing I have to do is remind Aaron to let babcia breathe now and again.

The night they drove in I decided to make chicken noodle soup. I'm a bad soup maker. Yes, I tend to point out flaws in everything I create but with soup I am not being overly critical when I say I really am Very Bad at it (i.e. whipping it up without a recipe).

Actually I think that was sort of beside the point, but I had to mention it in case anybody might think I make delicious soups. I can't have people thinking that.

So I only had chicken, broth, carrots and some spices. I really wanted parsley, but we didn't have any.

Then, when I heard the kids playing out back I remembered something. In the middle of November, before it had snowed I went out into our teeny tiny garden (foot-wide strips in the shape of an L maybe 8 feet and 20 feet long) and tried to dig up everything that should have been dug up months before. It was way too hard (I didn't use any tools because I didn't see how they could help. I'm an idiot.) so I left most everything there. Especially the parsley. We had a lot of parsley and it was stubbornly stuck in the ground. I planned to try again later (meaning tell Greg that it was Man's Work and he should really do it).

Before we had the chance to procrastinate for more than three days it snowed and everything was covered in a foot or three of snow for two months. Last week all that snow melted and what was underneath it? Beautiful, green, fresh looking (albeit smashed flat on the ground) parsley.

That parsley was just exactly what the soup needed to make it approximately as unimpressive as every other pot of soup I've ever made. Hooray for procrastination!

14 comments:

Kazzy said...

I love that your procrastination paid off!

Now I want soup...

Kimberly Vanderhorst said...

I'm a crummy soup whipper upper too. Though I did find a recipe last year that was FABulous, even in my inexpert hands.

So glad you got to have that sweet joy of something falling neatly into place like that. How awesome!

Erin said...

Well I think you are a fabulous soup maker, but maybe you are holding yourself up to a higher standard over there in Poland where they eat a LOT of soup. I can't believe you had fresh parsley in January!

Barbaloot said...

The fact that you even have a garden puts you lights years ahead of me!

I'm sure the soup was yummy:)

Anonymous said...

Hooray for Preserved Parsley! It sounds delicious.

Carolyn V. said...

Awesome! So some procrastination does pay off. (yes!) Yay for the parsley. =)

Susan said...

I keep being amazed when I see little bits of our grass under the snow when it gets cleared away in some spot or other to see that it's still quite green under all that snow out there! I just made white bean & chicken soup for Lily's Great to Be 8 night, and rather than whipping it up without a recipe, I found one by Paula Deen that had a nice 5 stars from millions of reviewers who claimed they didn't change it a bit. Unfortunately my "pinch" of red pepper flakes tasted like a 1/4 cup or so, it was so smoking hot! What that means is, only the parents could eat it, (the kids had hot dogs too.) and I luckily still have lots of soup to work with for the next few days.

Annette Lyon said...

This is enough to make me plant a garden and ignore it completely. Huzzah!

melissabastow said...

I'm a huge believer in procrastination. It's what makes the soup of the world go round. (Or wait - is that how the saying goes?)

Melanie Jacobson said...

I suspect our herb patches look very much the same.

Lara Neves said...

Procrastination really can come to the rescue. Sometimes.

And I'm glad you highlighted one of those cases. And I'm also glad you had some parsley for your soup.

Loralee and the gang... said...

...sounds just like my life. And I am also grateful when the outcome is a good one!

Anonymous said...

So you're saying that I should totally slack off and it will turn out all right in the end! Yay! Finally, something about my terrible habits that will pay off! ;)

Andi Kate, Children's Author said...

Oh, I have missed your blog! I have been absent from the blogging world for some time. You make it fun to be back!