Kitchen Cupboard Soup (and) What Made Milwaukee Famous

Thursday's as good a night as any to make a big batch of Kitchen Cupboard soup. (I know it's Saturday now. Don't nitpick. I'm a couple days behind, here.)

Kitchen Cupboard Soup is a Huff family tradition. Dad's version usually includes a can of pre-fab veggie soup as a base and then random cans of veggies from the Huff larder. I like to spice up the tradition with some fresh veggies and a brothy base.

This batch of the stuff included

• carrot
• onion
• chopped garlic
• frozen spinach
• some hot garden pepper
• red pepper flakes
• Original Mrs. Dash
• Lawry's Seasoned salt
• beef broth
• macaroni noodles
• flour, milk & butter for thickener

(Spice at every step and taste regularly.)

Sautee carrot, onion and garlic at bottom of big pot. Add spinach when things start to smell good. Keep cooking until the frozen water on the spinach has disappeared and the pot is starting to brown a little. Add water and scrape that good brown stuff off, this makes a nummers veggie broth. Cook down. Add beef broth and noodles, cook till noodles are looking good, add thickening agent, cook down more to desired thickness. Oyster crackers a must. And, had I had it on hand- a heartier beer would have been nice along with it.

To accompany the  mid-week cooking, a little mournful country by a legendary musical cousin-lover. If you were paying attention, you might have noticed that I got this album the other day in my big Monday record splurge.

You saw it right, that's Jerry Lee Lewis (the whole lotta shakin' fellah) looking real velvety and serious. This was a fun find, full of great country songs. It's a different side to the artist I thought he was. Of course near everything I knew I had learned from the 1989 movie "Great Balls of Fire" (starring Dennis Quaid as Jerry Lee and a very young Winona Ryder as his tiny cousin-wife) which evidently only covers his early life. He still toured in 2009. Talk about longevity! 

The album introduces a particularly great song: "What makes Milwaukee Famous (Has made a loser out of me)" . Which does a particularly good job at some charming (boozy) product placement. I hadn't done much thinking on the partnership between the music and advertising industries before. Had I thought of it, I would have pinned it as a newer trend coming along with the advent of hip-hop and rap consumerism. (Comon' Air Force Ones?) But it seems that we've been buying up on behalf of our tunes for ages. And rap doesn't have the corner on the market. (Have you heard Red Solo Cup yet? I mean, really.) 

We Americans just love our stuff. So much so, we define ourselves by our products- by how we buy. Whether it's Jimmy Choos or Chuck Taylors, Chef Boyardee or Annie's Organic. And if we really like something in America, we write a song about it.