Soft Foods

Lawson had some dental surgery this week, so for the last several days we've been eating soft foods. It's been a fun challenge. The problem with foods for sick people (milk toast, chicken noodle soup, etc.), as I see it, is that they are mostly low in fiber, and who wants to be both sick AND constipated?

So here's what we've been eating:

Sweet potato and red pepper soup: I found a recipe for this in that great soup book you gave both me and Grandma a few years ago, but the recipe was dumb -- throw everything in some vegetable stock and boil it for half an hour? So I roasted the sweet potatoes until they sweetened up properly; softened the onions, garlic, and pepper in oil; simmered the whole thing for a while with leftover duck stock; seasoned it; then pureed it. It was wonderful. I added some Texas Pete to my bowl.




Roasted beets: my new obsession. If you roast them long enough, cut them into 1/2-inch pieces, and toss them with lemon, salt, and olive oil, they are soft and sweet and perfect.

Homemade mushroom soup: Sauteed cremini, dried shitake, stock, sherry, and fresh thyme, mostly. It was creamy without dairy. I was happy.

Puddings: puddings! If they are not already, I predict that puddings will be the next silly comfort food trend. My homemade butterscotch pudding was a bit too firm, but the flavor was excellent. I made rice pudding with cardamom, honey, and lemon zest -- excellent with a glass of tawny port, in case Dad's interested. But the most incredible discovery from this series of dental surgeries has been simple vanilla pudding. Here's the Joy of Cooking's recipe (mostly), which is perfect (and small -- enough for four tiny ramekins):

Mix in a heavy saucepan:

- 1/3 cup sugar
- 2 T plus 1 1/2 t cornstarch
- 1/4 t salt

Thoroughly blend in 1/2 cup, then stir in the rest of:

- 2 cups milk or cream or some combination thereof

Stir slowly and constantly over medium heat until it begins to thicken (this is usually rather dramatic). Then stir fast. The pudding will start to simmer; hold it there for a minute, then take it off the heat and stir in:

- 2 t vanilla

Pour the pudding into bowls and put them in the fridge for as long as you can stand it. Once I unmolded the puddings from tiny ramekins onto tiny plates and scattered them with fresh raspberries. That was pretty special.