So Many Dishes

No food evokes more memories or stories for me than soup. My family only made a few soups, but they were memorable.

I remember my dad as the family soup maker, and Saturday as the most likely day we’d have soup. There were two: alphabet soup and Senate navy bean soup. Alphabet soup meat a hearty homemade beef stock, and I loved eating the carrots when my dad would strain out the beef bones and veggies. Bean soup was primarily a winter meal; I can’t remember him making it during warm weather.

The other soup I associate with my childhood is Pennsylvania Dutch chicken pot pie. And yes, it’s a soup. My mother probably made it, but I associate it with my grandmother. She would cook a stewing hen, strip off the meat to add to broth, and put in onion and chunks of carrots and potatoes. The crowning touch would be the homemade egg noodles. I remember helping her roll out the dough, which she would cut into thick squares to add to the soup, along with a bit of chopped parsley. All I wanted in my bowl was broth and noodles; the rest was just along for the ride.

As for soup stories, nothing beats this one: for the first four months that Ken and I were married, we lived in my maternal grandparents’ home in Pennsylvania while they wintered in St. Petersburg, Florida. It was only about a mile from my parents’ home. One cold January day, there was a major snow storm-a blizzard by Pennsylvania standards. There was way too much snow to drive anywhere. I’d talked to my mom on the phone, and she said that they had made bean soup for the cold evening. Ken and I looked at each other and decided that we’d brave the cold and snow for some hot bean soup. So we bundled up and walked, right down the middle of what was normally a busy route. We surprised my parents when we knocked on the door! The soup was delicious, and definitely worth the cold trek. My dad filled a freezer container with hot soup for us to take home. We traded it back and forth during our return, enjoying the bit of warmth it provided, although it made it a bit harder to maintain balance going down a slippery hill.

I make some good soups, including last evening’s soup au pistou, but none of them stimulate such strong memories. But there are other dishes and other memories…