Recipe for the Holiday Week: Sweet and Sour Meatball Soup

 

As the latest wash and rinse cycle in stocks kicks in as expected for the quad stock option expiration, I wanted to share this old recipe with you again. 

I had to look up the recipe, which is an old paper written in my godfather's hand, God rest his soul.

It is something that was handed down from his family, in Prussia, where his father was a blacksmith.

I have modified the recipe a bit over the years, but here is the basic idea.  

Once you get the hang of it feel free to experiment with things that suit your taste. 

If you do not use pork, other bones can be substituted. 

I find that blanching the bones first and then discarding that liquid makes for a 'cleaner' soup.  

I learned this from making tonkotsu ramen broth.

There is a less sweet seafood version of this that I make with cod, hold the chicken wings.


Süße und Saure Suppe

Into a large pot add four quarts of light chicken stock. Add four stalks of celery. If it is green clean the outside to remove any bitterness by scraping it with a knife.

Add one pound of cleaned pork neckbones. This will add 'richness.'
One or two cloves of garlic.
Bring to a boil and simmer for 45 minutes.

Remove the bones and celery.

Take 1 pound of ground beef and 1 pound ground pork and 8 to 16 oz. of plain bread crumbs in a large bowl.  

Add one tablespoon celery salt and pepper to taste.
One well diced onion.

Mix in two eggs. If the mixture seems heavy add up to 1/2 cup milk to soften the bread crumbs.
Salt and pepper to taste. Add some garlic powder if you are of that persuasion.

Bring the stock back up to a boil. Make the meatballs and add them to
the stock. Cook them until they float to the top on a slow boil.
Remove them and put them on the side in a bowl.

Add one cup of diced celery, one diced leek or sweet onion, one large potato, and five or six sliced carrots.
Slice one lemon into disks, remove the seeds.
Add one package of cleaned and separated chicken wings or wingettes.
Bring to a slow boil and simmer for about 45 minutes.

Turn the heat down very low.

Add 2 pints of sour cream. Add one cup of sugar or sugar substitute.

Mix lightly without breaking up the carrots and other things in the soup.
Add some stock to the sour cream container and let it cool off.
 

Add 1/4 cup flour to the stock in the container and mix it well.
Add this back to the soup to thicken it. A rue can also be used. Or cornstarch.

Now taste the soup broth and add sugar  or a substitute to suit your taste. Do not overdo
but it should taste slightly sweet. 

If it is not sour enough add some cider vinegar to bring the sourness into balance with the sweetness.

Add back the meatballs and let it simmer for about fifteen minutes. Don't burn.

Add some chopped scallions for color, and ground pepper. Add salt if needed.

Serve in a bowl with a crusty bread.

The meatballs tend to absorb the liquid overnight. Add some chicken stock if needed.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - See-Saw

 

"The period of financial distress is a gradual decline after the peak of a speculative bubble that precedes the final and massive panic and crash, driven by the insiders having exited but the sucker outsiders hanging on hoping for a revival, but finally giving up in the final collapse."

Charles Kindelberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises 

 

"The loveliest of the Devil's tricks is to make you believe that he does not exist." 

Charles Pierre Baudelaire

 

"And they said to him, 'Where will this happen, Lord?' And He said to them, 'Where death is, there a gathering of vultures will be.'” 

 Luke 17:37

 

Gold and silver rebounded sharply, with several of the mining stocks showing outsized one day gains. 

Newmont Mining was a good example. 

Stocks themselves struggled with big cap tech leading the way lower.

VIX was higher.

The Dollar fell, hanging on to the 96 handle by its fingernails.

There will be a stock option expiration tomorrow.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Endless Wealth Extraction - Le Monde Mythique du Papier

 

"In a hierarchically organised society, the Machiavellis are one step ahead.  They have the ultimate secret weapon to defeat their competition.  They’re shameless.”

Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History

 

"In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live.  To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it.  So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent.  The foolish thus have the field to themselves.   None rebukes them." 

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929

"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God.  The world is crowded with Him.  He walks everywhere, incognito.  And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labour is to remember, to attend.  In fact, to come awake.  Still more, to remain awake. 

C. S. Lewis

 

"The market ideology is now the new form of imperial power and many of us, without any critical reflection, have signed onto that." 

Walter Brueggemann

 

“These days, banks have become so big that much of what they do is merely shuffle wealth around, or even destroy it.  Instead of growing the pie, the explosive expansion of the banking sector has increased the share it serves itself.  Bizarrely, it’s precisely the jobs that shift money around – creating next to nothing of tangible value – that net the best salaries.  How is it possible that all those agents of prosperity – the teachers, the police officers, the nurses – are paid so poorly, while the unimportant, superfluous, and even destructive shifters do so well?” 

Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists

 

These jokers are shameless.

I am sorry I did not buy even more heavily on that big dip.  

Yes this has always been a facet of the markets.   

But in 25 years it has rarely been more brazen. 

I hope you did not get whipsawed out of your positions.

Let's see what fresh shenanigans tomorrow may bring. 

In such a fragile system, agility and flexibility is the name of the game.

Physical gold inventory levels continue to fluctuate in Hong Kong.

Stock option expiration on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening. 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The War Against the Truth

 

"Another cause of today’s instability is that we now have a society in America, Europe and much of the world which is totally dominated by the two elements of sovereignty that are not included in the state structure: control of credit and banking, and the corporation.   These are free of political controls and social responsibility and have largely monopolized power in Western Civilization and in American society. 

They are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate land, labor, entrepreneurial-managerial skills, and everything else the economists once told us were the chief elements of production.  The only element of production they are concerned with is the one they can control: capital." 

Professor Carroll Quigley, Oscar Iden Lecture Series 3, 1976 

 

"Money is power.   And those who control the money, if they have the will for it, can use it as a means to incredible power, to create debt, and to control it, thereby controlling the debtors, both as individuals, as communities, as regions, and whole nations. 

This is the story of global trade deals, the Dollar, and the foul marriage between politics, money, and central banking.  The more discretion and secrecy that is granted to those who create money and debt, the more vulnerable is the freedom of the people."

Jesse, 4 May 2015

 

"Far be it from any of us to be of those simple ones who are taken in that snare which is circling around us!  Far be it from us to be seduced with the fair promises in which Satan is sure to hide his poison!  Do you think he is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the Truth? 

No; he offers you baits to tempt you.  He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform.  This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you.  

He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them.  He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you.  He bids you mount aloft.  He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."

John Henry Newman, The AntiChrist

 

 Stocks dumped again today, but managed to rally off the lows into the close.

The Dollar rallied and VIX moved higher.

Gold and silver were hit and did not recover off their lows nearly as much as stocks.

Tomorrow we will hear what the Fed has to say about their policy moves with rgard to tapering, and their projection of inflation and rates.

Since this market is the Fed's Frankenstein monster, their words may carry some impact.

There will be a stock option expiration on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.