One can imagine, after a month or so of diet slop, the ennui that sets in. How much cabbage soup can one endure? I had made a large vat of vegetable soup whose contents included parsnips, rutabaga, onions, a whole hella lotta cabbage, and mushrooms. I had the idea that this was going to get me through a weekend of pain but really, Jesus, just looking at the picture of it here makes my eyes torpid. So after a few meals that ended with me snoring in my soup, I blended the mess into porridge. Or, in any event, into something looked like it would not be out of place in a Dickens novel. It didn’t taste bad, just, well, like a couple of Tylenol PMs downed with a cup of warm milk.
So I zipped it up with some Indian spices. The Royal Indian Mounted Food Police were not around to cluck their tongues at me so I just went ahead and dumped in an insane amount of Indianish spices and then finished it off with some dal. (Dal are lentils, for the uninitiated.) And it was awesome. Particularly when I garnished it with a spoonful of sour cream. Oliver may not have recognized it but he’d have been back asking for अधिक.
