Home On The Range
an excerpt

Annie greeted him with open arms and said that she hoped he would not mind that she had invited her friend Pam to dinner. She just had to share Phil's cooking skills with one of her bosom buddies. Phil didn't mind. He simply added the whole carton of chicken broth to the soup and dropped in two chicken breasts he found in Annie's refrigerator. While the chicken cooked in the broth, he peeled and seeded the squash and cut it into small cubes. Then he sautéed half a white onion in butter until it turned golden. He nuked the sweet potato in the microwave oven for three minutes. When the soup began to bubble, he chopped the red pepper and peeled the cooked sweet potato added them to the soup, along with the cooked onion and the chopped bunch of basil. He removed the chicken breasts from the soup, minced them, and returned them to the pot. Before he poured the soup into a food processor bowl to puree it, he seasoned it with freshly ground Tellicherry pepper and with an Italian herb mixture he found in Annie's spice rack.

As he returned the soup to the pot, the door bell rang. It was Annie's friend Pam, a slim woman whose rather coarse features were mitigated by her long black hair and by a warm smile.

"Oh, this smells so good! When are we going to eat?" she crooned as she walked into the house.

"As soon as you settle down and share a glass of wine with us," Annie said.

But they had not yet taken their first sip when the door bell rang again.