Rambling and a Recipe

Sorry for the relative quiet here but I am up to my chubby bum in databases and stuff. Spent several minutes today, however, thanking various spirits that I did not travel to Indianapolis this week. Serious snow and cold there. Cooled off here as well after a couple of nice days...only 38 at about 5pm.
Did solve my connectivity issue whilst in Indy though as I am now the proud owner of a Sprint Broadband Wireless Modem that works pretty well. Should be able to find the Internet anywhere I go now.
I know I am rambling a bit here as I am waiting for the Oracle 10g client to download and it is nearly a Gig zipped. The client in Indy is moving to this version at the same time he is upgrading my application to the latest. Gonna be fun.
While we are waiting for Oracle to arrive how about a recipe?

Hearty Barley Mushroom Soup
This is a vegan recipe that is very quick to prepare and is good and hearty and great for these cold winter days. It is also flexible in that you can play with the ingredients depending on what you have in the fridge and cupboard.

2 cups of button, porcinni (sp?),baby bellas or shiitake mushrooms sliced
1/2 cup diced carrot
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped celery
1 cup pearl barley(not instant)
8 cups of vegetable stock
1 TBSP of soy sauce

Saute the onions, carrots and celery in your soup pot with a couple of tablespoons of canola or olive oil until they start to brown a bit and then add the barley and cook until it just starts to color. Overall this stage should take about 10 minutes. Add the stock and bring to a simmer, cover and cook for 20 -30 minutes or until the barley is tender. Finish with a tablespoon of soy and then salt and pepper to taste. Like I said this is flexible though I wouldn't leave out either the mushrooms or the barley. You can skip the celery if you don't have any but I like the added texture. If you don't have real vegetable stock you can use 4 of the large Knorr vegetarian vegetable broth cubes and 8 cups of water. Not a vegetarian? Use chick stock... just the low sodium kind. ( I like the Swanson's Organic). Sometime a splash of balsamic vinegar will brighten it up as well. Enjoy and don't forget some crusty whole grain bread.