Less is More

January 13, 2012

With today's cooler weather, I decided to make a pot of Vegetable Beef Soup.  It's simple, it's easy, it doesn't take long to make, and I love it.  One of my other favorites is Beef Barley Soup.  However, it's been about 7 years since the one and only time I've attempted to make it - Catherine refers to it as the Barley Loaf Incident.  When I cook, I use a recipe but usually modify it a bit to suit my tastes.  That often means adding more of an ingredient I particularly like - more cheese, more chocolate, more spices, and, in this case, more barley.  The amount of barley called for in the recipe just didn't look like much, so I added more than it said.  I left it to cook and went off to do other things.  When it was time for dinner, I lifted the lid to find that the pot was FULL of barley.  In fact, it was a solid mass of barley with pieces of beef throughout and was thoroughly disgusting.  I was so disappointed!