Tracy Lee Karner

One gourmet's request: soup, bread & cheese–with beer, please!

Tracy Lee Karner
Homemade soup & home baked bread–a gourmet peasant meal.

To make this gourmet peasant soup:

  • To broth, add what’s on hand (perhaps smoked sausage, potatoes, carrots, celery, onions and cabbage).
  • Stir in pleasing seasonings (thyme, just a pinch of caraway, some salt & pepper, a smidge of celery seed).
  • Serve with good bread (home-baked if possible), cheese and beer–maybe Leinenkugel’s Canoe Paddler. Marketed as a heat-beating summer refresher, its hint of rye and white pepper also goes well with cabbage soup in winter.

What does it take to be a gourmet?
To be a gourmet is to enjoy life’s pleasures–the simple and the extraordinary. To use all of our senses, with awareness, enriches our lives.
Gourmets take time to appreciate, not only food and drink, but also the sunshine and moonlight, the crocus breaking through the snow at winter’s end, the smile of a friend or a stranger. Gourmets brings imagination and memory to the table, developing a vocabulary to describe a unique, personal perception.
Gourmets delight in life, with gratitude.
Becoming a gourmet doesn’t require any special talent, training or money. Some people (even peasants! and young children!) choose to make the most of whatever they’re given, and then, to relish it.
Be happier; be a gourmet.
What’s your definition of a gourmet? 

Leinenkugel's Canoe Paddler
Leinenkugel’s Canoe Paddler

 
 

9 thoughts on “One gourmet's request: soup, bread & cheese–with beer, please!”

  1. This looks wonderful. Sometimes I pull leftovers out of the refrigerator, add chicken broth (or beef broth, depending on the meat I add) and then chop up fresh cabbage and toss into the grand mix. Now I know which seasonings AND which beer, too.

    1. Marilyn, I feel like we should get together and share a bowl of homemade soup! If anyone had ever told me that I would like a little cabbage in my soup, I would have guessed they were delusional. I didn’t grow up with cabbage… but now I love it in a winter soup. (Cabbage is also great sauteed with thinly-sliced onions and a tiny bit of bacon– then add cooked white beans, and a pinch of sage, in chicken broth, with just the eensiest pinches of white & red pepper.)

  2. I’ve only been in Texas for a few days now, but I miss the reason for comforting soup (cold) already…
    What is a gourmet? That is a really interesting thing to think about. Merriam Webster tells me it is a connoisseur of good food and drink – but it also tells me that a synonym is bon vivant and gourmand, which I would totally disagree with. In fact, the French gourmand is the opposite of gourmet: it means someone who eats in big portions with undiscerning taste…so, Merriam Webster is not really helping me.
    I think being a gourmet involves being able to enjoy the pleasures of life, but in a conscious way (unlike the bon vivant, the other synonym Merriam suggested…just sayin’). A gourmet is someone who decides to care about what he consumes. It is a mindset more than an action. You don’t have to go to fancy restaurants to be a gourmet, you don’t have to guzzle oysters or kaviar to show you are a gourmet. To the contrary. What you do need to do is make a conscious decision to taste, and to figure out what you like and what you don’t and why…

    1. I whole-heartedly agree. Well thought-out. I think it’s sad that the term “gourmet” is associated with gluttony and wealth. I don’t think that it’s that way in much of the rest of the world, is it? I don’t agree that gourmet and gourmand are synonyms, but I do think M.W. is accurately reporting the general confusion and contradiction that is common in America about food/eating/drinking.

  3. A gourmet is someone that can take a handful of items, a few herbs, and spices and make any number of pleasing meals. When I am draining every drop of yummy juice from my roasted chicken to put into a jar and pop into the freezer, I do not feel like a gourmet. However when I pull that wholesome, yummy broth from the freezer as the base for my next creation, I feel like I might be close ! Tracy, I don’t always comment, but love your musings and adventures ! Godspeed !

    1. Thanks for replying, Lorena–actually, I didn’t even realize you were reading my blog. The encouragement is very welcome. And you, dear, are definitely a gourmet–someone who appreciates the gift of living!

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