Broccoli Chowder (or When You Have No Food to Cook In Your House And No Money to Buy Any Plus You Are Too Lazy To Leave The House)

This is not my proudest recipe. You may want to try it. You may not.

What to cook when you have barely any shit that constitutes food stuffs in your house and you have cancelled your debit card because you thought it was lost  while you were on a road trip but then you found it in between the seat and the hump box of your car and therefore are in a current state of having no money.

No cash, you say?  Why don't you just go inside the bank and withdraw cash like people used to in the 1970's? Why don't you use your credit card that you keep for emergencies and flight milages?  That would be really really great if I actually wanted to leave the house at all today. So, for those of you who are poor or have no money on hand, or so rarely used that aforementioned credit card that it actually was cancelled by the bank two years ago, or if you are just a reclusive weirdo (No judging, here. We folks at Cookings of Many Much Greatness are a loving and accepting community of feelz) than this is the recipe for you.

 I ended up with a spicy yet citrus-y broccoli chowder of sorts, which was actually was quite tasty. 

If there were an Olympics for making food out of a random/ nearby and nearly expired cupboard items, I might actually win something from someone.

I was going to make pasta, but there were no onions in the house, there were no kidney beans, and worst of all there was no red wine! I was going to have to attempt this culinary adventure .....

sober.

Shit.

Noodles and jar sauce is just kind of yucky. I think you understand. I’ve done it. We’ve all done it. It’s not really food unless you are doing time in the pen and you are trying to be creative about mixing your ramen noodles with a tomato like paste so that you don't have to go to the chow line and eat those mystery meat nuggets for the 40th day in a row.

The one ingredient that I did have on hand was crap loads of broccoli.  I mean, really, .... lots and lots of broccoli. I have no idea why. I think they multiplied themselves in the dark like little mice do in the walls when you are forced to sleep in one of those government group living situations.

I had about four tablespoons of olive oil left in the jar and only four and a half cloves of garlic. I wanted to use onions, but there were none. Who would’ve guessed that the lack of chopped onions could bring a tear to the eye as easily as a chopped one?

According to one chowder recipe I looked up I should use thyme, which was awesome since I had some amazing  French thyme!  And then I realized that, apparently, I had already used the last of that up. Oh.

Because I was in need of  some kind of spice, I *did*  find three old jalapeno peppers that were wrinkling in the back of the vegetable crisper and I gutted one of them with all the care and suspicion one might utilize in prepping a fish caught in the wild wilderness of the San Francisco bay. I then chopped it and then threw the other two away. I minced the garlic with a garlic press, I dumped all the olive oil I had in the pan with a little crushed pepper and some sage. Sage ought to be just as good as thyme, right? I mean, they *are* both green in an army sort of way.

After sautéing the items on the back burner (because I could not get the front one to light anymore and I was too lazy to get matches) I added some flour and stirred, then added more flour, and stirred – and continued to do this until it was as thick as a monkey's spunk. You don’t want to leave the pan alone at this point. It’s kind of the same as when you are breaking in a wild pony. If you let her sit too long, she get’s bitter and will never let you properly ride her. If you aren’t hands-on enough, she will develop all kinds of  behavioral crusts and clumps and she will be entirely un-serviceable and then the only thing you can do is sit it somewhere on a patch of grass and walk away. 

All–in-all, it’s just not pretty. Keep your hand on the wheel, stirring that pot regularly. Then, and only then, can you proceed to give her some cream.

But I didn’t have cream. I only had milk. So that is what I used to loosen that thick flour. And then I loosened it more with more milk, and then some water I had put in my Better than Bouillon jar in order to utilize the remaining flavor scraps stuck to the sides. But it wasn't enough. I needed more bouillon, and I didn’t have any more, so I added some of the champagne I was drinking ( I forgot to mention that I found some leftover 4 buck Trader Joe's champers, didn't I?) which did not do anything for the flavor at all.

 And so I tried a little powdered mustard, which did help but did not erase the bland bitter flavour of that cheap booze which should only really be subjected to orange juice before being imbibed. But then I remembers that Braggs proudly proclaims that it makes a great tasting broth! YAY! Well, shit. I ain’t got no other options, so in it went along with the last remaining ½ cup of parmesan cheese I had in the fridge. This did it quite well, but it still wasn’t enough.

 And that was when I remembered that we had super crappy beer in the fridge. Super crappy beer is only good for two things. Drinking in the desert sun at high noon or using as a soup base. I figured that I well fell into the latter of those two catagories and put about half that beer in with the food. The other half is still looking at me with it’s sad cheap beer eyes that say “Are you really going to pour me down the drain just because you aren’t in the desert and it isn't noon?” 

The natural accompaniment to both cheap beer and chowder is, … lemons!

Thank goodness  I have one withered old lime that has been living atop the fridge  for the last month! Because of it's age the skin had gone yellow which means it counts as a lemon.

So, that went in along with some basil and marjoram because, you know, what the hell. At least I have it. And then I put on about two heads of chopped broccoli, which will leave me exactly one head and a bunch of kale left to figure out what the hell to do with tomorrow.

I realize, after boiling a little on medium, that I need more cheesey flavor. This is a problem since I no longer have any more cheese. But I do have nutritional yeast flakes, the cheese of the straight edge community! It has all the flavor of cheese but it’s more like a super hero person/icon, instead. And with a little more Braggs to top it off, it was just perfectly zingy and salty and fresh and spicy- like a 1945 sailor you might meet on the docks of San Pedro who just got his first swallow tattoo, but might not have totally realized that he is gay yet.  Maybe with age it will mellow perfectly.

How to Make Soup!

      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!