Asparagus & Brown Rice Soup

Alayna and I chose this soup because I had a bunch of asparagus at home I didn't know what to do with it. We found a recipe that incorporated asparagus and brown rice and we were tentatively planning to work off that until we re-read the recipe at home and realized adding soy sauce and hot sauce sounded sort of gross. Plus it instructed us to use multiple dishes.

We did not like this.

We altered the recipe so we only used 1 soup pot and 1 pot for rice. No other dishware was dirtied! (Minus our feeding bowls... I said that with a southern drawl and I hope you did, too.) This soup set a lot of records actually. Alayna came over at 7pm and we were sitting down eating by 7:40. This never happens. Not necessary because soup takes that long but because we have a habit of dilly dallying over things like kittens and craftware. And Alayna ate, I kid you not, 4 bowlfuls of this soup. To make her feel better I ate three. And my second bowlful was REALLY big.

When she asked for her fourth bowlful she reasoned, well it's just vegetables and water, really.
It's true.
Now enjoy this soup yourself and don't be shy with the Parmesan cheese. Trust me.

Oh! I was asked to include an Obituary for Gourmet Magazine in here. It's true, it was the Vogue of cooking. Alas, I too, miss paper.

• Cook a cup of rice (mixed brown and wild is best) in a seperate pot
• Sauttee one chopped yellow onion, adding 3 finely chopped shallots at the end
• Adding as you chop, put in about 5 celery sticks, 4-5 smallish carrots and a bunch of asparagus, keeping the pot covered on medium heat
• Add a handful of chopped parsely, several sprigs of fresh thyme and some ground black pepper
  
• Once the veggies are cooked through but still have some crunch (the asparagus should be bright green), add in the cooked rice and fill the pot with chicken or vegetable broth
• Squeeze in the juice of one lemon, bring to a simmer and serve with a sprinkling of parmesean on top