Christmas Soup

Today was the day for me to try making a new soup that we plan to serve with Christmas dinner..... Crab Artichoke Parmesean Bisque. My husband and I bought containers of that homemade soup in the downtown "Whole Foods Market" a couple of weeks ago. Delicious soup, and it was a cold and rainy day when we had that for lunch (right in the market) so it tasted especially good.

So here we are, two weeks later, with sunny 80-degree temperatures, and I'm making soup. Which is fine with me.... I love soup, especially ones that don't come out of a can. I figured that the soup shouldn't be too hard to make, being that we knew the three main ingredients-- crabmeat, artichoke hearts, parmesean cheese.

I started by making my basic soup base, the same as I use for the crawfish bisque (that I started making after we had it in one of the local seafood restaurants). You take diced onion and let it get lightly brown in a little bit of butter.... then I added about 1/4 cup of finely diced carrots (they had carrots in the Crab Artichoke Parmesean bisque)...... after those got all nice and happy, I added a bit more butter (which I hate to use, but there's no substitute for the real thing), then I added three spoons of flour and let that cook for a couple of seconds. Then I poured in the "new" milk that we've been buying: Organic Fat Free 1% milk (delicious). I can't even tell you how much milk I used.... I just know how full my soup pot should be after I pour in the milk.

The milk has to come to a slow boil, then it thickens, with those onions and carrots in there. To make this soup extra-thick (which is how it was in the Whole Foods Market), I let a small red bliss potato cook in the microwave, then I took off the skin, mashed up the potato, and added it to the soup.... along with about 1/3 cup of grated parmesean cheese. I didn't even add salt and pepper because the cheese has salt, and the artichoke hearts have spices already added.

Now for the good parts.... I didn't have crabmeat in the fridge, so I used a can of whole baby clams.... I cut them up into teeny pieces. Then I took about six artichoke halves (the kind that comes in those small jars with oil)..... I drained those and chopped those up into teeny bits and into the soup they went. I let the soup cook slowly for less than half an hour... and taaa-daaaah! Delicious........ really a nice, thick, Christmas-day-worthy bisque.

Young Miss C was here this afternoon (she had just half a day of school today) so she tasted it and loved it also. My husband has meetings this afternoon, so I'm anxious to see what he thinks about it. For Christmas, I will make sure to have real crabmeat in the fridge, because that will give it a richer flavor than the baby clams.

We're having a seafood menu for Christmas dinner..... mussels with pesto sauce, then the crab/artichoke/parmesean bisque, then crab/salmon cakes. C's mom is making garlic bread to go with the mussels, and potatoes with feta cheese & artichoke hearts to go with the crab/salmon cakes. R is making a vegetable casserole to go with the main course, and she's also making a fruit chutney for the crab/salmon cakes. My husband will make his plum pudding for dessert, and I'll bake a pumpkin pie (or I may bake Greek cookies, if I have the time).

Speaking of Greek cookies.... my Greek-cookie-friend F up in New York reminded me how upset I was when our local supermarket had decided not to stock frozen phyllo dough. How right she was. I promised F that I would have a better attitude when I go grocery shopping. I promise not to say "I hate it, I hate it, I hate it." I promise not to complain that there are hundreds of varieties of cheese and thousands of kinds of breakfast cereal.

But do I really have to stop complaining that it takes 54,357 steps to get from one side of a Kroger to the other?