Soup’s On!

Sometime before the immigrants hopped aboard a ferry to New York, while they still milled about Ellis Island, they must have seen the words…
“Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”  Such is how it is with soup.

I have always been a somewhat picky eater.  As I got older, and made my own dietary decisions, the food I ate became better though more restricting to those around me.  Yep…I am devout vegetarian, though better defined as a vegan with lose reins. And recently I added a couple of raw cookbooks to my shelf. But no matter what, I can always come home to soup.

When I was young, and it was just my mom and I living in a shared studio apartment, I would watch as she marveled at the ease of American cooking.  Having spent all her life in Denmark, where the refrigerators are the size of microwaves and each meal is purchased and prepared fresh that day, the idea of macaroni and cheese or hostess pies was an absolute wonder.  Not only that, it made her little girl smile to gulp down a cherry-pink glass of Strawberry Quik.  So, though my diet growing up may have had its share of Twinkie-like preservatives, it was prepared with love, as well as my Danish mother’s shelf-life awe.

Then, when I was older, we moved to the hillsides, and began, on a small scale, to raise sheep.  Caring for those sweet kids took me to that maternal place, and despite my family’s hobby farm habits, I became a vegetarian.  They had lamb chops, and I had a baked yam.  My mom, bless her heart, never forced the Clean Plate Club membership with little Puddles (the lamb) sitting, stewed, on our dinner table.  But I did have to cook for myself.  By age fifteen, I had learned a few simple skills.

Which brings me back to soup.  There is nothing more inviting then the smell of a soup that somehow wafts into every corner of a kitchen.  And when you are the one behind the pot, there is nothing more compassionate to create.  Somehow, you open your fridge and anything yearning for one last life will taste exceptional in a soup.  You can throw anything in.  Vegetables that may have never met in the grocery aisle somehow happily commingle in pot of soup.  And, truth be told, you may never have the exact same bowl twice.  Soup is beautifully undefined.

And soup becomes what you need.  It is welcoming. You can open cupboards and add new spices or juices or even one bay leaf, and it will listen.  If you crave hearty, a bit of brown rice.  If you need spirit, a few crushed tomatoes.  When your searching for strength, a handful of lentils.  If you need simplified, warm broth touches your soul.  Somehow when you slurp soup, you feel like someone is listening.

Today marks over a week since I have made a pot of soup.   It is as if all the veggies in my fridge are headed to America, and I am still awaiting my ferry.  I think I am hoping Lady Liberty, with a ladle in her hand, will turn a parsnip and celery stalk into the nourishing brew I am longing for and send me towards my Promised Land.

And I wait on my fractured island.   My huddled chard, my wretched carrots, my homeless fingerling potatoes…all brought together in a warm and seasoned melting pot.  And the lamp is the glow of my gas burner, gently simmering my soul. Oh…can I get a glass of Strawberry Quik with that?