Pants on fire

I was given the gift of clam soup last week by a friend who made more soup than she needed for herself. I will refer to it as soup because I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be a chowder or a stew, but it’s really neither. I had a bowl for dinner with Kashi crackers. The next day thanked her for the delicious soup because I am polite. And because I am a liar. A polite liar. As it goes with lies, the lie became a gigantic cobra that turned and attacked. She said, “I’m so glad that you loved it! Here, have another jar!”

You can see from my weekend to-do list, this extra soup caused me great consternation. (Sorry, I had to black out certain portions of this list before posting because we had some super top-secret errands to run on Sunday.) As if I needed to remind myself to agonize over the soup. Write that down, Barb. You might forget.

Clam soup, originally uploaded by bbmowery.

A physical description of the soup follows: The appearance is unusual. I expect a seafood soup/chowder/stew to be based in either cream or tomato, but this soup has a clear broth. The cook let me in on her secret, which is to reserve all of the clam juice and use it in place of water in the recipe. She says this provides “extra tanginess.” I shared this factoid with Robb, and it caused him to take the Lord’s name in vain. The major solid contents of the soup are chopped clams, tomatoes, onion, and bacon. Lots of bacon. Do you see where this is going yet?

I took exactly ten bites of soup, and this is how they went: I put the first spoonful to my lips, and they instantly split and chapped. At the second spoonful I crawled back to the kitchen rasping, “Agua, agua!” At the third spoonful I realized that the combined force of my coffee addiction and this soup would leave me dehydrated like a crunchy new kitchen sponge. At the fourth spoonful my tear ducts began producing granulated tears. At the fifth spoonful a herd of whitetail deer emerged from the forest and began licking me. At the sixth spoonful my phone rang, and it was the director of the King Tut exhibit asking if I would like to travel with them as the newest mummy in the collection. At the seventh spoonful I dipped a piece of leftover pot roast into the soup, and it instantly turned into beef jerky. At the eighth spoonful my hands were so swollen I could not remove my rings. At the ninth spoonful I ate a package of silica granules from a shoebox to wet my whistle. At the tenth spoonful I poured the remaining soup into my bathtub and sat on the water’s surface reading the newspaper–so buoyant!

And now I have a second jar.