Chunk O' Meat Soup

For Jackson's birthday I decided to make corn bread (his all-time, hands-down favorite food), peas (his second favorite food - trust me, I know), and taco soup (which he scarfs down). Franz was going to stop by the grocery store a couple of days beforehand, so I asked him to pick up a couple of the ingredients for the soup that I was missing. When he got home, he mentioned that he'd picked up the ground beef and was purposely putting it into the garage fridge so that it would not be frozen when I needed it for soup, and it wouldn't get mixed up with some other ground beef we'd set aside for another meal.

On the night of his birthday, it was very hectic. I had a late start due to some unforeseen events, and ended up with two hours to frost two cakes (a cake in the shape of a number one for all of us and a small bear smash cake for him) and make dinner. It was tight. At the time I was starting on the soup, I asked Katie to ask Franz to get the ground beef for me. I was simultaneously mixing up the cornbread and contemplating the cakes. She came back in with the package and I dumped it quickly into the waiting skillet. As I began to break it up and turn it, the skillet started to just overflow with meat. Not giving it too much thought, as I was committing my mental energies elsewhere, I got out a second skillet to split it up so I wouldn't make such a mess. Once the beef was browned and drained, I dumped it into the stockpot and started adding the other ingredients (I was doubling the recipe, as I always do with soups). Well, it came to the last couple of ingredients and I realized there just wasn't room in the pot. Wonderingly, I pulled out a second pot and began transferring some of the soup to it, trying to keep the amounts of each of the ingredients proportionate.

Once I had the cornbread in the oven, the peas cooking, and the cakes frosted, my brain was free enough to contemplate the soup, which seemed to me to spawning and increasing in quantity from what I remembered the last time I made it.

Somewhat puzzled about the soup, I set the table and called everyone into the kitchen. As Franz came in from the garage, he casually said, "What did you do with the rest of the ground beef?"

"The rest of what ground beef?" I asked. He'd only given me the package he had picked up at the store specifically for my soup.

"That was SIX pounds of ground beef!"

"Huh?"

"I picked up some extra for whatever else we might want it for."

Okay, there was a huge communication gap, apparently. Well, that certainly explained the growing and overflowing soup production. A doubled recipe called for 2-3 pounds of ground beef. Franz remarked, upon tasting it, that it had to be his favorite soup ever because it was like having a small side of soup to go with a hamburger. We had two pots of soup left after dinner and it looked like we hadn't eaten any at all. You should have tried to lift the stockpot - it was tremendously heavy! We fittingly renamed the soup, "Chunk O' Meat Soup."