It’s been a week. Guessing you can tell, since Blog Monday is on a Wednesday this week. Blog Monday actually being on a Monday will have to be an aspirational kind of thing I’ve realized. Like not eating chocolate everyday, it is mostly achievable but sometimes just not bloody possible. Just go with it please. You can do it. My youngest son has no idea if it’s today, tomorrow or yesterday after tomorrow and he seems perfectly happy nearly all the time.
There was one thing that made me unreasonably happy this week. It was a pot of soup. Yeah, it’s lame now that I read it like that. I can dress it up a bit for you, even though that’s what it was at the end of the day. I made it on Monday after coming home from the second funeral in a week. Beef, vegetable and lentil soup. A tiny bit spicy, very tasty and with plenty meaty bits. Even a marrow bone or two. Vegetarians, just focus on the veggie bits please. I made about ten liters from scratch and I imagine I looked a bit mad. There I was, dressed all in black on about as perfect and sunny and blue skied a winters’ day as Cape Town can ever gift – mixing up a giant cauldron of something hot and bubbly. I swear I got a fringe ‘fro with all the steam. And it did take a cauldron! I made it in my very favourite pot, a bright red 14.8-liter oval Le Crueset cast iron monster. Sorry, I’m name dropping now but I love that pot if it’s possible to love a pot. I’ve had it about ten years and just hauling it onto the stove makes me feel strong. I can feed an army from that pot. I have fed an army from that pot over the last ten years.
But what’s so special about a pot of soup? It was definitely yummy but not the best I’ve ever eaten. Even a cauldron of soup in a Le Crueset wouldn’t be something to write about, surely. Soup is not special. Winter in Cape Town demands soup most days. It’s ordinary. I grew up with a mother who was known to put on a pot of soup if we so much as splashed water against the windows. So I never consider soup as a treat or for a special meal. But as I shared that soup with some pretty great friends later in the evening I realized that homemade soup in a giant cauldron is a supremely ordinary thing, and that’s where the magic lies. Sharing such an ordinary thing in such trying times is what brings happiness much bigger than what can fit in a 14.8-liter cauldron, even a Le Crueset one. And that’s how soup got to be something to write about on Blog Monday on a Wednesday.
Hope the side of sentimentality with my soup doesn’t give you indigestion! And if you want to share some spectacularly ordinary soup, drop me a comment and I’ll do my best…
Have fun, my friends
Q
PS. Remember to get your Vote on today!
