Cream of Barley Soup: Pantry Dinner

I mentioned this soup in a comment about two years ago. I can't believe I've never posted the recipe. Since we work lonnnngggg days on Mondays and Wednesdays, I like to have dinner all made when we get home. So on Sundays, I generally plan out my meals. I always like to make do with what I have, especially since I want to (maybe) buy myself a birthday handbag 18 months early. Pantry cooking obviously requires no outlay of cash.

Cream of Barley Soup with Mushrooms (copied from a defunct blog--so already simplified from the source: Deborah Madison's book of soups)

Cover 1/3 cup of hulled barley with water - set aside. Heat a pot with 2T olive oil and 1 T butter. Add 2 large chopped shallots* and 1/4 tsp dried oregano and saute for about 5 minutes. Add 2 grated* carrots, 2 minced cloves of garlic and 1 chopped leek*, saute for 10 more minutes. Drain the barley and add to the pot with 6 cups of water and 1.5 tsp of salt. Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile simmer 1/3 cup barley in salted water for 30 minutes.

While barley in the soup pot is cooked - puree with 1 cup of sour cream*. Return to pot - salt and pepper to taste. Add cooked barley. Top with pan fried sliced mushrooms and serve with bread.

*I subbed my frozen caramelized onions for the shallots and leeks. I chopped the carrots. I cooked the soaked barley with everything.

Sadly, I am out of sour cream, so I'm subbing some half and half that's on its way to oblivion.

Barley keeps growing! Every time you re-heat, you have to add water. I think this is one of those immortal soups. I thought this would make two dinners, but I think it will make three.

25% off coupon for Coach bags!

I am so conflicted. On one side, I frequent Goodwill and Dollar Tree and swap good grocery deals with my colleague, Merton (who is even more obsessive).

On the other side, well, I am thinking about buying a Coach bag. Yes. This idea started percolating back in the spring, when I thought it might be neat to get a nice bag for my 60th birthday (2014). I really like the Coach Legacy line.

So by meandering here and there, as is my wont, I discovered that this week you can get 25% off all Coach with a coupon on Facebook. I'm not even ON Facebook, but Mr FS is. Coach is his only friend at the moment. Soon we will unfriend.

Mr FS said, Why don't you get your birthday bag now, so you will get more use out of it? He's always trying to get me to spend more money on myself.

Hurricanes, Migraines, Decluttering of the Mind

Luckily, I don't suffer from migraines. I do suffer--as last week--from hurricanes. So far, hurricanes have caused me some property damage (Katrina), but mostly anxiety, discomfort, and boredom.

I've been thinking that the post-storm feeling (assuming you suffer mostly from boredom, rather than truly serious losses) is like what Joan Didion wrote many years ago about migraines. So I looked up what she had to say:

For when the pain recedes, ten or twelve hours later, everything goes with it, all the hidden resentments, all the vain anxieties. The migraine has acted as a circuit breaker, and the fuses have emerged intact.

In the long wait for power, Mr FS and I read and dozed. Now, Mr FS is doing a major overhaul of the cluttered garage and I am cleaning up various indoor spaces. A giant pile of reading material was donated to the library yesterday.

It does seem that a decluttering of the mind has to take place before any sort of physical decluttering. Do you find this to be true?

Reading: A Frugal Gift

Yesterday, in my first post-hurricane post, I listed the books I read without--and then with--power. I have often felt that the greatest gift given me is my love of reading. Unlike Mr FS, I did not grow up in a house of readers. In fact, though doing well in school was encouraged, I sometimes thought that my family thought reading was--well--unproductive. I remember sidling up to my mother as she was in conference with my 4th grade teacher. I expected to (over)hear praise for my fine grades. Instead, I heard a discussion of how I "read too much" and needed to "go outside more to play." I was stunned. How could the activity that brought me so much happiness be so devalued?

As is no doubt obvious, I also get a lot of pleasure from frugality--for its own sake as well as for necessity. What--in our time and my place--could be more frugal than reading? The first frugal tip one hears is USE THE LIBRARY. And yes, the library has computers, and dvds, and pizza parties for teens, all of which are great helps to frugality, but the biggest savings comes from books. And what use is that if you don't like to read?

While reading may be a very inexpensive pastime, travel is not. I once asked Mr FS why his parents didn't travel more, even in their long retirement. He said it was because (he thought) his father liked reading so much, that he traveled in the mind. Like Thoreau: I have traveled much in Concord. At least I think that's what Thoreau said (my expert, Mr FS, is in his little shed, where he reads). The internet provides various versions of the Thoreau quotation: I have traveled A GOOD DEAL, I have traveled WIDELY. Whatever.

I am not quite ready to travel exclusively in that way just yet! In fact, much of my frugality is in the service of saving up for the big travel expense of next summer.

These meanderings were prompted by some internet travel as I read about Marilynne Robinson, author of the three books I read over the past week. I found a wonderful interview with her in the Paris Review. What an interesting person: she reads so much more widely than I do.

Here is the end of the interview: on reading and travel.

INTERVIEWER

Do you feel like there’s something you’ve missed out on in life?

ROBINSON

There’s always something that I feel I’ve missed. I should travel more, for instance. I went to Paris last fall, which was a great departure for me. I flew Air India, which in itself was quite remarkable. I had a lovely time in France and I thought, I should do this more often. But then I come home and I think, I have all of this work to do. Look at all of these books I haven’t read. Frankly, you get to a certain point in your life where you can do unusual things with your mind. So then, I think, do them.

Ahhh, something to look forward to. After our next trip--we hope to Vienna, Budapest, and ????. With a stop in Paris, of course.

In the meantime, I want to start on Robinson's non-fiction, including this, which she seems to think is her most important book.

Thanks to Worriers and Well-Wishers

Let me repeat: thanks to you all for sending worries and good wishes while we endured our most recent storm. Once again we were--and are--lucky: we live in an old house built on high-ish ground (so no flooding); we had plenty of food; and we only lost power for 36 hours.

While I could have used my storm time to do something useful, mostly I read and dozed off. So did the other three people in my house: Mr FS, Frugal Son, and his friend Michael--the last two seeking refuge from New Orleans.

I did enjoy my reading. I finished Home by Marilynn Robinson. When I finished it, I realized I didn't remember the beginning very well, so I re-read the whole thing.

Home folds into Robinson's earlier Gilead in an interesting way. So I re-read Gilead too.

Then I decided to re-read Robinson's first novel Housekeeping, published more than 20 years before her second. Housekeeping is her most challenging--and overtly literary--novel, very allusive.

I needed some help with it. By that time, the power was on and I had the internet again. Believe it or not, you can watch a lecture by Yale professor Amy Hungerford on the novel. Wow! You too can experience an Ivy League education.

I learned a lot (and there are lectures on other works too). I was also comforted by the fact that the Yale students didn't seem any more prepared than mine do. Most hadn't read the book!

I hope everyone has a chance to take a look at these novels. They are wonderful.

Not Again!

Send us good karma, readers.

For Now: Twenty Years Later

Books directed to messy people like me caution against the For Now habit. Oh, I'll just leave this box on the table for now. And then, of course, the box attracts a lot of other clutter, as in the Broken Window Theory.

As I look around my house preparing to figure out what to bring from the California home of my late in-laws (at great expense), I see many For Nows of another sort. For instance, when Mr FS and I first came to Louisiana, it was unclear if I would be employed. We lived in a very cheap rental house with our new baby and almost no furniture.

I bought some on sale chairs at Pier One: they were WAY on sale, knock-offs of Parisian cafe chairs. I was in love. Sadly, they were of typical Pier One quality and one chair broke within a week, necessitating the return of all (no, I explained to Mr FS, one cannot have a set of three chairs).

On a walk with little Frugal Son, I passed a used furniture store where I saw 4 sturdy (key word after the flimsy Pier Ones) restaurant-ish wooden chairs for $12 each. They are actually nice looking, in a utilitarian way. I bought them FOR NOW.

Twenty-odd years later, I still have them. It occurs to me that if any nicer chairs wend my way, it should be easy enough to send the still sturdy chairs to a new home.

Looking at my stuff with a critical eye is the only bright spot in this dreadful process. I am sorry that I did not schedule regular inspections over the years.

Do you have any For Nows in your home?