We are entering the time of year when we are all vulnerable to catching cold. The snow is starting to fall, the children are sneezing and who pushed that shopping cart last? When we lived in North Carolina it was called, “feeling puny.” And even if no one is getting sick, it is such a luxury to have a pot of soup steaming away on the stove, warding off germs and filling the house with a homey smell and the peace of mind that dinner is ready anytime we want it.
If you grew up in a Lipton-Chicken-Soup-with-Noodles household – like I did – there is a powerful sense of well-being when fragrant stock is bubbling, and the chicken is falling off the bones. Bring on that cold, damp weather. Inside we are warm and toasty and we have a good supply of Saltines.
Don’t forget about the security of freezing things ahead. Take a gray Sunday and brew up a couple of gallons of stock to help you through those nights when all hungry eyes turn to you, and you just want to collapse in a dark corner with the dog. Economy of motion and rich savory soup will save the day.
I can remember staying home sick in elementary school, lying in a cocoon of blankets on the sofa, watching re-runs of The Dick Van Dyke Show, Andy Griffith and Bewitched, coughing my head off and collecting mountains of soggy Kleenex. At lunchtime my mother would bring me a TV tray with a bowl of Lipton’s Soup and a saucer of Saltines, with an extra special glass of ginger ale with a bendy paper straw. One of my friends said that my mother would keep me home if I looked pale; she was jealous of the royal treatment. I just liked having the unlimited access to the TV, and having hot soup on a tray that miraculously never tipped over on the sofa, even though the cats would stroll over my bony blanket-covered knees, looking for handouts.
When I was home on breaks from college my friend Sheila and I would travel to the next town up the line and have a lady-like lunch at a restaurant called Soupçon. It took us a few years to get the joke. The menu consisted simply of soups – which we found an extraordinarily novel concept. We would always order the French Onion Soup, which came with a wee little baguette, a tiny ramekin of fresh butter and a minute green salad. We would quite grandly order glasses of white wine – which must have been ghastly Gallo French Colombard, knowing our sophistication in all things French then. (I cannot now say with assurance that we are any more knowledgeable, but our taste in wine has improved slightly.)
Soup is the most versatile of foods. It reminds us of the security of our childhoods, it stretches to feed unexpected company, it is easy to make and is always well received. It smells of holidays past. Make a batch of turkey soup after Thanksgiving, and in a single sniff you can relive the whole meal – without having to iron the tablecloth or to watch a moment of football. When you have someone lying on the sofa, pale and wan and coughing and wheezing, soup will warm the patient and it will be a comforting memory of the days that passed by in the wink of an eye.
https://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1639,156182-243203,00.html
https://www.food52.com/recipes/9900_delicate_chicken_soup
“Good manners: The noise you don’t make when you’re eating soup.”
-Bennett Cerf
Sam Tomlin says
Great article…very well written! Thanks