Soup is Good Food
June 18, 2009, by Connie Stetson
Photo by Blair Stocker
The unseasonably cool weather has Connie Stetson cookin’ up good thoughts on good food.
Up here where I live in the Sierra foothills, or the tullies, the sticks, the weeds, the outback—it is not unusual for the temps in mid-June to be tickling the soft underbelly of the low 90s. A harbinger of the dreaded dog days of summer—July, August, September, when temps reaching the high 90s to 100 are typical and loathed, and locals just sigh and say, “Well, at least we don’t live in Phoenix!”
But this June it has been downright and blissfully cool, so tonight I’m slipping into my softest, warmest jammies and I’m making a homemade soup, a split pea soup with ham to be precise. As comforting a comfort food, aside from mac and cheese, as you can get. (And by the way, if there is a heaven, I’ll expect to be able to eat all the mac and cheese I can stomach without gaining weight, so there.) I can smell it now as I type: the onions, garlic, carrots, peas, celery, the ham hocks, all bubbling together, the fragrance wafting through the house, feeling like a warm hug. If I had a cold I’d feel better already.
As I stir my soup and breathe in its goodness, I allow myself to drift back on the aroma to a time when for me, it seemed comfort was easier to come by. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich after school, a cup of hot chocolate on a rainy day, and Tollhouse cookies baking in the oven, could staunch the fiercest of my tears and could begin to mend my most shattered heart—the kitchen being the soul of it all. Probably why I have weight problem today, but that’s another blog.
And that’s the point of comfort food, right? The food your mom or grandma gave you when you were sick, or out of sorts, or blue—the food that made you feel loved and cradled and safe. Even now, when I’m feeling funky, ill, or just misunderstood, I crave popsicles, Campbell’s Tomato Soup, tea and cinnamon toast (thanks for the lovely reminder Melissa) and ginger ale. Lee said when he was a kid he was given sugar and butter white bread sandwiches. I have friends who swear by Jello, cottage cheese, mashed potatoes, homemade Jewish chicken soup (everyone knows that always does the trick), and other home food love cures.
I’ve ladled two heaping cups of that thick soothing porridge into a big mug, poured myself a glass of lovely zin, A Fish Called Wanda is on TV, the dogs are curled up on the rug, my feet are warm, and I am in a happy place. Soup is good food.
June 18th, 2009 at 7:15 am
Yup! It’s still toast for me. As I read this I made toast out of homemade bread from Taos Pueblo made in an Horno (outdoor oven made of adobe). I’m thinking another piece is in order.
June 18th, 2009 at 8:25 am
The process of making soup is an act of comfort for me, too. This week, my mother-in-law and husband prepared to move my father-in-law into an assisted living home. (He has dementia.) It has been an emotionally trying time for us all, so the first thing I thought of was to head to the kitchen to start a pot of vegetable soup to feed them.
June 18th, 2009 at 8:29 am
It’s chilly, damp and raining (again) today in Vermont, making me wish I could knock on your door and sit down for a bowl of fragrant, steaming soup–with you and the other smart, funny and earthy women I’ve come to know through fiftyisthenew.com.
June 18th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Crikey, I can smell that soup Conz! I’ll be right over. Don’t you just love that scene in Fish Called Wanda where Cleese is naked and the people come back to the flat? Its so English to avert your eyes and carry on as normal.
June 18th, 2009 at 10:47 am
There’s nothing like homemade soup. My mom’s chicken soup with matzoh balls is the bomb. So much so that her new Japanese granddaughter-in-law, who isn’t all that excited about non-Japanese food, requests it, weekly. Besides my mom’s soup, the classic comfort food for me is cream of wheat, and now burritos are on my list. Comfort doesn’t always have to be nostalgic. Connie, I can smell that soup you describe, it sounds so divine.
June 19th, 2009 at 7:12 am
A big mug of hot chocolate, cinnamon toast and my mom sitting at the kitchen table. There to greet me after a long day at elementary school; asking about my day, connecting as mother and daughter. In out busy family this was “my time” with mom. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
June 20th, 2009 at 8:45 am
Sometimes when I am cooking for my family or for friends, I think about the small gestures I am making and how (mostly) women have been doing this act for thousands and thousands of years. Nothing I am doing is original. My mother, her mother, and so on, have been doing the ritual of the hearth forever. Doesn’t that make it sacred?
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Hi soup lovers– I just got back from LA where I was tending to the heart of a friend and she requested my Split Pea Soup w/Ham. Here is my recipe for ya’ll:
Follow the directions on the split pea package– I use chicken stock instead of water–I like my carrots and celery chunked up into bite size pieces–Add a couple of hambones or hocks, saute’ onion and 4 cloves garlic, add to soup. After about an hour or so, give or take, remove hamhocks, cool, remove meat, add back to soup. Sometimes I put in a cup of red wine– I always add more love than the recipe calls for. Vegetarians–leave out ham, add extra love. ENJOY!