Zipped up to Bridgeport yesterday.  Had a beautiful drive up in between snow showers.  It was fun to walk around and window-shop.  Zipped back home to make soup for some friends who were coming over for supper.  We had so much fun singing, talking, eating that I forgot to take pictures.  Everyone liked my Italian meatball soup:

Make meatballs out of Italian sweet (not hot) sausage, some large, soft bread crumbs mixed with a little chicken broth, sauteed, minced onion. Form them very gently.   Make them big —  about golf-ball size.  Roll in flour and brown briefly in olive oil. 

Make soup out of two cups chicken broth, two cans of cannellini beans, drained (save liquid.)  I used one can of S&W petite cut tomatoes “diced with sweet onions, roasted garlic in rich sauce,” but any would probably work. (I suggest using low- sodium everything because Italian sausage can be very salty.) Two diced carrots.  Two or three diced stalks of celery plus leaves.  Bay leaf, rosemary sprig, two cloves garlic.  Add a pint of liquid.  (You could use water, more chicken broth, or the cannellini juice if it’s not too salty.)   Add meatballs and simmer briefly so vegetables will stay crisp. Stir in three cups sliced spinach leaves at the end so it will stay nice and green.  Remove bay leaf, rosemary sprig, and garlic cloves if you can find them 🙂  One meatball per serving.

I used my big red soup bowls.

Nobody likes fruitcake, but St. Anne’s made about 500 of them in the kitchen at St. P’s last month, and now we’re selling them off for a small fortune each.  I have serious doubts that we’ll see any profit.  The ingredients were very costly and the packaging was very upscale.  Everyone is being very nice about buying them.  I bought one and served it up last night with hard sauce.  As fruitcakes, go, this was the best one I ever tried.  Everyone here seemed delighted.

Still, in my opinion, trifle is the best holiday dessert.