How to Make Pining-for-my-Wife Vegetable and Meat Soup

Equipment

Very Sharp Knife (VSK)
Crock Pot (try to make yourself aware of how many quarts)
Potato Masher
Vegetable Peeler

Ingredients

1 pound of meat per quart-size of your crock pot
sufficient broth (any meat broth will do) to cover the meat in the crock (usually, 2 quarts will be enough for 4-5 pounds of meat)
Seasoning Salt
Mustard
1/2
pound of bacon
4-8 stalks of celery
1-3 onions
2 cans corn
2 cans beans (I used one of red, one of black)
1 pound of carrots

Steps

• First, wait until your wife goes out of town for a few days to visit friends, attend a conference, drive with her Mom across the country. Whatever..


• The evening that your wife leaves, go to the grocery. Wander morosely around, trying to remind yourself of all the things the kids need to eat. Lunches to pack. Vegetables. Some fruit. Do we need milk?


• Hey! Find some meat on sale (in my case, it was boneless skinless chicken breast; the containers were kind of leaky, so they were really cheap). Buy a sufficient quantity for your crock pot (see ingredient one).


• Go home, put your groceries in the fridge, lie awake in bed, keenly aware of how very alone and cold it is.


• Wake up the next day, get the kids ready for school.


• Get out your crock pot, reminding yourself your wife has assured you over and over again that it is impossible to screw up cooking meat in a crock pot.


• Use your VSK to remove as much of the remaining bits of fat or bone from the meat as possible. In the process, cut the meat into 1-2 inch chunks.


• Clean the knife, and the cutting board, right now. Raw meat makes kids sick. Sick kids makes your wife think you are a dunce. Go on, wash your hands too.


• Fire up that engine of culinary awesomeness. I set mine on high, intending to turn it down once it gets to the boiling stage, but usually forget. So, you know, I’m kind of the poster-boy for the assertion that it is impossible to screw up cooking meat in a crock pot. Sorry, I really have no idea how hot you are supposed to set it.


• Spice it up. Spice it up more. Remember, you are not seasoning a burger, or even a steak. Your are seasoning the meal for multiple pounds of meat. Add more. I go in circles with the mustard about 4 times, making a nifty bullseye shape. Then I make it a pretty red color with the seasoning salt.


• Add the bacon. No wait, cut the bacon into little bite-sized pieces, then add it. Man, sorry if you already added it, it’s kind of gross to fish it out and cut it up.


• Pour in the broth. This should bring the level of stuff in your crock pot up to about 2 inches from the rim.


• Peel the carrots and add them. You can chop them (with your VSK) into bite-sized pieces if you want, but it’s kind of funny to have soup, a meal eaten with a spoon, with these great stick-sized carrots poking out of the bowls. And by “funny” I mean “messy”. OK, only leave the carrots long if you have kids to assign to the job of washing the table.


• Close the lid, and go do something else for the next 4 or 5 hours to take your mind off of missing her. Do the laundry.


• Well, don’t go away the whole time; if you forget to eat lunch, that ceases to be romantic pining, and becomes tragic self-injury. Kids need you to be nice to them while Mom is gone, not some grumpy ogre. Come back to the kitchen occasionally, make a sandwich or something, and stir the soup.


• Before you add the rest of the vegetables, you need to break up the meat. Have you ever tried to actually eat a 2-inch hunk of meat in soup? Ridiculous! Move all the carrots safely to one side of the pot, and mash the meat with a potato masher. Seriously; it makes them into perfect, soupy, bite-sized pieces of shredded meat. Nobody likes soup with cubed meat in it, you can buy that kind of nonsense in a cheap can of chicken soup.


• About two hours before you are going to eat, chop up the onions into soup-sized bites, add them. They will all float, I think that’s normal.


• Same thing with the celery. Try to vigorously stir the soup to get those darn veggies to mix in with the meat. Stupid floaty veggies. Remember how attractive food was when your wife was here? Go sit in the living room for a while and look at your wedding pictures.


• If you forgot to turn the crock pot temperature down earlier, turn it down now.


• About 30 minutes before eating, drain and rinse the beans and corn. Add them to the soup. See how they mix in with the rest of the soup? Onions, celery, why can’t you be like your brother corn?


• Call the kids to dinner, get the big soup ladle out. Graciously accept their many compliments, assuring them that Mom taught you everything you know.


• Mmm, salty bacon-meat vegetable soup. You promised you'd feed them vegetables. Savor the broth. Salty like the tears lingering in the corners of your eyes.