Chalet Suzanne and Christmas Beef Wellington

A friend of mine just returned from a trip to Florida. In addition to playing alot of golf, she likes to tour factories. Forget the beach, swimming, and sunbathing, she prefers the factory circuit. This trip included a stop at the Chalet Suzanne resort in Lake Wales Florida. Go here for a virtual visit. It wasn't really the spectatular pink resort and its renowned restaurant that attracted her, but it was their soup canning plant, located on the resort's premises.

They can and market their famous restaurant's famous soups. The most famous is the Soup Romaine, which is called moon soup because it went to the moon as part of the Apollo 15 and 16's astronauts diet. I was the lucky recipient of a couple of gift cans of soup. On Christmas morning I utilised my much neglected can opener and used the Chalet Suzanne French Onion soup to make sauce for Beef Wellington. It was beefy and oniony, not really too much different from the stuff in the ubiquitous red and white can. The resort also boasts its own air strip just in case you want to fly in and pick up a couple of cans of soup-I highly recommend it.