Soup, Glorious Soup

I've lately become addicted to this potato soup I made. I absolutely love potato soup, and then I found out there is a website dedicated to potato soup recipes! However, one single recipe did not have all the things I wanted in it, so I combined a bunch of recipes together (there was a lot of fudging on my part), and hopefully I have created soup that is as delicious to everyone else as it is to me!

Now for the recipe:

Jenny's AWESOME Potato Soup

Note: I start with the measurements, but I tend to add more of everything than what I'm actually going to list.

1 14 oz. can vegetable broth (more is okay)
3 regular-sized potatoes or 4-5 small potatoes, diced into smallish pieces with the skin still on
1/2 cup diced onions (regarding the 1/2 cup measurements--I tend to make them rounded)
1/2 cup diced carrots
1/2 cup diced celery
3/4 tsp. McFadden Farm Bean & Soup Herbs
1/8 tsp. garlic powder
2 tablespoons butter (or butter-like-product)
2 cups milk
water
1/4 cup flour
Salt to taste
Shredded Cheese (I use Sargento brand of the "Mexican" variety)

Dice up all the stuff if you haven't done so already.

Melt the butter in a regular-ish sized saucepan or pot. Add the onions and cook until transparent.

Add carrots, celery, potatoes, and vegetable broth. Mix the flour with enough water to dissolve it and add that too. If the liquid doesn't cover all the vegetables, add more water (you shouldn't have to add too much).

Bring to a boil and cook for ten minutes. Add the soup herbs and garlic powder.

Cook for 10 more minutes or so, until the potatoes are soft.

Add the milk and cook for 5-10 more minutes, or basically until the soup looks all right. Make sure the soup does not boil over.

Let the soup sit a little while off of the heat, and then serve. Add salt to taste. Also, add maybe a handful of the cheese and stir it in to melt.

DEEEEELICIOUS. And I'm not even a fan of cooking. I just love soup so much.

div3 type="CRAP"

And BAM, I'm on another Uncle Remus epic.

Here's the kicker: IT HAS THE SAME CONTENT. Like, the same plantation songs and everything. I'm really tempted to just copy and paste the code out of the other book, except that my meticulous nature forbids this. If this were my permanent full-time job, I'd choke myself (or maybe I would just choke on my irritation).

I've been in a knitting slump, but I've also had a bunch of schoolwork to do. I am crazy for taking six classes and working 16-18 hours a week, but I honestly don't have anything better to do with my time, apparently, than proofread post-Civil-War childrens' literature and read Dickens. Man, I can think of LOTS better stuff, but none of it is blogging.

/div3

Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings can KISS MY ASS because I am hella DONE with it. I even encoded every single small-cap author name there WAS in the back (there were SEVERAL) and now my fingers automatically go to ctrl+v, even if I just want to type a capital V. You have NO idea how hard that was for me just now.

I have a very long and ugly history with that book. Computers are involved. Also a faceless grad student (I don't even know if it's a boy or a girl!). And now that chapter of my life is closed, /div3, huzzah (div1 is my college career and div2 is my job. That's RIGHT I'm making xml/html jokes. That's how cool I am--i.e., not very).

I want to marry Ysolda's Gretel beret. First I want to marry a girl, now I want to marry the idea of a beret (that seems to be female). Conservative America, eat your heart out. The trick will be getting the beret to propose (I guess I'm just old-fashioned).

Seriously, I don't even know if I'd look good in that beret. I generally look dumb in berets (except those weirdo kangol ones, but those are hella expensive). But all the FOs I've seen lately have been done in MALABRIGO, so holy yarngasm, Batman, I think I have to have this hat. I'm seriously tempted to use the Malabrigo I bought for my mom last year to make this hat for ME, although my mom might look super cute in a beret (not that she'd wear one--it would mess up her hair). However, I don't think I'm a neon-pink-beret sort of girl.

I also can't bring myself to pay so much for the pattern, what with the weak dollar and all. Four dollars is NOT that much, but it is when it could totally be cheaper. Stupid economy, and Ysolda's patterns being ALL AWESOME. I'll be poor and blind yet, just you wait. I'm already a crippled drug addict! Poverty would be a lovely garnish on the poorly-tossed salad that is all my medical conditions.

Now I'm hungry.

Jobs and Such

I wasn't entirely excited about this Ravelry business when it first started, so I was a little late queue-ing up for it. I'm not so sure I'm too excited now, since it's probably just going to be another message board I futz around with for a while until I get bored, but hey, might as well get all the futzing out of my system while I'm in college and have few friends and even less stuff to do when not doing homework (or work work...but I can futz around during my boss's lunch break. YOU try reading ONLY Joel Chandler Harris books for five hours and see how thrilled YOU are. Then render everything in small-caps! NOBODY KNOWS MY PAIN).

At any rate, I should probably be on Ravelry in the next two days, and definitely by the end of the week! I'm vaguely excited about joining an "exclusive" club, since it's free (unlike that sorority I almost joined by accident--my roommate is the president and therefore I've attended the required amount of rush events by virtue of the fact that I live where they were held! If this were the only prerequisite, my girlfriend could also join, since she was here for all those events too. I'm just too lazy to go to chapter meetings, and too cheap to pay to join a club I won't go to; as for my girlfriend, well, she DOESN'T GO HERE!).

My Ruffled Surplice makes me cry, my Camisa keeps unraveling of its own accord, and I've started that ubiquitious top-down raglan, which I have merged with the Boatneck Bluebell to create some sort of unholy monster (although you shouldn't quote me on that, since all I have is 3/4 inch of a neckline so far). I'm really paranoid about my FOs being depressing, and may go back to just making hats. There's always someone with a smaller head than mine (there's 99% of the world of someones, judging by those one-size-fits-everyone-but-me hats out on the market. I have this problem with shirts too. I am a rather bulbous individual).

I don't talk much about my job, because it frankly is not even interesting to me even in a "MY JOB IS BORING" sort of way. Its boringness is not really even very interesting. Joel Chandler Harris is vaguely racist in an ignorant, post-Civil War sort of way (as I imagine many people of the white persuasion were), but not malicious, although his rendering of Southern dialect makes me want to bash my face into the monitor until it explodes (quite a feat, as all the monitors in all the labs are LCD now. I miss those old HARD monitors. I did bash my face into one once, and let me tell you, I never made THAT mistake again).

Maybe I'll get in a procrastinate-y mood later this week and actually talk about what my job IS. Or I'll just ramble in a vaguely stream-of-consciousness fashion, which, after all, is what a blog IS.

And on that note, I will laugh at the idea of James Joyce or Virginia Woolf doing memes. I hate being a freaking English major. I don't like that I find that crap funny, or that I've read the intro to Leaves of Grass twice.

So Sad

My parents came to visit this afternoon on their way to Branson (yay?) and my mom tried on the Ruffled Surplice. It looks better on her because she has no shoulders, but since she's so short, it's waaay too long on her. The Sugar 'n' Cream will shrink up when I wash it, and maybe it will fit better (I hope). She also says she doesn't notice the dye lot differences, which is pretty cool.

It wasn't that much work, but I'd still be sad to frog it, especially since I did all that seaming. Also, it's such a cute pattern and such a cute sweater by itself. It's too bad I look stupid in it. Maybe if I had done a solid color instead of that variegated blue.

Of course now I'm even more afraid of sweaters! Augh. I should just go back to generic baggy ones, since those work out in my favor.

I Shouldn't Be Surprised

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

My Ruffled Surplice makes me look like a linebacker. Stupid puffed sleeves and broad shoulders.

Going to go cry now.

Or maybe I'll finish it with all the ruffly bits and it'll look better. But now I seriously doubt it...waaaaaah. If only I were slender, then I could wear nice trendy clothes all the time.

At least I got a new free shirt that actually fits yesterday. That will balance out the heartache...maybe.