Making Do

I have a cold. A miserable, awful, snotty head cold. And we had a cool front roll in this morning, so it's a bone-chilling 50 degrees outside. (Sorry. A little Houston humor there.)

Even though it is not too cold outside, I wanted some soup for lunch. Some onion soup. While I often make a big pot of soup and freeze it into individual portions, I didn't have any onion soup. I'm not even sure if I have ever made onion soup. But I have eaten plenty of it and, well, there is a first time for everything.

No one else wanted onion soup, so this was going to be a small pot of soup. What sounds good? I know, start with some onions and garlic. You can't go wrong there. I sliced some onion very thinly and added it to a giant, minced clove of garlic in a skillet with some butter. Mmm. Smells good already.



Since this is my soup and I can make it anyway I want, I decided that I wanted to add some sliced, golden fingerling potatoes that I had on hand. As soon as I noticed a little brown showing up on the onion, I threw them in, too.


Looking good. When I was convinced the potatoes were tender, I added a little of the leftover beef broth I had in the fridge. I just wanted to get up all the yummy brown bits from the bottom of the pan.



I had the rest of the broth in a pan already. Just wanted to heat it up and add some thyme. When all the brown bits were up, I added it to the rest of the broth and let it simmer for a few minutes.

I took one of my little Corning Ware bowls and grated a little Gruyere cheese in the bottom. I had some leftover from a holiday meal.


I added the soup to the bowl.


Now, I didn't have any French bread handy, so I just trimmed a regular piece of whole grain bread to fit the bowl and made do.



Then I sprinkled some more cheese on top.



Put it in the toaster oven to broil.


Doesn't it look all toasty and warm in there? Watch it carefully. It doesn't take too long to brown.

And here is the finished product.


It really hit the spot. I will say that, if I ever to do this again, I will leave out the potatoes. They didn't add anything to it and their texture probably took away from it. But it was good and warm and soothing.

Go forth and make do. And make soup.