an Afternoon Delight

Turning a lunch date into a nooner takes both skill and luck. Skill, because it takes some planning. Luck, because you have to be fortunate enough to find a woman with some free time during the day.

People aren't regimented to the old 9-5 schedule anymore, and if they are they seldom get an hour for lunch like they used to. With more and more people having random week days off instead of weekends, a seductive lunch date can often be a winner for today's modern bachelor, IF he's lucky to sync schedules with today's modern woman.

Today's recipe for an afternoon delight may not sound like much, but I promise you that it is simple and seductive. I recently received a message on Facebook from a woman I made this for 14 years ago, saying how much she loved this soup. So, we'll call it Make Her Cream for Mushrooms soup. Because I love a good dirty joke.

The great thing about this soup recipe, is that it can be adapted to whatever vegetable you want. You can replace half of the mushrooms with asparagus, broccoli, spinach, cauliflower, whatever. Personally, I like the mushrooms best, and find that there's something strangely seductive about those little fungi. Mushrooms are, after all, aphrodisiacs.

Your grocery list: (about $10)
8-12 oz. package of baby bella mushrooms
a 32oz can of vegetable stock
a quart of heavy cream
a baguette of French bread from the bakery
whatever fresh fruit is on sale, preferably berries or something you can slice up.

What you should already have from your well-stocked bachelor pad pantry:
1/2 - 1 cup of butter
1/2 onion
flour
1 tsp garlic powder
salt
pepper

Prep work: (5 min)
slice up the mushroom, and dice the onion

This recipe is very easy, but requires a lot of patience. Still, it really doesn't take more than a half hour to prepare. And you'll learn some skills for future recipes.

In a large soup or stock pan, combine a 1/2 cup of butter, onion, garlic powder and 1/2 the mushrooms and cook over low-medium heat until the onions are golden brown. If the butter dissolves completely, be prepared to double up on it. Sometimes onions and mushrooms soak up more than others. The key is that you get those onions golden brown, but still have plenty of butter on the bottom of that pan. You can't have too much butter in this recipe. Hey, we're cooking for seduction here, not health.

When the onions are golden brown, turn heat down to a simmer. If there's no simmer setting on your stove, that just means ultra-super-low flame.

Now briskly stir in a tablespoon of flour. What's the consistency like? We're trying to turn our butter, onion and shrooms mixture into a paste. Add a tablespoon of flour at a time, and briskly stir it in, until you have a paste-like substance. (a little thicker than a batter) This is called a "rue."

Once you have a rue, we'll skip to undoing the rue, my darlings. Pour a half cup of your vegetable stock into the rue, and whisk or stir the hell out of it until you have one consistency. Do this until all of your vegetable stock is now in your soup pan and not in the can, but only add it 1/2 cup at a time, stirring the mixture into one consistency before adding more.

Now you can turn your heat back to a medium low setting or flame, and toss in the remaining mushrooms, or another vegetable if you're branching out. If you're adding anything other than mushrooms, you will want to cook that vegetable first. Then stir the mushrooms (or other) in gently.

Now we want this pot to boil. Once it does, we'll add 1/4 of our heavy cream at a time, stirring well and bringing it back to a boil, before adding the next 1/4 of the container, until the container is empty.

After you've added the last of heavy cream, and the mixture comes to a boil again, remove it from heat, and let it sit. Give it a taste, and gently add salt and pepper to taste, stirring well as you add them. Be careful of overdoing it on either. Just reheat and stir well to serve.

Serve with a few slices off of your French baguette, and the fresh fruit you purchased.

Beverage suggestion:
Spend a few more dollars for a cheap bottle of champagne and some cranberry cocktail juice. Serve an equal mix of the two. Many mixologists would call this drink a Poinsettia, after the Christmas flower, but you can use it year round. 99% of women LOVE champagne, the flavors compliment this soup very well, and champagne most usually aids in the cause of seduction. You can't go wrong with this one.

Again, if you can't engage the woman verbally, while you tantalize her taste and smell senses, your game isn't necessarily going to close. While you're stirring up your soup, think of things to talk about. Ask her about HER. I find that asking a woman's opinions on subject matters of the day does two things. It helps me know the woman I'm spending time with, and let's her know that I'm actually interested in her. Stimulate a woman's mind, while you stimulate her senses, and soon, you'll be stimulating each other. Cheers.