just have to squeeze in one more ball joke. ...*snerk*
Okay, so. I'm not a cook. The first 20 years of my life, my dad cooked 90% of the meals, and my mom cooked the other 10% (sheeeee was not very good at it. She is actually worse than me; you know how some people are genetically icapable of curling their tongue? She doesn't have a chef gene.)
But the thing is, every time Mom or I tried to cook, Dad would hover and suggest things, needle and whine and 'oh if you did it this way instead' and it's fucking annoying, so we'd say HERE YOU DO IT, and he'd finish up.
This is not a great way to ~learn.
More recently, though, I've been doing a lot of cooking for the family, and it's worked out...okay, some successes, some failures, and yesterday when gyzym posted her matzo ball soup recipe I thought it sounded SO GOOD, I would just have to risk failing.
.
Step One: Ingredients
I went to Walmart, NOT because of any loyalty blah de fuck blah, but because they are closer than Freddy's (Fred Meyer) and the roads were sill kind of gross. What I did not expect to find were two "Whole Cut Up Fryer" chickens, because I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF THEM BEFORE IN MY LIFE. But, to my surprise and slight skepticism, Walmart provided. It did not provide, however, most anything else.
This was their spice section:
Oh, thank god, I can buy cilantro in a TUBE.
And yet? I can get a Jicama for 1.69lb.
...What the actual fuck is a Jicama. How do you even eat it. Why would you want to.
So I nabbed what I could find and sucked it up to drive to Freddy's, because the "ethnic food section" of Walmart is a row of taco shells and a fuck ton of Russian cookies. No Matzo ball mix. Not even in the stuffing aisle.
But Freddy's is by far more yuppy friendly, with a whole section behind the Cheese Display dedicated to weird organic foods, which is where I found the mix:
LOOK I CAN GET MATZO BALL SOUP IN A JAR. This is much less time consuming! \O/ (The cheese girl gave me a look, but maybe she thought I'd never seen a Gefilte Fish before. I haven't is it actually fish o.o) I went for the matzo mix from 1888, because that is ohhh roughly *does math* a fuck ton more years to get it right than 1925.
So I bought everything else (Walmart had turnips by the BAG instead of individually, awesome), and went out to my giant stalker pedo-van. Which I had left unlocked. And the woman parked next to me asking her dog if he "Ruvs her, yes 'e does, do you ruv mommy?" actually took time out of her busy schedule to give me The Crazy Eyes when I opened my car door and called into it, "ARE THERE ANY SERIAL KILLERS IN HERE? I'M HEADED WEST, SO. IF THAT'S NOT WHERE YOU WANT TO GO, NOW WOULD BE A GOOD TIME TO HOP OUT."
Really. Some people.
The haul. Yes, I bought myself a shirt. No, I didn't try it on. No, I did not buy baby carrots to put in the soup, these were carrots we already had, and they're PEELED. So, BONUS, RIGHT? Also, I think that looks like a fuck-off onion. I checked both stores and no one had heard of a vidalia onion. :/
OH. But about Italian parsley. Freddy's herb selection was mildly better, in that it wasn't all mint and things that come from a tube. It still didn't have parsley. Italian or otherwise. What it DID have was something called a "Pasta Meddley"
Slightly blurry, but it clearly states that it contains Basil, Oregano, and Italian fucking parsley. YESSS.
The problem is, which is which.
Had to google-image parsley. That was fun and great for my self-esteem.
Step Two: Recipe
gyzym says to wash the chicken. Ooookay. I wash it. And as I wash it, I notice the label on the front says "Some giblets not included."
Which doesn't really sink in until I hit the bottom of the package, and realize this means that SOME OF THEM ARE.
eep, my feet! My toes are not actually deformed, I think they're just scrunched up. D:
Anyway, I'm sorry, but i'm not doing it. I don't care how tasty and delicious etc, the closest intestines got to my mouth was when I ripped them free with my bare hands and flushed them down the disposal. BLECH. The neck was also not included, though not disposal-ed in anything but a garbage bin, because of a long and rather random story about my dad as a kid eating turkey at a friend's house and taking the smallest piece to be polite only to find out it was the neck. SORRY, IT HAS SCARRED ME FOR LIFE. I ONLY NAB PIECES THAT ARE IDENTIFIABLE.
So I put all the chicken in a pot and boil it:
And while it's boiling I chop shit up.
The parsley first because it was already on the cutting board.
I don't know if you actually stem parsley. I WAS DETERMINED (for reasons unknown) NOT TO LOOK SHIT UP.
Big Ass Onion:
It occurred to me as I was peeling this behemoth that--I find it really weird putting vegetables into soups WHOLE with the intent of pulling them out again and throwing them away. I HAVE NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE. What this means is that I spent a good five minutes staring at the onion wondering which way I should half it if I want it to not fall appart. I went for the way I would usually half an onion--down the middle--and crossed my fingers.
Isn't this the cutest turnip you ever did see? *chinhands* I named it Ted. I also ripped off all of Ted's little eyes because you do the same to a potato, so I was guessing most root vegetables are the same in that respect.
TADA:
BOWL OF GOOD THINGS. It was at this point I realized I had forgotten to buy mushrooms. And look, I don't like them, but I was going to stay true to the recipe and give them a shot. Until right at this moment, when my rat's ass meter done gone defunct.
So anyway, by now, the recipe tells me, the chicken should be at a boil and filming gunk at the top. It is certainly filming gunk.
But it is not particularly at a boil. And I think I know why--I put a lid on the pot? Um, which probably does stuff to it. Anyway, skimmed the fat, let it boil a bit longer...
Isn't it lovely.
And then--DUMP IN THE VERGIES
/Swedish Chef
Okay, for some reason, I figured now would be a good time to cook the matzo balls. I DON'T HAVE A GOOD REASON. I also don't have a good "Read All The Instructions Before You Go Dumping Shit in a Bowl" sense at all, which is why this happened:
The metal bowl was the one i used veggies for, which was wet (naturally) and meant scraping matzo dust off the bottom with my fingers so i could drop some eggs and oil in the bowl.
Wee box said to use vegetable oil. Um. We have canola and olive oil. And vegetable non-stick spray, but i'm thinking they don't want me to use 4tbs of that. SO OLIVE OIL IT IS, BAM.
Add mix:
Make balls.
Now, i went and made both packets in the box, because it said each packet makes between 9 and 12 matzo balls, and i'm thinking "There is a loooooooot of soup, and these balls are so tiny, we're going to need a lot of them." So one-inch balls all around, I put them in the boiling water and--
They esploded.
O.O
So, blah blah blah, cook for many moons, remove turnip and onion halves (they did NOT stay together, bdw), and remove chicken. Okay. Place it in the freezer.
I feel like you can dissect my freezer now, like we all did when Danny went to get Steve ice and stole his peppermint patty. The Trash/Treasure thing I will explain, because it's weird. Someone dropped the freezer when they were unloading it, and it dented one corner a little. Not enough to affect the machine, but enough that they couldn't sell it. So we got it for basically NOTHING. Only, before they forked it over, someone wrote TRASH on the inside. My Dad, being not as clever as he thinks he is, added TREASURE. Yup.
You can't see them, but in this next pic I'd just totally added noodles. An, er, AMOUNT of noodles, as it wasn't specified. But I liiike noodles, so i wasn't worried about going over.
Took chicken out of freezer, put on table for deboning/deskinning.
I would like to be a good person and tell you the newspapers were there to protect the table, but they were really just THERE. Also the chicken was a bit toasty still, as warned, but I survived! \o/
Added matzo balls to soup and returned with chicken.
And presto-stirro, Best Soup in the World:
It's more time-consuming than I'm making it sound (I am sooooo tired, you have no idea) and all-told with the chopping and the chicken-shredding and the cooking it took about four hours, though i'm sure the time could be trimmed down with practice. Saving this one for a rainy day, AND this time Dad has to make it. >:DD
But not mom. I mentioned making matzo ball soup and she came home with this:
There are like. Two really unappetizing balls in that picture. *shudder*
So, yup. That's what I did with my snow day.
THE END
Eta: oh my god, so many typos, i will find them all in the morning i promise *collapses*