Don't Panic Soup

The weather here recently has been lovely. Highs have been in the high 60s and low 70s. California weather. Shorts and long sleeves weather. Perfect weather. The skies have been blue and the sun has been shining, and I have been feeling awfully sorry for all those people enduring record freezing temperatures with sleet and snow as I sip lemonade with the windows open. I wanted to tell y'all that you should all move down here. I was going to say that I would meet you at the airport, and to bring a beach book.

That was, until, I got what my smug mug deserved for all that gloating. The cold! The bitterness! Overnight, it will get below freezing! You laugh, yes. But this is the Deep South, and we no likey cold weather. I am told that it once snowed here in 1989. I remember it snowing that year back home, at an near-equal latitude on the opposite side of the state. I built a tiny snowman on the back of my mom's mauve station wagon and we still have a tupperware container of that snow in the deep freezer. So it snowed here that year too and they closed the causeway to the mainland and that would have been about the time that I freaked the hell out.

Should it ever snow here again, I have the remedy for the stranded snowbird whose island has suddenly become very small. Elise's Friend Claire's Roasted Red Pepper Potato Soup is warm and comforting and actually quite healthy. I would imagine that you could sip on this soup and totally forget that you are on a small land mass surrounded by ocean with no immediate prospects of getting off without being shot in the process. It's the hotness on a cold night like this one, or on every night if you live somewhere insane like, say, Atlanta. I used soy milk in place of the cream to save calories and two lactose-induced sick days, but using cream or milk with lots of fat and calories can only make it better. You probably need to bulk up for that blizzard anyway.

This is also my contribution to February's Soup's On, hosted by A Veggie Venture, where you'll find lots of warm fuzzy soup recipes this month.