dinner

we are still an hour off in this house.  william is not even pretending to be going to sleep, and it's 9:30 p.m. i still feel like i'm getting up at 5:30 in the morning.  that makes for a tired me, right as henry is upping the ante.  climbing on the kitchen chairs, reaching into drawers, eating markers, sand, grabbing hold of greasy bike chains, anything he can do in the two seconds i dare turn my back on him.  

"danger to self": note the scraped fingers, the scratched up nose, probably a small bump or two on the head.  

he is simply a danger mouse.

let me tell you what we had for dinner, because you might have a big bulb of fennel this summer that you don't know what to do with.  we made carrot and fennel soup from 101 cookbooks.

except, we didn't have wild rice.

do you remember when i went shopping with the russian chemist and his wife and we went to the roskilde bazaar?  well, i was so happy to finally see something sold in bulk that i lost my common sense and bought this:

needless to say, we haven't needed to buy rice since that day.  so, first substitution in that recipe-- basmati rice instead of wild.  

then, i read the recipe wrong and added three cups of uncooked rice, rather than three cups of cooked.  so after 15 minutes of simmering, i no longer had a soup, i had a big pot of basmati rice with carrots and fennel.  but, it was good that way.  i would recommend it.  i would also recommend her suggestion of adding a poached egg to the top because you're not going to feel like you had enough protein if you don't.  so if it's been a long time since you've tried poaching an egg, now is the time to try it again.  it might not look pretty, but it will taste good.  

i also bought a little olive oil.