We all wear more than one hat. I alluded to this in yesterday's blog when I wrote that all of us move from one reality to another, ideally with fluidity, but sometimes there are bumps along the way. Most of us also wear more than one hat, which could be just another indicator of multiple realities, but the hat "thing" is, I believe, different.
I try to keep my chapeau changes to a minimum because I note that the more inventory I have in my haberdashery, more possibilities arise for screw-ups. Most of the time, I have been fortunate in that my hat changes have been at measured and controlled times, not coinciding with one another. Lately the hat changes have been so frequent and uncontrolled there are long segments where I find myself wearing all of my hats at once. This is usually not an issue for me, although it does lead to frequent sighs, deep breaths, late nights/early mornings, muttering, and the occasional "blue" language. I've always prided myself in my ability to multi-task and I thought I was handling everything with relative success and outward ease until.............I left the carrots out of the soup.
Last night I came to the realization that today I had scheduled myself for three cooking tasks. 1) We need more homemade soup because a) We've used up all of the frozen soup. b) We eat soup every Tuesday night (long church night) because it is quick and mindless to serve up. c) The summer season is fast approaching and we try to keep our freezer contents to a minimum during the summer AND there were some frozen soup ingredients that needed to be utilized. Hence, today was to be the last soup-making day of the winter season. 2) We eat only homemade granola and the container is nearly empty. Making granola takes about a four-hour chunk of time so I have to plan when to make it. 3) We are going to a potluck tomorrow and I have decided to take carrot cake as my culinary contribution. Why? Because I can eat one piece and let everyone else help me eat it up. It is extremely tasty but very fattening, which makes it a great potluck dish.
To make a long story shorter, I decided last night to make the soup and let it cook through the night in the crockpot. Seemed like a good use of the night hours. Capt. SO and I had decided to try to polish off two of the three remaining discs on our trip book-on-CD and I knew I could prepare soup ingredients while listening to the book. However, I was in a hurry because I also knew that while we were listening to the book, I could sit at the dining table and continue hymn selection for my church. I was finished with May and June and needed to complete July, August, and September. ( As I write this I can see how I was piling the hats on my head.) I power-chopped through the potatoes and onion, threw in all of the frozen veggies, turkey meat and broth, added the barley and spices, put the lid on, added my smirk of self-satisfaction and settled into hymn selection. This morning Capt. SO and I awoke to the mouth-watering aroma of simmering soup. I lifted the lid, stirred the pot and then noticed my oversight of NO CARROTS. Normally, this type of oversight would not phase me but in my heightened state of too-many-hats-on-at-once, the absence of carrots in my soup became a crisis of global proportions. One would have thought I'd lost my cell phone or been informed that UPS would no longer deliver to my door.
It was then I realized that my distress over NO CARROTS IN MY SOUP was a symptom of too many hats and that the situation is serious. I'll know the situation has reached further crisis proportions when I make coffee and forget the beans.
Until then I'll just have to live with no carrots in my soup.
Ancora imparo
