By Andrea McGovern
I love winter. I kind of hate to admit it in northern Ohio, but I really like watching the snow pile up. I like the way it makes popcorn on the trees. I even like looking at the frozen garden. I enjoy walks in the winter. I love the stillness and the way you can see the contours of the ground through the bare trees. But mostly I like staying at my house, reading, writing, cooking and hibernating like a bear in a cave.So, you may have noticed I left out some of the bad things about winter. I never mentioned ice storms, not being able to get into your driveway, frozen water lines and two-hour commutes home on dark, cold nights.
That’s probably why God made soup. This warm and welcoming concoction speaks to me of home, coziness and being well cared for.
When I was a child my mom made homemade soup pretty frequently. The other days we ate Campbell’s. I must say that as an adult I have gravitated more to the homemade variety.
Nowadays, when I make a big pot of soup, I actually have leftovers I can put in small containers and freeze. Eat your heart out, Campbell’s!
The thing I love most about soup is its forgiving nature. This is not an exact science, it’s a simmering cauldron of possibilities. Out of alphabets? Use elbows, orzo or pastina. Throw some rice in the chicken soup instead of noodles—although that was one of my mom’s staples and I didn’t like it very much; we used to put ketchup in it. If you don’t like chunky tomatoes in your soup, use puréed instead. Be creative and try different herbs. It took me years to figure out the missing flavor from mom’s vegetable beef barley soup was dill. She always bought a package of “soup vegetables” in the produce aisle. That was where the dill came from.
Some people like potatoes in their split pea soup, some don’t. Leave them out if you’re cutting carbs. It’ll still be delicious. Although I’ve included salt in most of the recipes, it’s fine to omit it and see if you still want it at the end.
The point is experiment, experiment, experiment. You can’t go wrong with soup and it’s the perfect match to an Ohio winter!
McGovern is a freelance writer
Andrea McGovern finds that cooking soup warms the heart and speaks of home, coziness and being well cared for.
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