It’s not often that I’m in the mood to cook anything when I get home at night, and usually it’s a safer bet that I’ll feel like watching a reality show and going to bed. Sometimes I cook anyway, and sometimes the routine of preparing food takes away the stress of the day’s activities and leaves me relaxed and invigorated and so on and so forth, but other times I give up and cook little or nothing. Fortunately, today we had some vegetable soup that our friends gave us when they were cleaning out their freezer. I was looking around for some kind of protein to cook with it, until I remembered that our friends are from South Carolina and their vegetable soup has ground beef, too. I opened some Francis Coppola wine, which I often buy when I’m not sure what to get at the county liquor market. The brand includes a number of solid choices among the major grape varieties. If he can make The Godfather Part II, then surely he can make a decent $15 bottle of wine.

(Photo: Easter Dog, Alexandria, Virginia.)

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