Soup Week Confession

Yesterday was day 2 of Soup Week. Which doesn't mean anything more than the title would suggest. Yesteday, I made soup. This time of year, when things are cooling off (quickly), I find myself wanting hot soup for lunch. So it was time to stock the freezer. Sunday I made my favourite Red Pepper & Tomatoe soup. Yesterday I made Chorizo and Sweet Potato. It took me 3 hours (clean-up included). And herein lies my confession: I like to cook more than I like to scrapbook (gasp!).

10oz of beautiful Chorizo Sausage. I wiki'ed Chorizo to find out a little bit more about it (we eat it often). FYI: It's a Spanish-style pork sausage seasoned with paprika.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to throw my rub-ons out the window (Except the Heidi Swapp ones. They suck.) But cooking seems to be the way I prefer to spend my time lately. And given three hours, I chose to make a soup rather than a layout. And I had fun (until it came time to do the dishes).

Today I will make Cauliflower Cheddar Soup (I know, right???) and when I am done, I will proudly add my individually portioned containers to my freezer, with the same pride in which I add a completed layout to my album.

Carrots, celery, onions and a sweet potato waiting to be peeled, sliced and diced. Oh! And if Brian happens to ask, I would like a new peeler for Christmas.

I guess as far as hobbies go, I never considered cooking. If you had asked me my hobbies I would have answered "Scrapbooking, skiing and reading." But I spend more time cooking than all three of those activities combined. And if you were to judge the talent I possess (on a scale of 1-10) for each of those activities you might give me the following scores: Scrapbooking - 5, Skiing - 4, Reading - 7. But I have been told often that I am a 'good cook' (although that might just be a courtesy). I would give myself an 8 (that's generous).

Cooking my ingredients. I didn't realise just how good the house smelled until I left to take out the garbage.

And now that I have given my 'hobby' it's fair consideration, I can justify spending time (and even money?) on it. I will be heading to the Library today to see what the 'Cooking' section looks like. I own many cookbooks, but I can honestly say I have never checked out the 'Cooking' section of the library looking to build a basic cooking foundation. Does it even exist?

Even when I managed Williams-Sonoma I didn't think of cooking as a hobby (and that's their credo!). I though you were either a Chef, trying to be a Chef or a consumer (which I considered myself to be)... I never thought you could comfortably (and confidently) call yourself a Cook if you just dabbled. I didn't think you could list Cooking as a past time if you didn't own a $300 knife or wear a white hat. Why not?

Ready for the processor. I don't have an emulsifier to I ladle everything into my food processor. Tedious, but I am grateful for even that.

I will no longer be embarrassed to say I spent the day (or week) making soups (it sounds like such a waste of time). But instead I will say it with the same tone in which I would brag about spending a weekend scrapbooking. So what if I start making dinner at 4pm some days because I 'feel like it'? And I won't pretend to bitch & complain about 'not knowing what to make for dinner' because I actually like that part of my day.