Stahlke Adoption

Soup's On

Last Sunday, we headed to Lake Michigan to let the kids swim. It was a beautiful, warm day, and although the water was too cold for me (who grew up swimming in the Gulf of Mexico), the children had a ball. I just lay on the sand and soaked up the sun, enjoying the last moments of a Chicago summer.

On Monday, the weather changed and now fall is here. The kids are wearing sweaters, and the air is crisp and dry. The house is cool enough that we can again eat soup, which I haven't served since last May.

When I was growing up, my mother made casseroles to use up leftovers. My hunch is that many American families eat casseroles, and I tried them a few times with our kids. But I guess Ukrainians don't really have the taste buds for them, especially the ones with cheese! So I've learned to save all the bits of leftovers in a specific part of our freezer, and I pull them out now and then to make soup.

A few years ago, I read James Michener's novel _Poland_, which contains a character who is starving to death. In his suffering, he dreams (or hallucinates, I can't remember) about the soup his mother made when he was a child. He longed for the large pools of fat that would float at the top of the soup.

Eastern Europeans love soup, and it was served at many of the meals we ate in Ukraine. Most importantly, sour cream is always available to add to the soup, but only after it is served into bowls at the table, and not into the soup pot. That way each person can add the sour cream according to their taste, and the leftover soup can be saved for another day if it's kept free of cream.

So . . . fall is here, and the soup's on.

posted by Stahlkes @ 2:19 PM