First you make soup by getting out a really large ass pot. You are going to need a pot because a pan is too small to make soup in and you can't make soup on a plate. You are going to use a large ass pot because everything that might go bad in your fridge, barring a few items and adding a few others, is going to go into that pot. You should adjust the size of "large ass" to fit your personal needs. If you, say, live in Oakland, what might be a "large ass" for someone else might be a medium sized or small ass to you, particularly if that other person lives in, say, Mendocino County. I hear that there is a lot of speed there. For the hipster boys that thought it would be fun to start an ironic frat house two doors down from you and play loud football in the street at 11pm on a Monday night, this might mean be the equivalent of a sauce pan.
Onions and garlic go in first. They don't *have* to go in first. If you find you forgot to put them in first you can always put them in later. It will really not make that much of a difference. But you want to put in the garlic and onion first if you are into that sauteing thing. Soup can be made without sauteing and it is fine, but today you are going to saute. Other cooking peoples say to saute in a frying pan or wok. This is bullshit unless you like cleaning more dishes.
It's important to add one fuckload of minced garlic and two fuckloads of chopped onions to the pot with no heat. Then you are going to add just south of a shitload of olive oil, or enough to coat everything on the bottom of the pan and turn on the heat. Don't turn on the heat before or you might burn your garlic. Burnt garlic sucks and you don't want it in your soup.
Tip: send your husband out to chop the onions in the backyard with goggles. This works way better than the other way you have been doing it.
Start to add some salt and pepper to your mix, then decide to use the Penzey's Ruth Ann's Muskego Ave. Chicken and Fish Seasoning, which is really a sort of lemon pepper salt thing and you have been putting it on most everything since you got it despite your original suspicion of it as being just glorified salt. Plus your mother-in-law got it for you.
Stir everything until the onions are no longer just white, but are now kind of a pearl color.
At this point it is really time to open the red wine. Pour in half a bottle. This is going to leave you and your husband with only a glass each and you are going to want more. You should have bought more, but you were thinking that one bottle of wine and one bottle of vodka would be enough last night. You were mistaken. So, plan a wine run in the middle of your soup making.
Pull everything veggie or meat that might go bad out of your fridge. Be sure to sniff the sausages and check if they have a sticky or slimy texture before chopping them up and putting them in the pot.
Tip: A bad smelling or slimy sausage is not something you should put in your pot. Tell your husband to shower or perhaps get that thing checked out by a qualified physician.
Potatoes go in early if you want a creamy texture of dissolved potato or late if you want chunks. Scrub well, but don't bother peeling them. Why would you peel them, anyway? Carrots should be peeled, however. You then add chopped bell peppers, tomatoes, turnips, and yellow squash in the pot. You chop up some fresh basil and then realize you have to add the entire bunch because you chopped it on top of the sausage area and you can't put that shit back now because it might turn septic. So, the equivalent of a fuckload of basil goes into the pot. You also add some Herbs de Provance because it sounds cool and your mother-in-law got it for you.
Your pot is now full. You will have to put the other vegetable back in the fridge. Hopefully you have added some water to the pot so you have a pot full of both vegetables *and* boiling water or you might need to separate the batch into two pots. You don't have any broth, but Bragg's will do just fine. It's really the same thing anyway, right? And plus, look at the shiny hair!
Now you are ready for your wine run. Put it on simmer and tell your three cats to make sure the house doesn't burn down while you are gone.
Target is the place to go for the soup wine run. While there you can also pick up other things like lint brushes and attempt to find some sort of ginger matching foundation for your husband. Sadly, you find that Target, like MAC, has a bias against gingers and there is no foundation there for anyone with a pink based complexion. The MAC store clerk lied when she said that adding blush to the light foundation would convert it to a ginger hue. Instead, it converted your husband into a large carrot. Don't believe the MAC counter ladies.
You notice that there are a plethora of hot ladies at the Target. Was this always the case or did more ladies become hot as you hit your mid-thirties? When you realize that you said this out loud you notice that the woman in the yellow polka dot dress is quickly moving away from you and into the next aisle. Maybe this is because you have a little of the impetigo left over on your face which your cat gave you last month. It's not a good look.
There is a really hot Amazonianly tall giant red head of a woman in front of you and your husband at the check out line wearing only an oversized man's work shirt and cowboy boots. Your husband looks at you and says something about that being the way he wants to die. You hit him in the arm, but secretly you agree.You both decide it would be a bad idea to ask her if she knows anything about ginger foundation.
Back at home, you can now open the second bottle of wine.
Taste your soup. If it is a little bland, add one buttload of Bragg's and a half a bottle of the newly opened wine.
If your flavors are still off, add some of that spicy beer mustard that worked so well when you were making corned beef and some siracha because siracha goes in everything. Stir and taste again. The flavors should now be starting to have a harmony. Add just a bit of thyme and this thing called "Mural of Flavor" from Penzey Spices because the name sounds cool and your mother-in-law got it for you. You might add a lemon, but you do not have a lemon.
Boil down for an hour until the flavor is more concentrated and enjoy!
