Welcome, belated St. Paddy’s Day to y’all. Pull up a chair and relax, we will have some small talk while I prepare today’s soup. I decided to create a new soup recipe from the leftovers of my St. Patrick’s dinner of corned beef, potatoes, carrots, onion and cabbage. I am going to call it “St. Paddy’s Stew.” So, this will be an addition to our Cookbook Fundraiser. I’m debating whether or not to throw some horseradish in with it, will decide later today as it progresses.
The deadline for all contributors of recipes to the Cookbook has passed, so now I am going to fill in the rest to bring the soup recipes to a total of 150. There will also be side dishes and desserts too. The total recipes in the Cookbook could be around 175 or more. We are still offering Advance Order’s for the Cookbook at a $5 discount, for only $20, which includes shipping and an e-book version too, until March 31st.
One of the recipes in the Cookbook is “Corn Chowder Soup” which I prepared last Sunday. It was a recipe contributed by a neighbor of mine, Linda O’Connell. If you will recall, little Davey Johnson, one of our potters, drew the recipe at random for me to prepare. He could not make up his mind if he wanted the option of adding sausage or shrimp. So, I decided to do both, with a twist. I added not just regular sausage, I added a mild Italian sausage, and not just shrimp, I happened to have some Alaskan Spot Prawns which I had recently received from Alaska in my regular shipment of Alaskan seafood. I receive a box every other month, instead of monthly.
I have been trying to follow the recipes as written in all of the other previous recipes, but since I already decided to tweak this one, let’s tweak it some more, I thought. So, the recipe called for three cans of corn, well some fresh corn sounded so much better to me, so I replaced two of the cans of corn with four ears of fresh corn. I was right, it added a very nice fresh taste to the chowder. Now the recipe called for “cayenne pepper to taste’. Well apparently, Linda’s idea of “to taste’ and my idea of “to taste’ are different. I gave some of the leftover to her for her and her husband to sample, and I seen her a couple days later, she said “wow that was really spicy, but we ate it all”. I think that she would add a pinch of cayenne, where I would add 2 or 3 “dashes.”
Today’s soup, “St. Paddy’s Stew”, is going to be simple and easy since it is basically just throwing together the leftovers and adding a broth. Well, it just so happens that I saved the broth that it simmered in while getting happy in my slow cooker. The “broth” was a lager beer and enough water to cover the corned beef and vegies. I saved it just in case I might want to make this stew. Thinking ahead sometimes pays off.
Speaking of thinking ahead, Empty Bowls has to start organizing for our first event of the year which is going to be on the 4th of July. We are planning an ice-cream social event, where instead of a bowl of soup with every bowl purchased, you would get a bowl of ice-cream. We also intend on having a hot-dog stand too. We really need an event coordinator, are you interested in volunteering? We want to have the location where some fireworks will be after dark. A regular 4th of July Picnic type of event. We need a celebration of sorts after all of this Covid shut down and limitation. By July we should be able to gather without repercussion.
While we are talking about needing a volunteer to coordinate that event, we really need some volunteers for the other events that are in the works. In October at the Arts and Crafts Festivals, we will need 4 to 5 people to be at the booths that we will have at two different fairs, for a total of 8 to 10 people. The fairs are scheduled for October 14th through 16th, which is Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Then on November 11th, we will have our Soup Event, where purchasers of a bowl would get a bowl of soup from a variety that we will have to choose from. We will need volunteers to assist at the event, besides preparing some of the soups. I forgot to mention that anyone purchasing a bowl outside of the event are allowed to attend the event. We will be keeping track of those purchases and have a checklist for the attendees.
With these events, that we are planning, we hope to sell 1,000 bowls this year, which would give us around $25,000 to pass on to the food banks and pantries in our six-county region. These people need our help, especially this year, due to this terrible pandemic that we have had to endure for more than a year now.
As always. I invite your comments and questions, even criticism is accepted.
See y’all next Sunday, until then, do not be afraid to try something new and different.
Enjoy life!
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