Cheddar Cheese Soup with Ale

Recipe: Cheddar Cheese Soup with Ale

After 2 months, 400 miles travelled, and 1 confused cat and dog, My Happy Place has relocated! I am now in the Wilmington, DE area. Yay! To be exact, I'm living in Kennett Square, PA. Man, is moving an adventure. I think the biggest adventure was the 6 hour drive with my cat who rarely leaves the house. I think she meowed for the first 2 hours straight. The next 4 were spent alternating between giving me death looks and making very low growling like sounds. Needless to say, we were not friends for the first few days here. :) I actually moved at the end of June. My attempts to cook with plastic utensils and paper plates did not bode very well. So I had to wait until I unpacked the kitchen boxes so I could start cooking. That may not seem that big of a deal. I mean it only took the moving guy about 4 hours to pack up the kitchen. How long should it take to unpack it? Ha! Between trying to get acclimated to my new area, my new job, and travelling a few times (including going to see Terraun and Sarah get married!), unpacking didn't exactly go as planned. My bedroom was unpacked relatively quickly. Then again, if I didn't unpack my bedroom I'd either have a really high credit card bill from all the clothes I'd be buying or I'd have no friends at work after wearing the same outfit for 6 weeks straight. I actually unpacked the first half of the kitchen in mid-July. And I thought I had all the key things I needed to cook. I even bought the groceries I needed to cook my next recipe. But I was still missing a few key things I needed to cook. And it took me another 3 weeks to get the rest of what I needed unpacked. But no worries. I used the time not cooking very wisely. I discovered Wawa Italian Hoagies in the intermission between cooking. Wawa is a regional chain of gas stations/food marts. This summer they had a special on subs called "HoagieFest" which offered 6" subs for $2.99. And since I live within walking distance from a Wawa, I used the time between cooking to get very acquainted with my local Wawa. It may sound strange to hear me say I ate mostly gas station food for the past 6 weeks. But these subs are really, really good. I actually found myself craving them sometimes. Of course after 6 weeks, I think I've had my fill. But the Italian Hoagie definitely got me through without starving in my first few weeks here. But now I'm unpacked and ready to go back to My Happy Place. And boy have I missed it.

My favorite thing about being up here is the access to so many good places to grocery shop. When I thought I was cooking 3 weeks ago, I went to a store called Jansen's Market, a gourmet market. And guess what! They have Hungarian Paprika! I had to stop and smile when I saw Hungarian Paprika in the spice aisle. It almost brought a tear to my eye. I also have a pretty decent grocery store within walking distance from me. I'm going to really really like it up here. There is one thing that has thrown me off though. Buying alcohol is totally different up here. In WV and OH, if I need a bottle of beer, I can go to the gas station and grab one. Or Giant Eagle. Or Wal-Mart. Or Foodland. Pretty much anywhere that sold food, sold beer and wine. My soup recipe calls for a bottle of Ale beer. When I went shopping at Jansen's, I found everything I needed but the bottle of Ale. I went from aisle to aisle to no avail. I asked the checkout girl where the beer was, and I noticed she looked at me strangely when she said they didn't sell it. I didn't think anything of it though. It was a hoity toity grocery store. Maybe selling alcohol would lower they're appeal as a gourmet store. I went to the store next to my house and searched every aisle again. And again, no bottle of Ale. Now I was starting to wonder if Pennsylvania was a dry state, or the county I was in was at least dry. But I knew I saw a wine shop in the same shopping center as the store by my house. So I asked the checkout guy at this store if they sold beer. And again, the strange looks. For fear of making myself look too silly, I waited to ask one of my coworkers what was up with the hidden beer. And turns out, you can't buy alcohol in a grocery store or gas station in Delaware or Pennsylvania. Huh, who knew? You have to buy beer at a beer distribution center and wine at a wine shop. At least in PA. Yes, I did say beer from a beer distribution center where they sell nothing but cases of beer. And yes, I did say I need 1 bottle of beer for my recipe. 1 bottle is much less than 1 case of beer. But I found a way to make it work. I went to one of the beer distribution centers and very nicely explained my dilemma, and he gave me a bottle of beer. They had a few cases that were damaged and opened, so he grabbed a bottle from one of those cases. Now, he actually gave me lager, not ale. But I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Especially when my only other options are to buy a $50.00 case of Ale for 1 bottle or drive around aimlessly looking for the next beer center hoping they have a bottle of Ale they will give me. The cook book said Ale has a heavier taste than Lager, but the soup was still good. I'm curious if the soup will taste better with Ale, so I may make it again. I hear in Delaware, they sell beer in smaller packages than 20 bottle cases. Other than the adventure with the beer, the recipe was really straightforward and simple. And in case you were wondering, the cheeses were sharp cheddar and grated parmesean cheese. Yummy!

So there you have it. My first recipe in my newly located Happy Place is in the books. It took a while to get My East Coast Happy Place up and running. But I'm looking forward to seeing "oh the places I will go" now that I'm here. And yes...that was a Dr. Seuss reference. :)