Freezing Rain Turkey Soup

This morning began with my roommate, J. saying "Hey I think it's hailing."

I replied with "Hey I think I'll e-mail my internship and ask if I can switch my hours to any day but today."

Which lead directly to:

-"Hey I think I'll spend the day lazing about the apartment, trying without success to read several different library books,"
and
-"Hey maybe I should get a cat. Or volunteer in Haiti."
and
"Hey, maybe I should make soup"

Ingredients:

-Leftover turkey, preferably dark meat with bones that has been in the freezer since Thanksgiving.
-Onions, carrots, celery, frozen peas.
-barley or brown rice.
-salt, pepper, cheap white wine.


1. Throw the frozen turkey into a pot with just enough water to cover. If you put any more, your soup will be watery. Turn on high.

2. Twenty minutes later, take out the turkey pieces and pick meat off bones. set meat aside.


3. Put bones back in pot, add half of the carrots, onions, celery, in huge chunks. Include onion skins and celery leaves. Add a dash of cheap white wine, and lots of coarsely cracked pepper (crack in a mortar in pestle, or with the back of a spoon)



3. Twenty minutes before you want to eat, strain out all the stuff from the broth. Add barley (which expands a LOT. Try one cup or less for soup for four) and carrots and celery cut up bite size or smaller. Cut onions pole to pole in thinnish slices. Put the meat back in a bout five minutes before serving, along with frozen peas if desired.




4. Freeze in containers, preferably ones that take up the same amount of space as the leftover turkey did. This will erase any temporary sense of accomplishment you have.

Variation: add lemon and sage (fresh or dried). Half a lemon was enough to make my soup very lemony-perhaps too lemony.