Overanalysis

I think I've kept myself so busy that I haven't had time to think over the past month. I don't know what my overall take on everything is... everything just... is. At least that's what I think I think. I'm probably overanalyzing the situation. I do that sometimes. I think. Or do I? Okay now I'm just being silly...

Being the somewhat selfish person that I am, right now I think the thing that's bugging me the most is how off-track I've gotten in keeping fit. I FINALLY got to hockey for the 2nd time in like a month last night, and I felt like Rocky in "Rocky Balboa", still with some flashes of brilliance but with old age catching up (except in my case it was lack of recent exercise). I was so out of breath but felt great afterwards. I still don't know if I can bowl this week because of my moron antics (slipping on the same patch of ice twice).

My office is having a series of cooking contests and I was literally too busy to enter last week, so I pretty much have to enter this week's throwdown. The dish is either hotdish or soup, themed as one last hot meal as the winter ends; it may be a week tardy as it was well into the sixties today. And yeah, that spring fever is hitting hard. Anyways, back to the food talk... since there are prizes involved, I went with what has gotten the most positive reactions from those I've made it for (and fits the category), and I decided on cheeseburger soup. I don't really follow a recipe, I just throw it together...

I started with my huge aluminum stock pot, filled with 350 oz. of filtered water, and made my stock by boiling celery, carrots, tarragon, and yellow onions for a few hours. I prepared 3 lbs. of hamburger and a pound of finely cut bacon on the side. I also cut up carrots and russet potatoes into bite-sized chunks. Once the stock was finished, I removed the exhausted stock vegetables and added the cooked meats and uncooked veggies. As the veggies cooked, I sea salted and peppered to taste, using a mixture of freshly ground black pepper and white pepper. I also threw in a bit of garlic powder. The cool thing about using these two root vegetables (potato and carrot) is that as the soup cooks, the flesh of each breaks down and give the soup a grainy but very desirable texture. I also like the appearance of the cooked vegetables as the edges get rounded off -- a sign of a long cooking process. Once the vegetables have cooked and everything has been seasoned to taste, the final ingredient goes in (and it's a sin) -- 2 bricks of Velveeta. The soup transforms from a cloudy gray to a beatiful white-yellow color that looks velvety when the soup is stirred. This is one thing I make that definitely tastes better than how it smells. I literally say "holy shit" after my first try and proceed to down an entire piping hot bowl. I give the soup a little while longer to cook and boil down to a nice viscosity. Then I fill up literally every possible storage container that I own for storage (crock pot, 2 cooking pans with lids, and all nine of my available disposable tupperwares). Then I realized it was 1 AM. I am so so bad with my sleep schedule....