Oliver's Favorite Meal

What's Cooking? Oliver's favorite meal.

Okay, so Oliver doesn't actually get to eat the vegetable beef soup. But I can't resist giving him the soup bone after I'm done with it. He is contentedly chewing away while I blog. (And in case you were wondering, no, I don't give him chicken bones when chicken soup is on the menu!)

I made this soup primarily to freeze for winter, but we sampled it for dinner tonight, along with some of the rye bread from yesterday.

My much-beloved and often-used soup pot:
Barbara Kingsolver and her family - and some of the bloggers I've started reading recently - like to do pizza on Friday nights, but soup is our Friday night staple - even in the middle of summer. For one thing, it is very easy to thaw out a container of soup - either in the fridge or the microwave. For another, while I have made a successful pizza (or two?) from scratch, my first attempt was a complete disaster and I'd hate to have that happen again!

Jordandal soup bones
I used to be a vegetarian, and still don't buy a lot of meat, so I'm not sure what grocery store, corn-fed soup bones look like, but I've been told that grass fed meat is different. Some sources say it is more fatty. Others (like a Time Magazine article from several months ago - sorry I don't have the cite, but here's a similar story) say that corn fed beef is fatter. I think it might actually be a difference in where the fat is, but I'm not even sure about that. (I read the Time article I linked here, and that one says that corn-fed is higher in saturated fats, and grass-fed is higher in Omega-3 fats.) Regardless of its fattiness or lack thereof, I'm very satisfied with my grass-finished beef from Jordandal.

Purple carrots from the farmers' market:
Making the beef stock:
I opted not to buy any celery at the grocery store, so my stock was missing an ingredient. Normally, I throw in a lot of carrots and celery to the stock, which makes it very flavorful, but I was conserving carrots for the actual soup today, and only used two small ones.

My favorite spot to shell peas:
This is a chair that belonged to my grandmother. She had it in the corner of her dining room, and from it you could look out on the cornfield. I loved to sit in this chair and visit. My cousin recently purchased her house from my uncle, and the kids and grand-kids divvied up all of grandma and grandpa's stuff. I got this chair, my grandma's stand mixer, and her rolling pin. (I blogged a while back about not having a rolling pin, and am pleased to report that I can actually make *excellent* pie crust - no more Pillsbury for me!)

Halfway through the peas:
I was sorry not to have Adele here to help me with the peas. Fortunately, Michael came to my rescue and shelled the last third of them while I started chopping turnips, carrots, onions, and green beans.

After letting the pot simmer for 3 hours, I had some nice beef stock:
Back in went the beef followed by the vegetables:
Dinner is served:
I'd love to say this meal was 100% local, but I used spices and herbs from my cupboard that came from factories and warehouses in trucks and trains.