The Soup Diet: Week Three Report

This week ended up being Left-overs and Leek week. Some ingredients and unfinished soup from the last two weeks were nearing expiration in the refrigerator, affecting the direction of this week's menu.

Monday: Adaptable Aztec Soup
Tuesday: Russian Potato Mushroom Soup
Wednesday: Leek and Potato Soup (this time with thyme)
Thursday: Leek and Potato Soup
Friday: Russian Potato Mushroom Soup

No major adaptations to the Aztec Soup this week. I just used tortillas. Non-glamorous but still delicious. The Russian Potato Mushroom Soup was okay. It used leeks, carrots, potatoes and mushrooms. The combination sounded fabulous, but the end product was merely good. The lack of fabulousness may have been affected by my refusal to add the half-and-half the recipe demanded. Instead I blended/pureed half the soup. But I still think the recipe falls short of its promising ingredients.  In other words, it is somehow less than the sum of its parts.  The chief problem with the Russian Soup was proportionality: too much work (chopping and blending) for too little reward (an okay soup).

Which leads me to a small paragraph opining on the proportionality factor in my cooking and baking philosophy. The perfect recipe, to me, not only creates a fantastic dish but accomplishes that dish with as little cost and fuss as possible. I employ of ratio of Taste to Effort, where 

Taste   =   good, very good, excellent and best evah!

and 

Effort   =   cheapness + time to prepare + time to cook + time to clean up

Some math or statistics genius would put up a spread sheet right here, but that's not me. I'd say that the ratio for the Russian Soup was 1/9 (1 for taste (it tasted good) and 9 for effort (lots of chopping, peeling, dicing, blending and use of more than one pan)). The Leek & Potato Soup was 9/3 (9 for taste (excellent, almost a best soup evah) and 3 for effort (potato peeling, leek washing, and blender use drives up the effort factor but the blender factor surprisingly reduces the potato dicing factor because it only requires potato slicing)). So Leek & Potato Soup wins! Indeed, this week the subtle but sweet Leek and Potato Soup became fabulous with the added improvements of more salt and a dash of thyme. I love you leek! Stay in my refrigerator forever.