My happy little leg cramps have graduated to full out left leg labor pain type leg cramps. And when you look it up on line it says, “sucker, you are just going to have to suffer–it could be weeks, could be months.”
Ferdinand has been reduced to cold cereal, candy bars and plain pasta. He doesn’t seem to mind–and Jonathan is away–eating peanuts and freeze dried string beans somewhere on the Appalachian trail with his mother.
I would be a liar if I told you I was going to get up from this bed and make soup, but I am having minestrone visions, which may or may not be a sign that my body is trying to heal itself, if only via hallucinations.
Cut one onion, 2 carrots and 2 stalks of celery into a fine dice. Saute this in the best olive oil you have for about 20 minutes, over a low flame, with 3 cloves of garlic, a stalk of parsley and one of fresh thyme. (or no herbs–in Tuscany they traditionally would use no herb here). Dice up a little fresh pancetta or lard from a happy pig (if no guarantee of a happy pig, just leave it out) and saute that for a few minutes with the onion mixture. Add 2 chopped zucchini, potaotes, peeled and chopped, 1/4 of a savoy cabbage that has been cut into a fine shreds along with a few cups of hot stock and 1 squished whole, canned plum tomato. When the vegetables are just done, add between 1 and 2 cups of COOKED cannellini, half of them smashed. Ideally, you want to cook them from dry, so that you can use their cooking liquid for the soup. If not, just use extra chicken or beef stock to get the consistency of soup that you would like. Taste for salt and black pepper. Add 20 baby spinach leaves that you pile one on top of the other, then fold over, and slice into thin strips. Do the same with about 10 basil leaves, adding them about 2 minutes before the soup is done. Serve with a drizzle of olive oil, parmesan, and a crusty crouton.