Tomato Soup with Crab and Jalapeño

Tomato Soup with Lump Crab Meat, Pickled Roasted Jalapeño, Ginger Oil

Grilled Muenster Cheese Sandwich, with Pop Sauce, on 12-Grain Bread

Suffering an injury recently has debilitated me greatly in the activity department. Even the half hour needed to stay on my feet to make yesterday's breakfast of pork chop with scrambled eggs and roasted potatoes proved to be a challenge during and long after the cooking.

But since I can't subsist on just on junk food — or doughnuts and cookies and milk — anymore, I needed to find more convenient ways to make still well-rounded and fully realized dishes.

So on my one brief trip out of the apartment this morning, I brought home from the nearest supermarket a couple cans of tomato soup (two different brands), a can of lump crab meat and one jalapeño pepper.

I lightly roasted the pepper over an open burner flame, then sliced it and soaked it in cider vinegar. During the soaking, I heated the two cans of soup in a saucepan with just a hit of fresh cracked pepper. I also mixed some ground ginger into some olive oil to flavor it. Once the soup was heated and slightly reduced, it was ladled into a bowl, in which a handful of the crabmeat was added, with then a few drops of the ginger oil, and finally a few slices of the pickled roasted jalapeño pepper.

The tomato flavor was deep and rich, bolstered by the aromatic and slightly barky sweetness of the ginger oil. The faintly toothsome and nuanced sweetness of the crab countered very nicely — adding great "meal" feeling body to each bite, finishing pleasantly with the earth smokiness of the roasted jalapeño, along with its inherent florality, matching sweet kick, and the added boost of palate-cleansing acidity.

Since it is the Christmas holiday — and because I knew I wasn't going to bother making anything else for the rest of the day — I decided to add a grilled cheese sandwich to accompany the tomato soup, as is nostalgic custom, mine here oozing with melty meunster cheese (with a smear of our own Pop Sauce™ on the inside) on 12-grain bread

I am glad and grateful that I was able enough to get to the market to get some canned goods to make what felt and tasted like a real home-cooked meal. I think I've now earned any doughnuts I may be able to muster having later today.

Merry Christmas!