Potpourri Soup

This strikes me as a good soup for winter, and here I am cooking this soup on one of the hottest days of July! Soup is good any time of year, though, and I just love pepper, so I couldn't resist trying a soup which calls for whole black peppercorns just floating around adding a little spice!

I've never fried hamburg in butter. I mean, if you buy 85% you get plenty of fat melting in which to cook the meat, right? But then I figured it out, you don't have the butter in the pan just for the hamburg. It is more for the onions, which follow directly after cooking the meat a bit. The recipe does not indicate how much water, so I just poured it in till it looked like soup rather than hamburg and veggies. It says to simmer an hour with just the meat, onions, barley, tomatoes and peppers. Then an additional hour with the carrots, potatoes, and celery. Good heavens, two hours? I didn't have the time, so an hour does it, with everything poured in to simmer all to once.

I filled my bowl and had saltines on the side. Biscuits might have been better, but I'll make a note of that for winter soup.  Just don't feel up to heating the oven in this heat.  I had to add salt (none listed in the recipe) and more pepper, because surprisingly, this soup needed more.

The recipe contributor writes about his grandmother, who made this soup. He says that her other recipes are lost and he only has this one because it was printed in a local cookbook. There is a picture of his grandmother next to the recipe. She looks happy and relaxed. Making good food to nourish one's family is surely reason to be content.