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Omaha, Nebraska 68152

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Olive Branch Newsletter For November 2001

The Simple Life

By Gabrielle Staben

Yea! Soup Season!

I love the turning of the seasons. Fall is a season rich in colors and smells that brings back good memories. Crisp air, golden leaves, wood fires in the fireplace, baking spices, and best of all a pot of soup sitting on the back of the stove.

Soup is the original convenience food. As soon as mankind figured out how to boil water in a pot, other goodies found their way into the boiling water and voila! Soup's on! Every part of the world has it's own classic soup. Egg Drop from China, Miso from Japan, Goulash from Hungary, Borscht from Russia, and Gazpacho from Spain. Chicken soup is even said to have healing properties. With such a respectable history, it is no wonder that soup is the ultimate comfort food.

A good basic soup is almost symbolic of simple living. Soup is generally inexpensive to make because you can vary the ingredients according to whatever ingredients you have on hand. Soup can even be made up of frozen leftovers. It is wholesome because, it is easy to include a whole meal's worth of vegetables and protein in one serving. If you have a crock-pot, you can throw in the ingredients in the morning and have a hot meal ready when you get home. Nourishing, quick, and cheap. What a wonderful combination!

The other marvelous thing about soup is the variety available. Chowder, chili, chicken soup, cheese soup. There is a soup for every mood. Last year I started experimenting with different recipes. I am proud that I can now make homemade Chicken Soup, Chili, and Vegetable soup with out using a recipe! This year I want to experiment with potato soup and split pea. Today I would like to share Hazel Burgess' recipe for vegetable soup. Like all good recipes, it comes with a history....

BURGESS VEGETABLE SOUP

Grandma Winger made a sweet tomato relish with tomatoes, onions, and sweet peppers. Whenever the relish was made there was always a lot of juice left over. Because nothing was ever allowed to go to waste, this juice was canned as well. Grandma Burgess found that this made a good vegetable soup base. Years later when Hazel ran out of vegetable juice, she found that V-8 made an acceptable substitute.

• 1 Roast
• 1 can V-8 or other vegetable juice
• 4-5 beef bouillon cubes
• Salsa, hot peppers, or hot sauce to taste
• Spices-Bay leaves, Sweet Marjoram, Basil, and Oregano
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• About 3-4 medium potatoes, diced
• Vegetables-Frozen Mixed and/or fresh (the latter work the best)

(Keep in mind that the quantities of each ingredient are based upon the size of your stock pot, which ingredients you have on hand or get rid of, and on which ingredients you like the best. It would seem rather odd to have this soup taste the same way twice.)

First take the roast put it in a stock pot. Cover the meat with water and boil it until tender. Skim the fat or refrigerate it and remove the fat that way. Save the water used to boil the meat. Trim the fat off of the boiled roast and cut the roast into small pieces. Place the meat and the water used to boil it into a soup pot. (If you do not have a roast, a pound or two of cooked and drained ground meat will also work-I have used ground turkey with good success-ed.)

Add the V-8 or other vegetable juice to the soup pot. To make the soup more flavorful, add the beef bouillon cubes and something spicy like salsa, hot peppers or hot sauce. Just enough for flavor, not so much that it burns. (If you accidentally add too much, you can divide it up between two pots add more ingredients and make that much more soup. Don't worry, it freezes well!) The spices may vary, but Bay leaves, Sweet Marjoram, Basil, and Oregano are most often used.

Next, add 1 medium onion chopped, some chopped potatoes, and a big bag of frozen mixed vegetables plus any other vegetables you have on hand. Celery and carrots are always nice. The time-honored way to do this is to add ingredients until the soup is even with or slightly over the top of the pot so that it must boil over onto the stove. Grandma Winger used to say that Hazel would always try to put eight quarts into a six quart kettle this way.

Deborah likes barley in her soup. If you like barley, add about 1 cup once the soup has started to boil.

Simmer the soup until everything is soft and cooked (About 1 hour). This sort of soup makes good leftovers. The flavors will blend and mellow in the refrigerator over night. Don't be surprised if your soup seems to be more vegetable than soup, that is just how it should be!




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