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Page two, Winter Soups

Vichyssoise was another soup that Mom became interested in when she no longer had to concentrate on food that appealed to growing children. The cold soup made with potatoes and leeks may have been featured in a magazine or the Des Moines Register, and she liked the flavor combination.

A stickler for grammar and pronunciation, Mom asked me how to pronounce vichyssoise, since I was a first-year student in college French. She didn’t speak a language other than English but was interested, so I gave her a small book of French words that are frequently used in our language. The little blue book sat by her reading chair for years.

Mom served her version of vichyssoise cold a few times, but it quickly evolved to the more traditional potato soup served hot. Leeks weren’t easy to find, probably nonexistent in the grocery stores of our community at that time, so she substituted onions.

My sons devoured plenty of potato soup when they were growing up, and it makes an easy meal with salad and bread. I use milk instead of cream but add a generous cup of shredded cheddar cheese at the end, letting it melt and blend into the soup.

Mom didn’t agree that cheese tasted better than whipping cream. A true devotee of butter and thick cream, as she was, couldn’t be swayed in her opinion. Both results produce a comforting, hard to resist soup.

Potato Soup
1 14-ounce can chicken broth
3 russet potatoes, peeled and diced
1 medium onion, diced
½ cup whipping cream

Cook potatoes and onion in broth until vegetables are done and mixture has thickened. Stir in cream, adding more if soup is thick, without letting it boil.

Mom’s Notes: The thick cream does wonders for flavor, though half and half would do. For clam chowder, add a can of minced clams before serving. Chopped, cooked bacon is good as garnish with each bowl.

When I started cooking, I continued this interest in food from France. Julia Childs, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, became my favorite cookbook. Mom always liked to know what I was doing in the kitchen, but when I told her about making Soupe au Pistou, a full-flavored vegetable soup from Provence, she couldn’t see the appeal.

"I don’t understand how they can make vegetable soup without meat,” she said. I explained that the soup’s vegetables, garlic, herbs, olive oil and Parmesan cheese blend to a rich flavor as succulent as any meat. I never made the soup for her, so she remained unconvinced.

Later I succeeded in pleasing her with a French-influenced soup from a recipe I found in a magazine. The ingredients include chicken broth and butter, a taste more to her liking. She often asked me to make this soup when my brothers and I came to visit and filled the family home to overflowing.

Huge meals were required to feed so many people, and the focus was strongly on food. We talked about what was planned for the next meal while eating the present one. Mom, my sister-in- law, Judy and I seemed to spend most of the day in the kitchen. When we weren’t cleaning up from one meal, we were getting ready for the next one.

Bretonne Bean soup fed us well at these family gatherings and gained the distinction of being included in my mother’s cookbook.

      Bretonne Bean Soup
      1 cup dried navy beans, presoaked
      3 tablespoons butter
      2 cups chopped celery
      1 cup chopped onions
      1 clove minced garlic 
      3 14-ounce cans chicken broth
      2 cups water
      ¼ cup tomato paste
      ¼ cup butter

Wash the beans and drain. Cook the onion, celery and garlic in three tablespoons of butter until lightly browned. Add the broth, water and beans.

Cover pot and simmer for 1 ½ hours or until beans are soft. Cool and strain through a food mill. Return to pot, blend in tomato paste. When soup is heated thoroughly, stir in ¼ cup butter. Serves 6 to 8.

Combining compatible ingredients in a pot and cooking them into simple, filling food has been going on for as long as records of cooking exist. A truly versatile food, soup nourishes the young and healthy, people who want to lose weight but still eat nutritiously and those who don’t feel well and have lost their appetites.

I fixed soup for each of my parents in their last days, the only times I knew them to lose interest in food. Mom asked me to make Bretonne bean soup for Dad because she was worried that he wasn’t eating enough. He was too ill to leave his bedroom, so I brought a bowl of soup up to him and stayed while he began to eat.

“Tastes like there’s some sugar in this,” he said. He’d detected sweetening in the small amount of canned tomato paste the recipe calls for. He still had that unerring ability to detect flavors.

I spent my last days with Mom in early January of 1999, a brutal winter with temperatures hovering below zero during the day, even as the sun shone brilliantly. Good weather for soup, and she had not eaten much all day. I fixed the old stand-by potato, using milk and cheddar cheese, because there was no whipping cream in the house.

She only tasted a few spoonfuls from the small cup I gave her, but she didn’t seem to mind the substitution. “Mmmm … that tastes so good,” she said.

Margaret Cullison has recently retired from public education and moved to southern Oregon. Now liberated from work, she's happy to be writing again. She can be reached at Tekie@charter.net.
©2006 Margaret Cullison for SeniorWomenWeb
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