squeequeg | Recipe for What the Fuck Soup

1. Make tasty asparagus dish* for communal dinner. Realize that one now has a lot of tough asparagus ends. Debate efficacy of end-snapping technique. Vaguely remember advice on saving asparagus ends to make stock. Toss ends in fridge.

2. Look up recipes for vegetable stock. Greatly overestimate one's cooking skills. Chop up asparagus ends. Discover half an onion and some sad parsnips in back of fridge. Chop them up too. Play with cheesecloth and make bouquet garni. Spend evening simmering stock and watching anime.

3. Apartment now smells of asparagus. Debate relative merits of smelling like asparagus. Stop train of thought before it can reach unwelcome destination.

4. Strain stock, congratulating self on kitchen skills. Notice stock is a particularly interesting shade of green. Refrigerate stock. Worry about various kinds of food poisoning.

5. Look up slow cooker recipes for ideas. Place great amount of faith in ability of slow cooker to make food out of anything.

6. Add stock, leftover smoked pork hock from cassoulet attempt, baby spinach that was next to the sad parsnips, leftover hot sausage (see cassoulet), and can of white kidney beans to slow cooker. Look up pasta/slow cooker combinations, on the theory that some soups have pasta too, and decide to add pasta near end of cooking time.

7. Reflect that current work schedule does not make for convenient cooking times. Convince Wonderful Companion to switch on slow cooker at appropriate time. Emphatically warn Wonderful Companion that the contents of slow cooker may not be to his liking.

8. Debate whether Wonderful Companion's lack of concern regarding the slow cooker contents is a sign of a generally optimistic outlook on life and cuisine or a sign of dangerous heedlessness. Suspect Wonderful Companion is secretly amused. Realize that Wonderful Companion's amusement would not be secret if it were present.

9. Return home to find slow cooker bubbling away. Decide scent is, while unusual, not bad.

10. When digging in cupboard for pasta, discover summer sausage. Remember that earlier attempt to add summer sausage to cassoulet was thwarted by sibling. Realize further that there is no one to stop us this time.

11. Chop up summer sausage, cackling maniacally. While pasta is boiling, add summer sausage to and remove smoked pork hock from slow cooker. Shred smoked pork hock, noting poor meat/not meat ratio of hock.

12. Add shredded meat and pasta. Turn slow cooker to High. Leave for an hour.

13. Serve with French bread. Contemplate one's fate.

14. Consume.

15. Proclaim "What the fuck? This soup has no right to be tasty!"

16. Attempt to replicate recipe, if only for the amusement of one's friends.

* The asparagus dish is quite tasty and much simpler, being little more than roasted asparagus with bacon and goat cheese crumbled over it. If served on toast, it requires a Dex check to eat successfully, but would probably be just as tasty and less problematic if served straight.