My orange bag & the banquette

While house-sitting last week, I noticed my orange bag sort of matches their banquette. See...



This is my weekend/ "personal item" bag, and I just love it. Thus far, I have yet to run into another person carrying the same bag, though I am certain such person exisits. 



I found it in New York City at Brooklyn Industries. I love its colors, especially the orange; they make me happy, and lift my spirits a bit when my plane gets delayed.



My dream kitchen has a banquette, so I have a place to read my cookbooks & food magazines. Thus, getting to cook in a kitchen with one is fabulous. The fact that the banquette complements my bag just gives me an excuse to play with my camera (another love).



I also love my orange bag's pockets, and



its interior compartments.



Look, it even makes for good pattern mixing.

Soup from a freezer mystery

Soup sounded really good for dinner. Perhaps, your freezer is like mine & filled with mystery plastic containers, but could they become soup? Most people probably just dispose of these items, but not me; I think they add some interest to my meals. Frozen creamy liquids are my favorite, especially when I think it is one thing, and find out I'm wrong. This time, it actually took 3 tries, as the first 2 were just frozen milk (not sure why I froze milk). If you are curious, thawed old frozen milk is pretty gross - creamy water with random chunks - ewww! 

Okay, the third one was definitely a sauce (yay!), but that's all I could tell. Knowing I often freeze white sauce, I assumed it was white sauce, but heating it pretty much made it melted butter. Of course, white sauce contains butter, but not THAT much. I have no idea what it was, but soup is what I wanted.

So, I sauteed broccoli & red pepper just using Pam (clearly, no need to add much fat). Then, I added the veggies to my mystery sauce. Of course, the consistency was basically veggies floating in butter, so I added flour to thicken it. Normally, when thickening things, I gradually add the flour, but not this time - just threw in 1/4 C+, or so (too much for soup, for sure). After draining off some fat, it looked better, but it needed water, and some serious emulsification. Thankfully, the kitchen (house-sitting again) has a hand-held blender (love these things). For spice, I added some salt & pepper.

And, here is that SUPER THICK, but tasty soup,...



and companion for my last piece of cornbread...