Ever since I was a little kid, I have associated soup with being sick. I remember having Campbell's Chicken Dumpling soup, those golden globs of goodness swimming in their pool of healing broth. Or slurping up Chicken and Noodle soup, the tiny specks of carrot and celery were hardly worth counting as vegetables.
We moved to Europe when I was seven, and my aunt Silvana once took us to a dark restaurant in Milan late at night, where I was entranced by their chicken soup with stars. The white porcelain bowl was so inviting, as I dipped and redipped the silver spoon in the flickering candlelight.
I love a good French onion soup - gruyere cheese caramelizing on the sides of an ovenproof crock, crusty bread now mushy with dark brown ambrosia, the contrast of salt and thyme to the sweetness of onions. I confess I tend to only eat it in restaurants, as there’s a lot of clean-up.
Lentil soup is comfort food. The Saturn Cafe used to have the best lentil soup with vegetarian chili and brown rice, served with a sprouted, whole wheat bread smothered in butter. It was a rainy winter during my sophomore year at UCSC, and I spent many an afternoon curled up in one of their booths, with my book and brown bowl of comfort.
Butternut squash has taken my fancy lately, in its homogenized box from Trader Joe's, the orange liquid pouring out into the saucepan in serious gulps. I'll add black pepper and sage, often a dash of nutmeg, a trick I learned from my daughter’s spouse, Morgan. It’s the perfect mug soup, warming hands and belly.
I've never been fond of clam chowder, either red or white. They smell too fishy. I am also turned off by beef tongue and oxtail, from the days of going to the butcher with my Mom when we lived in Luxembourg, the slabs of organs neatly lined up in the steel chill.
Mom used to make green soup. She would throw pretty much whatever was in the fridge into the Cuisineart - not quite sure what, could be lettuce, could be parsley - along with some chicken or beef bullion, garnished with a swirl of ubiquitous Parmesan cheese. We would sit at the white Formica kitchen table in Bethesda when I was in High School, watching the cardinals on the feeders outside the window.
Miso soup is a perennial favorite, but I stopped going to Mobo sushi because theirs tasted like dishwater the last few years. When I went out to the Nevada desert in my twenties to protest the atomic testing site at Mercury, I learned the benefits of miso and of studies in Japan of healing rates for those who drank miso after surviving Hiroshima or Nagasaki. I love chasing after the little white tofu cubes with my wooden chopsticks, the way the salty green seaweed clings to the side of the plastic red and black lacquer bowl, which always has a satisfying clink against my teeth.
Now I associate soup both with healing and enjoying staying healthy. Ever since COVID, we've been making bone broth from the rotisserie chickens from Costco, slow-cooking in the Crock-Pot for a good 24 hours, adding apple cider vinegar to leach the goodness from the marrow. Then skimming out the fat and filtering out the bones, looking for the wishbone, of course. Last, adding potatoes, green onions, carrots, ginger, turmeric, paprika, and a full head of chopped garlic (for those medicinal benefits) and cooking until all is tender. This I will freeze in Chip’s favorite little Pyrex containers, for those stuffy winter nights to keep the colds away.
