I’m still feeling a bit under the weather, and decided last night that the perfect antidote to the cold and the sore throat and the dark and the rain was home-made soup. Initially, my soup started out as vegetable broth, until I realised that I hadn’t planned far enough in advance to soak the peas or the soup mix. As the vegetables were bubbling away merrily by this stage, I shrugged and decided to just add some lentils and chilli flakes, and blend it to make a thick, spicy chowder-style soup instead. Just the ticket.
Unfortunately I had not allowed for the orange-to-green vegetable ratio, and the carrots and lentils were not enough to outdo the leafy green things. I was left with a disgusting-looking pot of green gunk. The thing is, it tasted absolutely delicious, but I couldn’t bring myself to sit down to a bowl of it while it was that particular shade of green.
From somewhere at the back of my mind I recalled a memory of last weekend, when Jay had dyed our dinner red for no real reason. Logically, this would suggest that the neighbours had in their possession such a thing as red food colouring, and, I reasoned further, if I were to add a few drops to my delicious green gunk, it would be transformed into a more edible colour (e.g. orangey-reddish).
I went next door, where E2 located and donated the food dye, while asking a series of questions about why I was making soup at 11.30pm, why I was dying it, why I couldn’t just eat it green and that type of thing. “Just don’t put it in the whole pot straight away,” she called after me, warningly, “try it in a little batch first. In case it goes… weird.”
I was very glad I heeded her advice, as when I opened the bottle and tipped it upside down into the bowl of soup I had just poured, I really was expecting it to have one of those dropper-style heads. I didn’t realise – nor did I see – that it was just a plain, ordinary, wide-open bottle neck. My first clue to my mistake was when the contents of the bottle went glug-glug-glug as opposed to drip-drip-drip. My second clue was when my bowl of green gunk turned rapidly into a bowl of blood-red soup.
I did learn from this test experience, and the main pot of soup was consequently transformed into the originally-intended orangey-reddish colour. Obviously I didn’t want to waste the other bowl, so I ate it in front of the TV, in the dark, so that I couldn’t see the disturbing colour I was consuming.
I think I could be a TV chef. I’m creative, and watching me work could not fail to be entertaining.
Filed under: accident, cold, cooking, friends, red food colouring, soup | 3 Comments »
