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

A Passion for Travel: So When Is It My Turn to Win the Lottery?

I love to travel. Maybe it started when I was young, when my family moved around the US because of my father's job (I'd lived in 11 different places by the time I was 12).

Though I got to see a lot of the US while crisscrossing the country on family moves, I didn't see much of the rest of the world. There were two trips to Mexico (the first one, crossing the border to Mexico on a boozy day-trip, doesn't really count; the second trip lasted a full week and was fascinating). I went to the Bahamas and Jamaica, but only Jamaica "counted" because I needed a passport to go.

Then, when I turned 45, I joined my husband on a business trip to Prague. Wow! Amazing. The following year we took our kids to Germany and Belgium, and last year the hubby and I traveled to Ireland. I'm hooked.

We need to win Lotto before more trips like those. In the meantime, I'll dream about fabulous places. But once I get the bucks, I'm outta here. And these are some of the spots I look forward to visiting:

* Paris
* Edinburgh, Scotland
* Italy (too many places to list separately)
* Alaska
* Morocco (Casablanca, of course, and Fez, where a cooking class for traditional Moroccan fare is offered)
* Japan (to visit my husband's "people")
* Maine
* Calgary
* Old Faithful
* a volcano (I'm fascinated by plate tectonics and such)

Any suggestions to offer about some of my dream destinations? Leave a comment and let me know.

Photo note: We took the top photo of the Porta Negro, or Black Gate, in Trier, Germany