I love soup. All kinds of soups, just not watermelon soup, Gazpacho, or Vichyssoise; that is probably only because they are served COLD. I like my soup HOT. I have an entire soup section in the “recipe book.” The recipe book is just a very long word document (about 500pages) that I have been working on for about twenty something years. It started out as just my mother’s hand-written recipes that I had typed up. This included but was not limited to my mother’s spaghetti sauce recipe. I hope my brother still has it. I remember he loved that sauce, and her meatballs too!

All my recipes have evolved over the years, including many of the soups. So, there are different “variations” of chicken soup for example. There may not be much of a change from one recipe to another, perhaps only slight differences in ingredients, but when you are cooking, you can often adapt a recipe to your own personal taste. I would suggest to try to make the dish as the recipe writer intended (being an amateur writer myself, I am partial to this). Then, the next time you make the recipe, swap out an ingredient you don’t like with something better. Then *SHA-ZAM* you’re a chef, who is now developing their own family recipe!

Like I was saying earlier, it’s too damn hot for soup, so I will not be posting any soup recipes here for a while yet. Don’t worry, I will get to them in lesson six along with the fall. It will all be here before you know it. Let’s not rush summer. It is my favorite time of year. School is out here in New York for the entire summer and the kids don’t go back to school until after Labor Day. To this very day, that’s why summer is still my favorite time of year. Plus, I love all our outdoor barbeque parties!

Speaking of parties, I am cleaning up my backyard now and trying to get it ready for guests to come over. I am looking forward to having huge crowds again in my back yard, just so I can cook for everyone. Is that crazy? Somehow it sounds crazy. If I really think about it, I’m working on cleaning up my yard so I can work at cooking all day so people can eat…OH, yeah, I guess I must love cooking! I do tend to drink while I barbeque so maybe that is why they call me The Drunken Chef!

Bon Appetit. I mean, be well, be happy and eat yummy food!

-The Drunken Chef (Russ)

© Russ Ahrens and The Magic of a Perfect Pairing,2023