it seemed as good a time as any

Last night I made a soup from a little mix my mother gave me nearly a year ago, last Christmas. I don't know why I waited so long to make the soup. I suppose I thought I'd put it on the shelf, and wait for the right moment, and on a Monday night, on an evening when the air outside the windows felt cool, after we'd returned from a half-week up in West Virginia, it seemed as good a time as any.

The soup in question was curried lentils, but I thought I'd add some chorizo for a little bit of bulk. We have access to strange meats in this town: there's no lamb, and every single supermarket has at least forty square feet dedicated to smoked pork products, and the meat shop is sort of dopey, but I did find some chorizo at one place, and I brought it home and chucked it into the pot. And then I made the soup. And then I tasted it, and almost died.

It was so hot. But it was so good. I doctored it a little bit more with some brown sugar, and the sweetness and the curry and the heat melded together and holy shit, was that soup good. And hot. SO HOT. I made a bowl for dinner and it took me an hour to get through the whole thing. I kept saying, This soup is so good. But it hurts so bad until the B politely asked me to shut up.

There's a sad ending to the story. It involves some (ahem) intestinal distress, and the remainder of the soup going into the garbage, along with the rest of the uncooked chorizo. But I did get to write an email later that night with the line that is not your fault, ha ha, that is the soup's and mine for eating it, and I did get to feel very fall-ish, eating that curried hot hot lentil soup, on an evening with the windows open and two dogs curled up on the couch, and as I recuperated, I uploaded some photos of West Virginia and here they are for you. I recommend you look at them. I cannot, sadly, recommend the soup, unless you are a high school wrestler looking to lose five pounds real quick*.



*If that's the case, come on by! The soup is in the garbage on the curb. There's also a dead turtle in the bag, so tread carefully. Or eat it all and lose one hundred and twenty pounds to cut weight, because, hey, you'll be dead in no time. Turtles transmit all kinds of disease.