food experiment #3

so i know you've all been on the edges of your seats waiting to hear about my third food experiment for the year. sorry about that. a little bit of life got in the way. but here it is, the story of my minestrone massacre:

on sunday i tried to make my own minestrone soup. not that i've never had minestrone soup before. i have. lots of times. but it's always been out of a can. (oh lovely can of soup. so convenient to heat and eat when the boy will not be put down. and labeled vegetarian, so as not to confuse those of us who would prefer not to eat mystery broth). so i thought, "why not try to make my own from scratch? i've made soup before. how hard can it be?"

i looked up a metric ton of recipes (okay, it was more like three or four) and none of them had the same combination of veggies and such that were in my favorite canned variety, so i decided that i would simply look at the can, read the ingredients, and make it up from there.

so i did. and it wasn't a collosal failure, but it just wasn't the same as from a can. and i've really cozied up to that canned soup (any foodies out there, feel free to string up your bows and take your shots). my soup ended up looking a bit more stew than soup (too much stuff, not enough room in the pot for more broth), and it also didn't freeze particularly well. the potatoes got squarshy, the noodles got mangled, it was not pretty (and since i forgot to photograph the debut night, and the repeats looked terrible, i decided we could live without the visual).

however, i think even a mangled minstrone would be improved by one of these bowls, don't you?