Everywhere across the world when dusk begins to cast shadows, the unprepared parents and caretakers all begin to ask: What’s for supper?”
Personally, I detest the word ‘supper’; it conjures a less thought-out meal, and for some reason brings to mind smacking lips and overly-hungry families, hunched over the groaning board. But there it is, the question that is always asked, and only answered once at a time, to be asked eternally again until the food is all grown, eaten, and gone.
For me, the way I best like to answer that question is with a pot of soup, particularly if it’s cooked on the stove on a chilly Fall evening. If it is Autumn, we will still hopefully have remainders of the summer garden that I need to deal with because I do not can, and the sooner, the better.
Tomatoes, small potatoes, peppers, dried rosemary, fresh chives, lemon thyme, half a zucchini, and purchased items needing immediate attention like carrots, onions and beautiful blocks of Twin Oaks tofu (locally made delicacy) all share amazing potential when married together in a pressure cooker full of salted boiling water.
Vegetable soup is the epitome of the saying “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” and I think of this once more, as I recall that there are a few shiitakes from our own inoculated logs that can be added, more for their woodsy character than their flavor. I love soups of all kinds: French Onion, tomato, potato, Lemon tofu…but vegetable soup sends a message of care and warmth and ultimate nourishment.
When prepared in a pressure cooker, the individual vegetables and herbs, and mushrooms retain their vibrant colors, texture, and vitamins (or so I am told). The time from processing to partaking is particularly rapid…if I was more proficient in chopping vegetables and refrigerator rummaging, it would be a virtual fast food. Fast, minus of course, the perusal of catalogs, seed sowing, watering, observing, weeding, mulching, and harvesting at least half of the ingredients.
Vegetable soup is personal on this level. Within view of the garden where most of the meal came from, we sit down to a deceptively humble meal. Candles, fresh-baked hunks of bread, and the warmth of summer are contained in each spoonful.