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When my 5-year old, who has barely eaten in the past 48 hours, asked for “orange soup,” I was thrilled. I wondered which orange soup she wanted. Was it squash? Carrot ginger? I was also confused, because I don’t recall her tasting even one, of the many orange soups I’ve made in her lifetime.

With a bit more probing she revealed that she wanted “you know, the kind of orange soup with abc’s in it.” And it hit me that she was asking for soup from a can, that reddish-orange goopy stuff, with the extremely mushy, over-cooked, alphabet pasta in it.

If you’re wondering how she would even know about canned alphabet soup, I wondered too. The answer can only be my mother-in-law.

Highly-processed food didn’t exactly seem like the most nourishing thing I could put in my sick kid’s empty stomach. My solution was to make it from scratch. It was simple, good, and best of all, she liked it.

• Canned Soup from Scratch •
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 yellow bell peppers, roasted, seeded and peeled
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 cup pureed San Marzano tomatoes
3 cups broth (I used vegetable, you could use chicken)
salt to taste
2 teaspoons sugar or honey (optional)
1/2 cup stars pastina

Roast two yellow peppers in the oven. While the peppers are roasting, sautee a small, finely chopped onion in two tablespoons of butter until soft and translucent. When the peppers are done, let them cool, then seed and peel them them and add them to the onions with the San Marzano tomatoes. Add 3 cups of broth, bring to a boil and cook for a few minutes. Puree soup using a hand-held (immersion) blender until smooth. Taste for seasoning, add salt and if it’s a little to acidic, you can add some sugar or honey. (I find that the San Marzano tomatoes vary in sweetness from can to can, so sometimes you need a little sugar or honey, and sometimes you don’t.) Bring broth to a simmer and add pastina and simmer until cooked. You’re done.

Leftover farro pie (which reheats quite well) and salad.

Two good new recipes tonight.

Farro & Parmesan Pie has been on my “to make” list for a while. I wasn’t disappointed, I rarely am when a dish calls for heavy cream, nutty grains, and cheese.

And since I’m on a smoked paprika kick, we tried Roast Chicken Breasts with Garbanzo Beans, Tomatoes & Paprika. The yogurt sauce that goes with this doesn’t call for salt, which seems criminal to me. I added salt.

Rose decided to have a keychain-making party today. Seemed like a good enough idea for a school holiday afternoon. All was going well until the pizza place forgot about our order.

Our hero Shane, ran out to another parlor, Due Fratelli, to score us a pie. An hour and a half later, five hungry girls and four moms were eating. It was pretty decent pizza, though Rose would tell you not as good as Pepe’s. The square pizza made with basil and fresh mozzarella, was particularly good.

Shane was out mourning tonight, so Rose and I had the leftovers for dinner.

See that handsome man there? The one behind the bottles of wine, rum, beer, empty plates & glasses? His name is James, and he was responsible for our delicious dinner last night. He made a fancy piece beef that everyone raved about, and a delicious orecchiette with shrimp, something creamy and a hint of truffle. (I made the salad) It was a delicious meal and I forgot to take a picture! It’s possible that those bottles are, at least in part, responsible for this oversight.

My crime is compounded by the fact that James is a follower of The Steady Table, and most certainly deserves to see his own meal posted here. Mea culpa, James. Next time, I wear a post-it note on my forehead. I promise.

My dad sent me this recipe*. I love that he sends me recipes!

Penne with Roasted Eggplant, Chili & Mint is easy and delicious, and gets bonus points for being a one-dish meal. You could easily skip the anchovies and add extra capers to take it from pescetarian to vegetarian.

*Over the holidays I discovered that my Dad has an entire document box filled with recipes he’s clipped, labeled “recipes to try.” I know he’s only going to send the ones he’s vetted, so I can count on them to be good.

More smoked paprika butter tonight, this time on baked sweet potatoes. Rose and Shane had shell steak cooked in the grilling pan. The salad was the same one we’ve been having a lot lately, recipe is below.

• Lemony Dijon Caper Dressing •
2 teaspoons dijon mustard
1 tablespoon seasoned rice vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sugar
Juice of half a lemon
1 tablespoon capers
1/4 cup olive oil (more if you like it less tangy)

Combine mustard and rice vinegar. Add the rest of the ingredients, except the olive oil and stir to combine. After adding the olive oil whisk with a fork until thick and emulsified. Serve over greens or radicchio with sweet peppers and parsley.

I overheard the fish guy at the farmers market call Tilefish “buttery,” and I was sold.

Dinner A Love Story has a post about Tilefish with smoked paprika butter. Seemingly perfect, until I was already preheating the oven and realized that the fish was supposed to be grilled. On a grill. (I don’t have a grill.)

I used DALS’s smoked paprika butter recipe*, but instead of melting the butter, I just kind of smeared it all over the top of the fish. Prior to smearing, I placed the fish skin-side down on an oiled and foiled a baking tray. The fish cooked at 450, for about 12 minutes. It would probably be better grilled, but we didn’t have any trouble polishing it off.

We had the barley that Shane brought home last week. After boiling it until tender, I tossed it with olive oil and salt. Barley is a nice change of pace from rice and probably more healthful.

For salad we had radicchio and orange peppers with mustardy, lemony, caper dressing. I’m going to measure next time and post the recipe because it’s a favorite of the moment. Even Rose liked it, she thought the peppers were tomatoes.

*I could eat smoked paprika butter with a spoon, by the way, it’s that good. And that color! Intoxicating.

My husband, Shane, can’t eat when there’s a New England Patriots game on tv, he’s just too emotionally invested. The problem is that it feels weird for Rose and I to sit in the dining room eating dinner, while Shane watches the game in the living room.

And so I’ve taken to ordering takeout on game nights. Rose and I eat, while sitting next to Shane as he watches the game. I don’t think he really gains anything from the experience, but it makes me feel better, and Rose gets to sport her Patriots gear.

Tonight we had Thai from Arunee (ironically, the stress of ordering takeout is gone now that I don’t have a migraine). Shane ate during half-time.

I don’t really approve of chicken nuggets. But I’m not too proud to feed them to my kid, even if they’re really old (so long as they’re organic).

To make a short story long, this is what we have in our freezer: Five pounds of butter, a 72oz bag of chocolate chips, some ‘fancy’ brownies, Baker’s unsweetened chocolate, coffee, vodka, ice and compostable waste. Compostable waste takes up a good 70% of our freezer space, much to my husband’s chagrin.

You see, we live in a cooperative apartment in the city and it’s not so easy to dispose of our compostable waste on a daily basis. Once a week, or when I remember, I bring my frozen veggie scraps etc. up to the compost collection spot, two blocks away. The operative word here is remember. More often than not, I forget until we’re at that critical point where frozen organic waste is preventing the freezer door from closing properly.

Today we were at that point. When I returned home from dropping off 30lbs or so of compostable waste, I discovered some old chicken nuggets in my, now spacious, freezer.

Shane is out and I decided to give the (organic, for kids) chicken nuggets to Rose for dinner. She didn’t like them, perhaps because they were old, probably really, really old. I gave the rest to the cats, and now we have room in the freezer for another pound or two of butter.