Week in Review Soup

Not really leftovers per se (and Thomas Keller, you're welcome to title your next restaurant Leftovers Per Se, no finder's fee, help yourself to my intellectual property). But for lunch Cranky threw together a soup of cabbage, potatoes, onions and carrots in some, OK, leftover organic chicken broth, along with tasty shreds of, um, OK, leftover frozen Kentucky ham. He did a wonderful job. I usually get twitchy when he's in the kitchen without me; I feel a need to be in there directing, meddling, kvetching. Lately, though, Cranky has been practicing creativity and restraint simultaneously. He's showing confidence, and he's refraining from overdoing flavors.
So, in review, today (Sunday), Gov. Schwarzenegger is showing no confidence at all about how to handle the clemency issue over Tookie Williams' impending execution. He’s probably feeling wimpy because Tookie’s biceps are bigger than his.
This little squizzle of soup is in a really tiny bowl, by the way, for photographic purposes. On Wednesday I complained in the blog about not being able to take good pictures of homey food. Among the many good suggestions I got in response was one from Jen at Life Begins at 30, who suggested shooting smaller portions of drab-looking food, and that gave me the idea of using dinky dishes to shoot little dabs! So that's what I did for this shot.
Meanwhile, U.S. air marshals shot and killed a guy for maybe or maybe not mumbling something about a bomb.
Flash forward to Friday. Cranky and I are enjoying our first dinner ever at San Francisco's lovely, romantic and cozy Isa, a place with an oxymoronic destination-neighborhood sensibility: homey and at the same time (ooh, can I say this?) metro. Our guests are Jen and her Jason. Jen presented me with a bag of tissue-wrapped small dishes, each one different and special and frisky and elegant. (I'm saving them for something classier than cabbage soup, Cranky.) Dinner at Isa is mostly shared small plates (small plates — prescient, Jen), but our two orders of potato-wrapped seabass amounted to at least a pound of flesh.
Meanwhile, we learn that much of the phony intelligence used by BushCo to ravage Iraq was acquired pound-of-flesh style (the T-word, torture).
Tuesday was an easy food day. A bag of Tim’s Cascade Style Potato Chips, wasabi flavor. Sometime you just gotta put the pot-holders on hold. I believe we were busy doing laundry. Underwear, stuff like that.
Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein, whom we recently saw in his cell wearing baggy tighty-whities, shouted at the judge in his trial that he now had no underwear. Ew.
Saturday was a genuine leftovers day. We nuked turkey stuffing with gravy. When you do them already smooshed together, it turns out decadent, sticky, obscene.
Meanwhile, the San Francisco Police Department seems bent on producing an obscene sequel to “Behind the Green Door” with its racist, sexist, homophobist (izzat a word?) videos. Call it “Behind the Blue Door.” Pigs.
Then Thursday happened. (Isn’t it fun being all out of order?) We put together an outrageous turkey soup with mushrooms and wild rice (do you believe we can buy locally grown wild rice?) and spinach. Cranky did it. I twitched a little when he suggested the spinach, but then I realized he was putting very logical flavors together. Very intelligent.
So now, that ninny Ann Coulter is proving how being “intelligent” must have been the core course she skipped. Seems like she likes to be “stupider.”
OK, finally we’re looking at Monday. What did I eat? I don’t remember. Maybe I had no appetite.
Meanwhile, Condoleezza Rice told European leaders that the United States "does not transport and has not transported detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture." Maybe she doesn’t remember. I really have no appetite now.