winter – Cook Instead

There’s a phenomenon in British weather that I like to call “the swirly”, where a storm will come in over the Atlantic, hang out for a few days, shimmy over to France, bounce off of Norway, and come back for round two a couple days later.

I now get why small talk about the weather is a thing here. In Chicago, as unpleasant as it might get, at least you can look at Colorado and brace yourself for tomorrow. And it’s not gonna then rebound off of Pittsburgh and come back as its own sequel.

This week’s dunk in the metaphorical weather toilet MIGHT just bring us snow tomorrow, but today it’s just this:

That’s why my work-from-home setup looks like this:

This is the best hot chocolate I know how to make. Believe me when I tell you you don’t need a trendy hot chocolate bomb or a flashy pre-made mix.

This is better.

The Columbia University campus exists in what I like to call a “lunchbreak wasteland.” Luckily, in the basement of the arts and architecture library there is a small and shitty cafeteria called Brownies and on Monday they serve a sausage and kale soup.

Is this the world’s greatest soup? No. But while Wednesday’s tomato bisque and Friday’s broccoli cheddar undoubtedly get glorped out of massive industrial soup-pouches delivered by the good folks at Sodexho, I believe this one is a Brownies Original. What corporation would mass-produce an aggressively spicy soup with lentils, sweet potatoes, kale, and enough Italian sausage to make getting through your afternoon classes a real gastrointestinal challenge? Who decided these ingredients worked together? It had to be a personal choice, and that’s what made it my favorite.

I haven’t lived in New York for two years, but this Monday I suddenly had to have this deeply visually unprepossessing but comfortingly hearty soup. All I had were some Sainsbury’s own-brand sausages, some elderly potatoes, and a dream.

Tag: winter

Bomb-Ass Hot Chocolate

Winter is Coming, but Soup is already here