Meals for Wisdom Tooth Extraction–cold cucumber yogurt buttermilk soup

I’ve had four wisdom-tooth extractions. As in my insurance company pays for one tooth at a time. On the plus side, this makes for a short time in the oral surgeon’s chair. On the down side, there’s four times the dread and four different periods of recovery.

Winter is easy–mashed potatoes: filling, not spicy, easy to digest. But I don’t feel much like mashed potatoes in August and while I love ice cream, my body doesn’t take well to an ice cream diet.

Which is how I ended up with soup–warm and cold. These are good enough that I had to share them with my family and mild enough that they don’t irritate the gum.

Cucumber buttermilk/yogurt soup.

This is an adaptation of a recipe from the Silver Palate cookbook:

2 cups buttermilk–the rich Bulgarian stuff is better.
1 cup yogurt. I didn’t bother draining it.
1 medium cucumber.
1 shallot clove
fresh mint and parsley
salt and pepper.

Combine yogurt and buttermilk in bowl.
Peel and seed cucumber–grate. If you had surgery that morning, use the fine holes, otherwise rough.

Add to yogurt and buttermilk.

Use a microplane zester and grate shallot into bowl–this is to taste. I used half a shallot. Shallot will liquefy. This is good. Add to bowl.

Chop up a few sprigs of mint and parsley. Add to bowl.

Salt and pepper to taste. Mix. Chill well. Makes about four servings.