It’s impossible to not celebrate the arrival of soup season. Once it’s necessary to turn the light on when I make coffee in the morning, once the shorts and short sleeves are put back in the bottom bureau drawers, once I’ve retired the window fan for the season and my feet once again feel so at home in my slippers that I rarely remove them, I get the sharp knives out and start chopping.
All of my soups are basically the same in terms of ingredients. I sauté chopped onion, then I add meat of some sort. I normally use pepper bacon, three or four slices, but lately I’ve been veering toward sausage for some reason. Then I put in soaked lentils, or navy or kidney beans, or black-eyed peas (the quietly surprising child in the bean family, I think), then broth or water, enough to submerge everything. Then I chop some more, potatoes and carrots and sometimes celery, although I’ve wondered about the purpose of celery lately. I add a large can of tomatoes and move the pot to the back burner, where it sits simmering for hours. I put spices in at the end. My soups are often accidental: Last winter, I meant to add chili powder to the French lentils, but I mistakenly grabbed the jar of cinnamon. It was very good, I thought.
I don’t follow recipes, but the secret to the best pots of soup I’ve ever made is the chopping. And it’s not the method of chopping – it’s the mood I’m in when I do it. There is something so peaceful about diligently chopping onions and potatoes, slicing them into long rows, and then cubes that stack up gently along one side of the cutting board. I only add vegetables to my soup pot by hand. I don’t do that business of tilting the cutting board so that it’s vertical and then scraping downward with the flat slide of the knife as if I were emptying a dump truck. If I’m rushed during the chopping, if I’m impatient about it, and if – especially if – I’m focused on something – anything, or anyone – unpleasant, I guarantee you that whatever ingredients I’m using that day will not soften sufficiently, regardless of how long the pot simmers.
I am not particularly religious, or spiritual even, but I do listen to the food. And a couple of weeks ago the season’s first batch of soup – split pea and sausage – spoke to me quite directly. I pulled a muscle in my lower back not by swinging upside down from a chandelier, or trying out anything too naughty to mention here, but by standing in front of the open refrigerator, pot in hand, and bending over to put the soup on the bottom shelf because there wasn’t room on top. The instant my hands let go of the pot and I began the lean back that precedes the return to standing up straight, something went wrong near the base of my spine. It felt like bark, still fresh and green in places, being ripped roughly from its branch.
I hobbled around for a few days and took lots of aspirin, but it scared me in the way most wake-up calls do if you’re paying attention. I have to stop spending so much time sitting at my computer, and on the couch and in bed. I’ve been walking more, and during the day I make a point of stretching in the living room or the kitchen, rooms where the computer cannot see me. But I need to get back on a bike, because I think it’s where my body and me belong.
All of my soups are basically the same in terms of ingredients. I sauté chopped onion, then I add meat of some sort. I normally use pepper bacon, three or four slices, but lately I’ve been veering toward sausage for some reason. Then I put in soaked lentils, or navy or kidney beans, or black-eyed peas (the quietly surprising child in the bean family, I think), then broth or water, enough to submerge everything. Then I chop some more, potatoes and carrots and sometimes celery, although I’ve wondered about the purpose of celery lately. I add a large can of tomatoes and move the pot to the back burner, where it sits simmering for hours. I put spices in at the end. My soups are often accidental: Last winter, I meant to add chili powder to the French lentils, but I mistakenly grabbed the jar of cinnamon. It was very good, I thought.
I don’t follow recipes, but the secret to the best pots of soup I’ve ever made is the chopping. And it’s not the method of chopping – it’s the mood I’m in when I do it. There is something so peaceful about diligently chopping onions and potatoes, slicing them into long rows, and then cubes that stack up gently along one side of the cutting board. I only add vegetables to my soup pot by hand. I don’t do that business of tilting the cutting board so that it’s vertical and then scraping downward with the flat slide of the knife as if I were emptying a dump truck. If I’m rushed during the chopping, if I’m impatient about it, and if – especially if – I’m focused on something – anything, or anyone – unpleasant, I guarantee you that whatever ingredients I’m using that day will not soften sufficiently, regardless of how long the pot simmers.
I am not particularly religious, or spiritual even, but I do listen to the food. And a couple of weeks ago the season’s first batch of soup – split pea and sausage – spoke to me quite directly. I pulled a muscle in my lower back not by swinging upside down from a chandelier, or trying out anything too naughty to mention here, but by standing in front of the open refrigerator, pot in hand, and bending over to put the soup on the bottom shelf because there wasn’t room on top. The instant my hands let go of the pot and I began the lean back that precedes the return to standing up straight, something went wrong near the base of my spine. It felt like bark, still fresh and green in places, being ripped roughly from its branch.
I hobbled around for a few days and took lots of aspirin, but it scared me in the way most wake-up calls do if you’re paying attention. I have to stop spending so much time sitting at my computer, and on the couch and in bed. I’ve been walking more, and during the day I make a point of stretching in the living room or the kitchen, rooms where the computer cannot see me. But I need to get back on a bike, because I think it’s where my body and me belong.
