Can I Just Get a Good Bowl of Soup?

I don't know about you, but the thing I miss most when I'm traveling is home cooking. Specifically, I miss MY cooking. I'm no gourmet but I'm a pretty decent cook, and enjoy spending time looking for new recipes and trying them out.

When I eat out it's fun to try new cuisines and "foodie" places, but after a few days all I really want is home cooking. And when it comes to home cooking, I usually want soup. Good soup. A bowl full of love that was made from scratch and simmered on the stove for a couple of hours.

Alas, good soup was not to be found on our last roadtrip. The best soup I ate was at Olive Garden and say what you will, but this doesn't fall into the "made from scratch" category in my opinion. I ate vegetable soup that looked promising but was watery and tasted like a can. The tomato soup in Boone, NC was homemade but was vegan and seemed to have tempeh in it - not that tempeh is bad, but it wasn't what I craved. I could have opted for bisque or chowder in Charleston, SC, but those options seemed to heavy for 90-degree temps and oppressive humidity.

Now that we're home I'm going to tackle the situation head-on. Tomorrow is soup day. Chicken tortilla soup, made from scratch. It's going to be delicious - I can't wait!

Photo by R. Young

My family just returned from an eight-day roadtrip during which we drove nearly 2,000 miles. With that much driving, we visited plenty of restrooms at truck stops, gas stations and fast food joints, always hoping that a tidy appearance on the building exterior would mean similar results in the bathroom. Sadly, that was rarely the case.

Sanitation aside, my
biggest beef was the lack of hooks or shelves where I could place my purse. After all, God only knows what was on those floors, especially the really filthy ones.

Are men still designing all the restrooms in the US? Equal numbers of stalls for both genders, plus guys get urinals - how ridiculous is that? But nowhere to put your purse? That's plain thoughtless.

Perhaps it's too much to hope that business owners will clean their restrooms. I don't expect miracles. But could they at least provide a hook or clean shelf for purses? I'd be very grateful.

Photo by Lisandra Barros Mendonça