#Homemade Soup

[hipstergecko]

Waking Up.

Hey so remember that DPxDC prompt I wrote awhile back? I've been writing it! Here's a brand new chunk.

Ghost in a Box: Danny experiences extreme sensory deprivation after getting trapped in a coffin like box his parents invented. His box is opened on the JL watchtower after being found in an underground bunker. Humans can't do sensory deprivation for too long. Apparently neither can Danny.

Original Ghost in a Box prompt here.

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Black bat was waiting. She was quite good at waiting. Sometimes on a mission you had to be patient. Still and silent. Waiting.

The boy that had come out of the box had been in the intensive care unit for days. He had been dehydrated and was terribly emaciated. He had been starving. How long had he been in the box?

They couldn’t ask him until he woke up. So she had been waiting.

Cass sighed and walked silently down the hall to the ICU. After they had gotten the boy into the medical wing, she’d gotten the whole “that was incredibly dangerous” spiel from her dad Batman. He was proud of her though. She could tell. It spoke through the lines of his shoulders and the tilt of his head. The softness of his hands. Hopefully that softness would be given to the boy from the box.

There had been multiple debriefs and meetings to discuss how to proceed with the boy. The majority of heroes were loath to continue opening boxes. What if they were full of creatures much like the boy? Capable of so much damage and danger. They didn’t even know what he was.

The documents they had uncovered called the boy a ghost. But after checking his vital signs, they found he had a pulse. He had a heart, breath, and blood. He was human.

But he was in the box. So he wasn’t. The members of Justice league dark had been contacted and were due to arrive any day now. They had been on assignment somewhere else. Cass hadn’t bothered to find out where they’d been.

None of that mattered anyway.

What had mattered, truly, was that the boy from the box was afraid. Afraid and unable to communicate. And Cass understood him. He was terrified and desperate. And Cass saw him beyond the horrors.

He was a child and he needed help.

So he was hers now. No matter what anyone else said. She reached out to him first and he was her new brother/son/child. Bruce would have to deal with it.

She had stayed on the watchtower, with Bruce’s blessing, since the box had been opened. She barely left the boy’s side much to Bruce’s chagrin. He was not pleased with the possibility of her being in danger. But Tim had pointed out that she was plenty dangerous herself.

She loved her brothers.

She stayed on the watchtower all the time now. Staying with the boy and only leaving the observation room to shower and eat on her own. The doctors had insisted, gently, that she should take some time to herself after those first few days. So she does. Today she took a hot shower and attended a few meetings to keep up as to what they planned to do with her new brother. She also got to spend some time with Spoiler who had just so happened to be on the watchtower that day (she sent a thank you message to Tim over the family chat).

She looked through the observational window, a frown hidden behind her mask. The boy was hooked up to various machines to monitor his vitals. His eyes were still covered and the headphones were still firmly on his head. He looked so small and frail against the bed linens. There wasn’t much more they could do until the JLD members arrived.

The doctors inside the room were gently cleaning the boy. Running a warm soft wipe down his arms and legs, checking his vital signs, laying a warm blanket over him for comfort. She watched impassively at first, then with intense interest as some of the monitors showed brain activity.

Signs of waking. Her new brother was waking up.

She was the first one in the room when the boy jerked awake with a gasp.

---------

Consciousness.

Discomfort.

Gravity.

The air tastes funny. His arm itches. His legs feel heavy.

Weird.

Danny floated on the edge of wakefulness. Or at least what he thought was consciousness. It was hard to tell anymore. Everything was a cycle of dreaming and waking, or was it dreaming and dreaming? It was hard to find reality. Nothing changed except the hallucinations his mind conjured. And even his mind had started to get things wrong.

He couldn’t trust his memories anymore. He couldn’t remember what life was like. If he saw his mother in the box with him, he couldn’t make out the details of her face. Or His father’s laugh. Or his sister’s hair. Everything was fuzzy. Distant. Faded from his memories.

Did he even have a family? Was that something he made up?

He couldn’t remember.

How long had he been in here? He’d stopped counting the days when his eyes ceased to glow. Recycled ectoplasm was good at sustaining a ghost, but not good at feeding a ghost. And him being only a few years dead, he was still developing powers. Well he would be if he wasn’t essentially being purposefully stunted in this stupid box.

What a stupid box. Can’t even sit up in it. It was more like a coffin than a box. It would figure that he finally got put in a coffin. Specially since he died all the way but not quite once already. How lame. Someone somewhere was probably laughing about this.

What was he thinking about? Oh yeah. His eyes stopped glowing. Made it harder to see what was real. He couldn’t see the shadows of his real hands and the lack of them on the images his mind conjured. It was hard to tell the difference. If he could even tell the difference anymore.

He probably couldn’t tell at all anymore really.

He floated beyond consciousness for a moment more, resisting the press upon his mind to wake. Better to sleep. After all, there wasn’t anyone coming to get him. The whispers were silent when he wasn’t in his mind. The voices stopped. The hands didn’t pull at his mouth and eyes. It was the only chance at peace he got.

Something touched him.

Weird.

Wait…

Something, no, someone was touching him. Moving his itchy arm. He felt hands on his legs, moving them under the heaviness.

The hands were touching him.

Danny jolted to full consciousness with a gasp. He violently jerked away from the hands and scrambled back. They’d never moved him before! They’d only tried to! He had always fought them off! They were just hallucinations!! His mind only thought he was being touched!! What happened?! How?! WHY?!

His breath came in larger gasps of air as he spiraled into panic. The hands, glowing and green, decayed and skeletal reached out of the darkness. Whispered words filled his ears, static and chiming all at once. He flailed out at them frantically, touching nothing. He whimpered. They weren’t real they weren’t real they weren’t real.

One of the hands grabbed his arm.

He cried out at the contact. The weak and raspy sound pulling painfully from this throat as he lashed out at the hand and fell back. The ectoplasm felt firm and plush beneath him.

Wait, was that really ectoplasm? Was this real?

Somehow in his retreat, he reached an edge. He slipped.

He fell.

He hit a hard surface and felt the air whoosh from his lungs. He choked on the strange air and grasped blindly around himself. There was no ectoplasm, nothing swishing around him as he moved. He struggled to breathe and reached frantically out to his sides.

There were no walls.

No walls, no ceiling, no swishing stale ectoplasm.

What…

He… he wasn’t in the box.

This couldn’t be real.

He scrambled back along what he felt was the floor until he hit something hard. A wall? He didn’t care. This wasn’t real, but it felt real enough to use as an anchor, so at the wall he stayed.

Danny grasped at his arms. Nails dug into muscle, piercing the skin and drawing ectoplasm. He felt the pain and it grounded him. He was real. He was still real. His breathing was still harsh, the panic still real. The hands still reaching for him weren’t real. The floor and wall weren’t real. He was just trapped in another hallucination.

He just needed to calm down and wait until he came out of it naturally or hurt himself into reality. Either way he would still be in the box.

Abandoned in the box.

He dragged his nails down his arms, leaving behind gashes that wept. He wasn’t concerned though. His ghost form would heal fast enough that it wouldn’t make a difference. All he needed was to stop seeing things that weren’t real. He’d shed enough tears over illusions of his friends and family. Been through enough terrors and memories to doubt his mind. He knew he was in the box. Once he found the box again he could try to go back to sleep.

He’d lost the will to do anything more what felt like a lifetime ago. All he had left to his obsession was protection. Self protection. Survival. Keep his human half alive. By staying a ghost and surviving the horrors of his mind.

It was all he had left.

He ran his hands up his arms to start tearing at his skin again and found… wetness? He hadn’t healed yet? He lifted a hand to his face and licked the wetness on his fingers.

Copper tang. The faintest taste of ectoplasm.

It tasted like… blood?

Danny’s heart stopped in his chest. Wrong. His heart stuttered in his chest and he scrabbled at his neck. He fingers found his pulse.

Oh no.

He had a pulse. He was human again!

The darkness surrounding him was suddenly suffocating, pulling at his breath and stealing his rational thought. He was real, but he was going to die. Humans can’t survive as long as he had without food and water and air! He couldn’t keep control of his ghost form and his human half was going to die! He had to change back or he would fail at doing the only thing he had left!!

He started hyperventilating and desperately grabbed at his ghost core. An immediate searing pain shot through his chest. The sound he made was akin to someone tearing paper and he fell over on his side. He began trembling all over.

That hurt so bad. That hurt so bad.

He couldn’t think. He could breathe but that just brought him closer to death. Tears welled from his eyes and caught on something just beyond his eyelashes, turning the blackness somehow darker. He was going to die and the recycled ecto had failed and he was going to die and the static wouldn’t stop and the hands wouldn’t let him go and he was going to die alone and forgotten he was going to die again nopleasenopleasenotagain-

Something touched his hands.

Danny jerked back and away, nausea surging up his throat. He pushed himself up only to vomit stomach acid. The only thing in his system. It burned as it came and went. His stomach clenched so hard that he curled over on himself. His muscles shook with strain as he hyperventilated. He couldn’t get enough air. He couldn’t see. Couldn’t hear. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move…

Something touched him again. A gentle pressure on his back. Warm and soft.

He tensed beyond what he thought he was able. Rigid, but shaking in fear. He had no thoughts beyond the sheer terror of what he thought was unreality becoming reality.

Moments passed. And nothing happened.

The pressure on his back stayed. It did not grasp at him like the hands did. It remained gentle and soft. A warmth. It was different. It was scary.

It felt nice.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Danny’s breathing calmed. Slowly, he felt things around him. He felt the blood trickling down his arms. The cold floor under his legs. The soft, long shirt on his body didn’t close in the back or reach down past his knees. He was warmer than the floor which was strange, but made sense. He was human again. He couldn’t even remember the last time he turned back human. It was his greatest fear. To turn human in the box and die alone and small in the dark enclosed space.

But he wasn’t dying. He was breathing. The air was fresh. It tasted strange. His hands fluttered along the wounds on his arms. He felt pain and knew it was real. And the pressure on his back felt real.

Did… did someone open the box?

Hope hit him so hard that he began to cry softly. He couldn’t let himself hope, but he couldn’t deny it. Not when this all seemed so real. His crying grew harder. Harsh stuttering breaths that he couldn’t even hear. Which was kind of odd. Why couldn’t he hear himself? Did he still have ears? He slowly reached up and felt where his ears should be. There was something covering them. A hard plastic thing that went up over his head. Slowly his hands moved in front of his face. He found his nose and his mouth. They were still there. Then he touched the places where his eyes should be. He felt cloth.

His eyes and ears were covered?

Another hand touched his own and he jolted. It was as gentle and warm as the other hand. He could finally hear his ragged cries as the hand took his gently and intertwined the fingers. A gentle squeeze had the tears coming hard and fast. From fear or hope? There was no telling. A sheer outpouring of emotion.

Someone had opened the box.

And they were holding his hand.

He desperately hoped this was real.

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That's it for now! Honestly I'm just writing snippets of story beats and then stringing them together when the anxiety has quieted. I have an AO3 account now, but I'm still posting everything here first!

Nyeeeh keep an eye out for more I guess.

[pumpkintheapplepie]

Pumpkin Soup

Quick Pumpkin Soup for One

Ingredients:

8oz pumpkin puree

1/8 cup diced onion

2tsp minced garlic

8-12oz water

1-2tbsp olive oil

Bouillon cube, nutmeg, clove, turmeric, salt, pepper

Sauté garlic and onion in olive oil until fragrant

Add salt, pepper, nutmeg, turmeric, and clove and cook over low heat

To a pot, add pumpkin puree, water, and a bouillon cube (I used a chicken bouillon cube)

Stir together and bring to a boil. Add onion and garlic mix.

Top with parmesean cheese and cinnamon.

Enjoy!

This turned out super flavorful. I wish I had more, but I only had 8oz of puree. The amount of water you add will determine how thick you want the soup to be.

[soapdispensersalesman]

[ms-mani]

Wonton soup with shrimp

[balkanradfem]

So, the last summer, I decided to try out the method of drying green-beans, to see if it would be a good alternative to freezing them. I love frozen green beans, but I want a method of preserving that doesn't take any energy to keep them frozen, dry stuff is shelf stable!

The way to do this is to grab a needle and a thread, stack the green beans on the thread vertically, and then hanging them up to dry. It takes them several weeks to dry, and I do have to say, they all dried properly, none went bad or started getting mold, the drying part went well! Then I put them in my big giant jar and promptly forgot about them for the whole winter.

And now, I'm going to test if they're good to eat!

Some of these are long noodle beans, and some are just normal green beans. In the container next to them are some young garlic plants I found in the field. I've decided to go and make a garlic+green bean soup, to make sure the green beans get a proper time to cook in there.

So, the method of rehydrating these is to put them in a pot, pour boiling hot water over them, and leave them to soak for an hour. This is how they looked when I took them out of the jar:

They seemed light and like there's not much substance to them, they're also pretty thin. I covered the pot and left it for an hour. In the meantime, let's look at the garlic plants. Firstly, what are they.

I sometimes forget to harvest a bulb of garlic, and then in the spring, I get 5-6 young garlic plants growing on top of each other. I tried to pry them apart and plant separately, but none of them would really go on to produce a big head of garlic. So I decided it's much more satisfying to just yank them all out and eat them in the spring as fresh garlic. The entire plant is filled with fresh garlic flavour!

I cleaned them up and separated the white parts from the green, because the white parts can be sauteed on oil, while the green parts will do better to just be cooked. I cut them in little soup-appropriate pieces.

Then I thought, well, this soup would just be so much better if there was a potato in it. Green beans and potatoes just go extremely well together. And I didn't have a young potato, all of mine have already sprouted, so I picked two that looked somewhat decent:

I know these look rough at first, but when you cut them, inside they're just fine! I didn't even peel them, just cut them in little cubes. Now let's look at how are the green beans doing:

They grew bigger! And they now feel very squishy and chewy, and there's much more weight to them, which I like. The smell coming out of them was not like a green-bean scent, it didn't smell much like anything really. I was very curious to how the water would taste where the green beans were soaking, so I tried it. And it tasted like tea. Usually when you cook some vegetable in hot water, it tastes like broth, right? Well this tasted like tea. Tea from leaves and bark. It was extremely interesting.

Anyway, I cut the green beans to little bits as well, and now we have all of the ingredients for cooking! It's going to be a very simple meal, but cool because we're just using garden stuff one can get in early spring.

I put the potatoes and salt on some oil first, because they can handle it for the longest time, and it draws out a more intense flavour in them. When they started smelling real nice, I added the garlic whites, and after a bit, garlic greens and green beans, or at this point they would be called 'leather britches', because people compare the texture of dry green beans to leather. And that's it! Extremely simple soup making. Here it is done:

I was excited to see what the flavour of green beans would be, because I was promised they have this very intense flavour, but I have to admit, this soup tasted overwhelmingly of potatoes and garlic! Which is a heavenly combination, so I loved it a lot. I was a little disappointed that I couldn't taste the green beans, I think the flavour possibly faded because I just left them sitting in a transparent jar for some 9+ months, and they should have been protected from the light better.

I could feel the texture, however, and it was okay, it was slightly leathery but by no means difficult to eat. I ended up eating the entire soup very quickly, and I have to say it was extremely sating. I felt very well fed afterwards and satisfied for hours. Food that is no trouble to store, easy to eat and sating, that sounds like a perfect thing for me.

I'll try it again this summer, but I'll see if I can eat the green beans before they lose the flavour completely, or if I could preserve it for longer by keeping them out of light, in a paper bag or a very dark spot. Possibly I should have tried putting them on oil to draw out the flavour, but I haven't thought of that at the time. I actually have a bit of them left over, because I wanted to see if they cook any different if I don't soak them first, so when I try that out, I'll put that information out as well!

[priestessofthepoeticprophesy]

Homemade Chickpea Citrus Soup with veggies and herbs 😊

[number-1-soup-fan]

Here is some homemade chicken soup

homemade is the best type of soup!

[familythings]

How to make the Traditional Meatballs Soup

Today I will share a special recipe. It is a traditional recipe from an area in the South of Albania, Gjirokastra. Meatballs’ Soup is very famous and more than two centuries old. It is known as the preferred soup of Ali Pasha Tepelena, an Albanian senior military commander and vizier during the Ottoman Empire period. Some legends say this soup was created in purpose for his taste. That’s why its…

[eddiessidegirl]

🍲soup season❤️

[wisterianwoman]

10 Mistakes You're Making With Soup

Master the art of soup-making with expert tips to avoid common soup mistakes. From seasoning secrets to mastering creamy textures, learn how to elevate your soups from ordinary to extraordinary. Uncover the secrets of building flavor, perfecting consistency, and crafting wholesome soups from scratch. Generally speaking, I like to live my life humbly, knowing there’s always more to learn and many…

[renee-writer]

November 27th

I am thankful for homemade soup on cold days.

[producewithamy]

Green Curry Coconut Soup with Shrimp & Vegetables

“There is nothing like soup. It is by nature eccentric: no two are ever alike, unless of course you get your soup in a can.” — Laurie Colwin Today it is the middle of June and I just got home from the Skandia Farmers Market. My booth was brimming with purple Lupine flower bouquets and garden plant starts. It was cold tonight and I could see my breath. The weather has been typical for the UP this…

[greenwitch-alchemy]

Incase anyone was wondering how my bread and soup turned out that I made on yesterdays live🍞🍲

[crownofstardustandbone]

Tomato soup fixins

[tenpolegardener]

Summer, cooking at home

Zucchini soup; sometimes I put cheese in but not today. I use a vegetable stock. Chicken stock can make it taste funny.

[jingerbunny]

The temperature was less than 80 degrees this morning, so I made chicken noodle soup from scratch for the first time, bone broth and all. It took all morning, but oh my god it's the most delicious soup I have ever tasted.