About six months ago, when the kids went back to school, I started making homemade soup for dinner every Saturday night. Sometimes I bake bread too (this milk bread is perfection to me) but usually I just buy some rolls from the grocery store and make a big salad on the side. It started as a healthy way to finish up all the veggies and random stuff left over from the week’s groceries but it has become something almost sacred to me. A conscious rejection of Costco pizzas and hot dogs, this cheap and nourishing meal has become a little touchstone I look forward to at the end of each week. Sometimes a bitter ale or glass of vino make it complete. We have small kids so our Saturdays are full of their activities. If I can, I usually try to avoid social interaction with anyone other than the Hamilton cast and my husband after all that running around.
Where I live in WI there is access to affordable, organic, farm fresh foods year round. My cousin outside of town will drop off grassfed beef cuts if I don’t have anything left in the freezer. There is an organic dairy about fifteen minutes away that has the most delicious salted caramel ice cream on earth. There are about 20 CSAs I could sign up for every summer. My access to this kind of food is indeed an unbelievable privilege. I have slowly become more aware of this and it impacts what I buy, makes me reluctant to waste anything. If it can be chopped up, if it looks a little wilty, if it is a weeknight leftover, it can most likely go into The Soup.
Sometimes I follow a recipe. Lately I’ve been doing that more. Why not make what someone else knows is good rather than trying to come up with something on my own? Some of my faves are below. Other weekends I just make a generic veggie chili, beef stew, creamy tomato. I smile when my kids roll up to the stove saying, “What is that? It smells good mom.” It is usually all gobbled up by lunchtime Sunday.
Lately I’m feeling the immense restorative power of these small rituals. Life is stressful. Persisting and Resisting take energy. Resolve.
To be honest, resolve isn’t something I’ve ever had to have. I’m white, I had a great public education, every opportunity in life. My parents taught me I had the responsibility to make the world a fairer place. And to Vote Democrat.
My husband had another childhood. He knows what it is like to go to bed hungry, to wake up hungry and to see your mom struggle with two jobs to keep the lights on. He serves in local government because he just can’t quite sleep right at night knowing kids in our community, in our state, our nation, our world are lying awake hungry for that dinner they didn’t get or that wasn’t enough to fill them up. His favorite saying is, “We can shape our world.” I hope he keeps running for office, we need more people like him in charge of our tax dollars. So The Soup is for him, too, a steaming bowl of love that will get him through another week of meetings and work and outrage.
The little things I do for our local Dems seem so much more important these days.
Marching is necessary.
Calling out Hate is necessary.
Showing up to yell at Congressmen is necessary.
Supporting our ACLU, now that it is the DOJ, is necessary.
Helping people get voter ID is necessary.
Informing voters from our communities, in all kinds of ways, that electing Democrats as an antidote to regressive GOP agenda is necessary.
Fighting to stop the legislation we know is coming from these guys is going to be a long drawn out fight. We can’t get burned out. We’ve got to simmer together, to throw in something spicy every once in awhile, load up on veggies and keep those proteins lean. We’ve got to remember the Soup de la Resistance will taste even better in that tomorrow, the someday, we’re all working to create.
Sicilian Chicken Soup
Hearty Chicken Stew with Butternut Squash
Slow Cooker Tomato Basil Parmesan
Barefoot Contessa’s Winter Minestrone (off the hook, it calls for mixing in Pesto and I could eat like 10 bowls)
Anthony Bourdain’s Goulash (my all-time fave from my all-time fave — from his newest cookbook)