An extremely hearty and simple soup for a wintry day

 Making my Vaguely Italian Bean and Greens soup tonight! The contents are extremely variable, the results are always really good.

Start with browning some crumbled sausage in olive oil. Using Italian sausage tonight, but could be turkey sausage or plant-based (which I haven't used so can't advise). You can also omit the sausage and substitute diced onions or carrots.

Add minced garlic to taste, and a hearty dollop of basil pesto.

Add a can of diced tomatoes (fire-roasted, chilies added, whatever you like) and a can of beans (cannellini today, could be roman beans or navy beans or whatever you prefer).

Add enough broth or water to make consistency you prefer -- I like a nice dense soup. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer.

Then add shredded greens. Anything goes. Marcella Hazan's simpler cookbook version of this soup uses Swiss chard, which is excellent. I've used spinach, arugula, kale, escarole, whatever; tonight it's shredded Tuscan kale.

When the greens are done, serve forth! Enjoy with grated Parmesan cheese and lots of crusty bread, and a bottle of wine.

I'm pretty sure I first made this soup before I saw the Hazan version, but I've no idea where I got the idea from. Probably a food magazine? Hazan's version is much simpler, without the sausage and tomatoes, really a variation on classic escarole and white bean soup, which is also delicious.

My Goodreads Reading Challenges, part 1: 2020

 A few years ago, the end of 2018 to be precise, I thought I would have an easier time reading and finishing many of the many, many books in my To Be Read pile. The reason was, I was no longer a full-time employee anywhere, but freelance, and given my lazy approach to finding work I thought this would mean more time to knit, more time to read, more time to Do Things that were not directly employment related. For example, I finished writing a second novel, and kept working on my third and fourth! And started cleaning out our crowded apartment of superfluous things. And pampering my plants.

As for more time to read? Once upon a time I read short stories voraciously, subscribed to all the SFF mags and bought collections and anthologies. But my tastes shifted over the years, and I began craving longer and longer stories practically to the exclusion of true short stories. The quality of available reading material had nothing to do with it. Just personal taste.

Things didn’t happen quite the way I imagined. During 2018, when I still commuted an hour each day by bus, and often spent lunch time at my desk, and we flew on lengthy trips several times, I read a lot of books. Seventy two! Same as 2017! And back in 2016 I read 77, perhaps an all-time personal best. I’ll write about those books some other time. (And yes, I’m using Goodreads to track all that.)

In 2019, I made the same modest goal of reading 50 books that I had for years past. And read 55! I blamed it on shorter bus rides, not traveling by air as much, and having generally more stuff to do.

Then…pandemic. Surely, even the distraction of having Spouse home all day working from home could not prevent me from continuing to tackle my book-reading goals head on. Surely I’d get lots of knitting done, lots of reading done. I once again set a goal of 50 books, which seemed eminently doable.

But I read only 39 full books in 2020. Many were but novellas, or even shorter. Graphic novels, with not much dialogue. I know now, that between pandemic and politics I wasn’t alone in struggling to concentrate enough to get through some very anxious periods. I thoroughly enjoyed what I read. But I worried about my aging brain, and set the same goal of 50 books for 2021. Which I missed. By a lot.

(I will report that thankfully neither I nor Spouse actually contracted Covid that year. Nor since, so far.)

2020 books included:

The Death of the Necromancer, by Martha Wells
Rogue Protocol, and Exit Strategy, and Network Effect, by Martha Wells
The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders
Paladin’s Grace, and A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, by T. Kingfisher
Life of David Hockney, by Catherine Cusset
Stormsong, and Midnight Bargain by CL Polk
Gideon the Ninth, and Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow
Beneath the Rising, by Premee Mohamed
The Haunting of Tram Car 015, by P. Djeli Clark
Color, by Victoria Finlay
The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie
Blackfish City, by Sam J. Miller
The Empire of Gold, by SA Chakraborty
The Vinyl Detective: Low Action, by Andrew Cartmel
Rag and Bone, and Slippery Creatures, by KJ Charles
Storm of Locusts, by Rebecca Roanhorse
The House of Sundering Flames, and Of Dragons Feasts and Murders, by Aliette de Bodard
Solutions and Other Problems, by Allie Brosh
A Pocketful of Lodestones, by Elizabeth Crowens
The Morning of the Magicians, by Louis Pauwels
Daemon Voices, by Philip Pullman
The Physicians of Vilnoc, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Girl Genius: Queens and Pirates, by Phil & Kaja Foglio

(I am omitting several things I read mostly for research purposes for my own writing.)

TO BE CONTINUED...

Variations on a Tuna

Saw an interesting idea for lunch in a recent NYT Food newsletter, and tried it today. SUCCESS. We both loved it! 

 
Mix canned tuna (1 can for 2 people) with a little soy sauce, a little sesame oil, as much mayo as you like (I am using Kewpie these days), mix with chopped cucumber (I used 1 small seedless for 2 people) and chopped scallion. Put over hot rice. Add a few shakes of furikake (flaked nori and sesame seeds).

Not so much a recipe as a procedure, as all is to taste. Other ideas included were chopped radish, avocado and tomato. I'll definitely try those!

Previously, my fanciest tuna salad lunches were scallions, dill, olives, capers and mayo and olive oil, sometimes sliced grape tomatoes. Diced celery is good too, but I usually only buy celery in fall and winter. Other times too lazy, just use mayo, capers and lemon pepper or Italian herb blend. I'm going to try chili-lime spice blend too! 

You can use whatever canned tuna you like, of course, solid or light. We eat canned tuna once a week or so, alternating types. 

My tuna salad notions came about after many years of my being convinced I didn't like canned tuna, while my Spouse claims he practically lived on tuna sandwiches for years while a bachelor. I gradually came to appreciate it, now I even crave it sometimes. 

I started out ages ago making a "Tuscan Tuna Salad" we ate in pita pockets or over beds of lettuce. 

• Sauté in olive oil: sliced scallions, diced fennel, red bell pepper, 1 can small white beans until warmed. 
• Mixed with tuna, diced cucumber, chopped parsley and dill. 
• Chopped olives are optional. I like them. 
• Simple olive oil and lemon juice dressing. Lots of fresh ground pepper. Salt. 
• Again, not a real recipe, more a procedure. Spouse can't eat raw onion, for example, so I use scallions instead, but you could use diced red or sweet raw onion. 

Quantities vary. I literally never measure chopped or sliced veggies in any recipe. I go by what would serve the 2 of us, depending on whether we want leftovers or not. Tuscan Tuna Salad could absolutely become leftovers for lunch, so eyeball it. Quarter a fennel bulb for 2 servings, half for 4. Peppers come in all sizes, so maybe half a cup for 2 servings or 4. An entire small Persian cucumber for 2, or a few inches of a larger greenhouse cucumber. 

Then I started making several tuna-based toppings for pasta. My first version was: 

• Sauté shallot, garlic in olive oil; 
• Add petite diced canned tomatoes, basil pesto, chopped black olives, capers, flaked canned tuna, crushed red pepper and lots of black pepper. 
• Use whatever pasta you like. Curly pasta holds the topping really well. 

My delicious version of Pasta Puttanesca is really easy for a pantry dinner when I'm tired. Again, for 2 people:

• Sauté small chopped onion or large shallot in olive oil, with lots of garlic. 
• Add a generous heap of anchovies, 1 can of drained diced tomatoes and at least a heaping tablespoon of basil pesto. Cook down a bit. Stir a lot. 
• At the last minute, add the can of tuna, a handful of chopped olives and a few spoonfuls of capers. 
• Shake on some hot red pepper flakes, and plenty of grated Parmesan. 
• Serve with red wine! 

OF COURSE Salad Nicoise is still the king of tuna salad meals. I try not to make a huge production of it, as good tomatoes and green beans and baby potatoes are in the Greenmarket just when I don't want to heat up the house by cooking. So I cheat! 

• Cut the baby red potatoes in half. Boil. When they have boiled 5 minutes, add the green beans to the same pot. They will come out done at the same time. Drizzle with dressing while still warm. Let cool a bit. 
• Hard-boil eggs preferably some other time if it's hot in the kitchen. Peel and slice in half or quarters or whatever you like. 
• Meanwhile, prepare vinaigrette dressing (olive oil, lemon juice or red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard). I sometimes add some mayo. Lots of ground pepper. 
• Prepare the lettuce. Mix it with a bit of dressing. Slice tomatoes. 
• Break up the tuna you're using (the jarred filets are best but canned is fine). I like to pre-combine it with plenty of small olives and plenty of capers and plenty of drained anchovies. Fewer bowls to wash! Mix with a bit of dressing. 
• Serve however you like. I fill our bowls with lettuce, then we pick the rest. 

I have a David Rosengarten recipe for "Lemony Tuna and White Bean Antipasto Salad" that I still haven't tried, but it's pretty simple. Tuna, canned cannellini, olives, sliced celery, capers, parsley, roasted red pepper, all combined with a lemon juice & olive oil vinaigrette plus lemon zest. Maybe next week!