GOD SAVE THE QUEEN

Speaking of anthems, as I was in my last blog, it’s a shame we can’t use America – better known as My Country, ‘Tis of Thee (and wouldn’t you know, God is in the lyrics there too, and some folks just might object. Nuts!) The British are already using the tune – not ‘officially’ mind you, but it might as well be. 

Just as most folks do these days, I googled God Save the Queen just to see what was what. Whew! There’s a lot of info out there, more than I needed to know, including these lyrics from the second stanza:

Lord, our God, arise,

Scatter her enemies,

And make them fall.

Confound their politics,

Frustrate their knavish tricks,

On Thee our hopes we fix,

God save us all.

 I hate to sound irreverent, but that one could be the anthem of any of our Presidential hopefuls these days: “Confound their politics, frustrate their knavish tricks.” Oh, those tricky knaves! 

All of the above aside, the real focus of my essay is Queen Elizabeth II, now celebrating sixty years on the throne.  To paraphrase Kermit-the-Frog: It ain’t easy being queen.  Although she used it for the year 1992, I’m sure she’s had many another “annus horribilis”. Still she soldiers on. 

I had an uncle who, during World War II, was stationed in England, and sent me many books from there. My favorite was one about a princess who found a little dragon and could keep him only if he didn’t use his fire. Well, one day these robbers came into her room and the dragon used his fire to chase them away and then he knew he couldn’t stay, and then… well, I do digress, and you can guess the rest of the story.  But with that book and many others I got accustomed to kings and queens and princesses.  They were part of life. I was still 10 years old when Elizabeth’s coronation took place, so naturally I sent her a letter.  She was the Queen. I know my Mom sent the letter, but I’ve always wondered where it wound up. At 10 I was still sorting out a few things like why I lived near Jamaica, New York, but there was also a far-away island called Jamaica, and didn’t everyone have a President and a Queen?  Finding out about Jamaica started a life-long love of geography, but it took me a while to get the President/Queen realities straightened out in my mind. You’d guess of course that England was the first country I visited when I could travel by myself.  I am an Anglophile and a Reginaphile too. (Is there such a word? Well I am it.)

 

I found the picture above, taken this week’s visit to the Cathedral at Leicester, in The Telegraph.  The Queen looks overwhelmed by all the flowers.  Perhaps if she’d ditch the hand bag she could have dealt with another one or two posies.  And – the ubiquitous question – just what is she carrying in that purse – the weight of the world? From some of the other pictures it looked like almost everyone had a bouquet for her.  What do they do with all of them afterwards?   

I’ve always perked up and listened to any mention of the Queen and her family.  They’ve all had their ups and downs, but it looks like these current years will be anni mirabili – happy years for the Queen. She certainly looks happy when she’s out and about with the Duchess of Cambridge – better known to us as Kate. Elizabeth II – QEII - has set sail on her Diamond Jubilee tour of the country. The countdown’s starting: she’s only got about three and a half years to go to surpass Queen Victoria’s sixty-three plus years in the same job.  I’m sure she’ll make it. 

I do love all her hats. She always looks
like she just stepped out of a bandbox.

THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER - OR NOT

The Star Spangled Banner was made our national anthem just over eighty years ago in March 1931.  1931 was the year the Empire State Building was completed and the year my husband was born.  Two out of three of those have weathered well – one, the anthem, has not. 

I’ve always found it hard to sing.  It starts out in a fairly comfortable range, but then “the rockets’ red glare” takes the range sky high. Years ago everyone sang it at the start of sporting events. Today some rock group or rap singer or some sponsor’s wife does the rendition. Many flub the lines. The younger generation’s singers just have to jazz it up and add notes that were never in the score. The singing wives, who really are fine in the church choir, should never be encouraged to get up and sing alone. This is our national anthem, for pity’s sake, let’s not abuse it.

A notoriously bad version - Oh, yeah!

Hard to sing or not, it would be less painful to the ears if everyone sang as they once did. Just think of the money NASCAR or other sports organizers could save if they’d just have everyone sing it in one rousing chorus – flags waving, jets roaring by overhead.  Sounds good to me.  But then I realize that having all these stars around entices fans to get to the track or to watch the race on TV.  With a sigh I say “Oh well, the almighty dollar wins again.”

Whenever the subject comes up it’s for sure folks will agree that our anthem is hard to sing, and most will suggest we’d be better off with a rousing rendition of Irving Berlin’s God Bless America.  Don’t hold your breath kiddies!  Though it has become popular to play it at many sporting events, especially in the National Hockey League, (after all, there is no law that says a national anthem has to be played) the politically correct in this country wouldn’t have an anthem that contained the word “God”.* I don’t know how these same folks handle their greenbacks though, what with “In God We Trust” on all our currency.  Perhaps they rely totally on electronic banking.

This Land is Your Land, Woody Guthrie’s great song, might come under consideration, especially if we stuck to just the first two verses. “This land is your land, this land is my land, from California to the New York Island” – it covers the whole nation.  But in the original version, after the first few verses it begins to sound like the protest song it is. Guthrie wrote it in 1940 as a rebuttal to Berlin’s God Bless America, which he thought unrealistic.  God Bless America does get my vote though. Anthem lyrics aren’t necessarily realistic, but they should be patriotic, extolling us as we can be our very ‘finest hour’.  Realistic lyrics would have to be changed on a regular basis according to the state of the union, and would read like the front page of a major national newspaper.

There’s a lot to be said for America the Beautiful – but God is in the lyrics there too, wouldn’tcha know.  And it’s a song that’s usually played slowly and with a bit more, shall we say, reverence than our current anthem, making it a poor choice at sporting event s.  Yes, “God” is in the lyrics of The Star Spangled Banner: “and this be our motto: ‘In God is our Trust.’”  Rarely do we sing on down to that fourth stanza to note it. At the time our anthem was chosen the movement toward political correctness was not even on the horizon. I wish Congress had stuck with Hail, Columbia. Maybe they can bring that one back.

You can go on line and come up with many differing opinions on the current song and its suggested replacements – I just thought I’d add my own thoughts to the mix.

*They’re after the Pledge of Allegiance too. Read this recent article from the UPI.



AT HANCOCK SHAKER VILLAGE

                    The wise man achieves balance by reducing his needs to the level of his possessions.

                                                                                                 ... attributed to Aristotle

HAPPY BIRTHDAY VITA

The Writer’s Almanac tells me today is the birthday of writer Vita Sackville-West, born one hundred and twenty years ago at Knoll House in Kent, England. I began reading several of her works, which I enjoy tremendously, after I visited her home and gardens, Sissinghurst, also in Kent.  It was a home in which I felt very comfortable, in which I could easily picture myself living – just take away all these tatty tourists and I’ll move right in.

As to her birthplace, Knoll, I remember four things about it: the 365 rooms (not that I visited them all), the ingenious Knoll sofa, endless staircases, and the bone-chilling cold in the sunny month of May.  The tatty tourists can have that one.  Maybe if they all rustle around and do a dance they can warm up the place.

SISSINGHURST CASTLE

The Almanac also tells me she wrote: "It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?"  It must have been lovely to be able to have the leisure to see that those days didn’t slip emptily by.  I’m sure she had other things to do, places to go, people to see, but I’m also sure she had household help. I don’t. I do have a nice chunk of leisure now that I’m retired, but the household chores are still mine to do.  The laundry is tumbling away even as I write this.  Every once in a while my schedule goes haywire and I’ve got to write a list of things to do, but usually I manage a properly apportioned rota of day-to-day chores that affords me lots of time to write – and read.  Right now life is mah-velous!

Oh – yes!  Happy Birthday Vita.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF GIRL SCOUTING

March 12^th this year marks the centennial of the founding of the Girls Scouts in America.  Organized by Juliette Low on her return from meeting Lord Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, it was first called the Girl Guides of America.  What started with eighteen girls now has a membership of over two million scouts.

 

Vintage uniforms

I’ve little association with scouting these days, except for buying my Thin Mints each year, so I had to do a bit of on-line research.  My, how scouting has changed – and all for the better. Brownies, Girl Scouts and Senior Scouts  - I was a Girl Scout and a Mariner Scout – have expanded so that younger girls can join as Daisies and older girls can stay on as Ambassadors. 

I must say that I am less than pleased with the change in the Girl Scout oath.  As I recall it, it was (and you can correct me on this!) “On my honor, I will try to do my duty to God and my country, to help other people at all times, and to obey the Girl Scout laws.”  In researching to try to verify this I found numerous variation between then and now. Now they’ve got a differently worded “promise” – no more oath! - along with laws I never heard of, a slogan and a motto, “Be Prepared,” that they lifted from the Boy Scouts. I don’t remember a motto, do you?  Well, all this is beside the point because today’s scouts won’t know the difference.

Girl Scout headquarters was first in Savannah, then Washington, D.C., and then, finally, moved to New York City in 1916.  In 1956, new land for a bigger headquarters was purchased on Third Avenue, and in November 1957 the new building was dedicated – and that’s where my bit of history took place. Several troops from the area – New York, New Jersey and Connecticut – were asked to select representatives to take part in the opening ceremonies.  I was chosen from my Mariner Scout Troop.  What an honor.  My role, as I remember it, was to carry in the flame, represented by a miniature cauldron filled with smoking dry ice, for the new “hearth”. 

My first (and last!) Photo Op

We had to travel into the city for practice several times, and one afternoon we were entertained at tea at the home of Irving Berlin.  I do remember a beautiful apartment and, of course, the grand piano. The Berlins were great supporters of scouting.  Did you know that the royalties from Berlin’s God Bless America go to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts? He set up a foundation to take care of it all.

Moving right along, after the ceremonies, some of us scouts went into the new shop.  I bought two embroidered Mariner Scout patches.  On the way out of the shop we ran into and started chatting with the Governor of New York, Averill Harriman, and I gave him one on my patches.  Some handy photographer saw a photo op in that, (did they call them photo ops back then?) and set up a picture with me giving him the patch. It was my 15 minutes of fame. The picture Averill Harriman and me, and a bevy of other scouts, appeared the next day on the front page of the second section of the New York Times. Averill Harriman always made the news.  I was thrilled! One of my teachers got a copy of the picture from the Times and sent it to the governor’s office in Albany and had it signed.  I did keep a photocopy of the picture, but I long ago I did one of those swaps from Yankee magazine and traded the original picture and my Girl Scout badges and pins for a neat-o horse collar and bell.  I’ve still got that hanging in my kitchen.

We used to hand these out to folks who bought our cookies.
 They could post them on their doors to warn off other sellers! 
That's a vintage Fifties uniform.

Speaking, as I was, of those Thin Mints, cookie sales start this month. In the 50’s, when I sold them door-to-door, cookies cost 40 cents a box – now it is around $4. The cost is based on the needs of the girls and troops in the area, so I can’t really complain about the increase – what cookies could I get for 40 cents these days?  Not any! Today, very enterprising scouts set up shop outside many local Lowe’s Home Improvement stores, Walmarts, and other places where the flow of shoppers is fairly steady. Be on the lookout for them and support our local Girl Scouts, and wish them Happy Birthday too.

 

            Oscar Wilde said, "Life is never fair. ...

               And perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not."

WOMEN HAVE A HISTORY

March: Women’s History Month.  Well of course we have a history - it goes all the way back to Eve, that naughty girl!  We’ve been slightly naughty (well, some of us!) ever since.  It still amazes that me that in the majority of cultures around this world we allowed men to convince us to ditch the matrilineal line of inheritance and descent. Barring a DNA test, unless you are the spitting image of him, you might never be sure of the identity of your father, but you can usually be sure of your mother. 

Today we know about the mitochondrial Eve, who, according to Wikipedia, one of my favorite sources, is “the most recent common matrilineal ancestor from whom we are all descended”.  There are little pieces of her in all of us.  These days, I think there is a little bit of the biblical Eve in many of us too.  We’re not too content to just go along to get along. Inquiring minds want to know, and to test, and to push against what might hold us back.

Boadicea, or, if you prefer: Boudica or Boudigga, was a feisty Celtic woman from the first century.  There is a lot of the ‘it has been said’ about her, and she is a recurring favorite flavor on many of the ‘learning’ channels. It’s probably not her real name, and the spelling is beside the point, but it is what the Romans called her, and it’s a variation on the Celtic name for the Goddess of Victory. Victorious she was for a while, yet in the end she lost it all to the better-equipped Romans.  But lead and fight she did, in a time and place where it was natural for a capable woman to do so.  Can you think of any other historically prominent women from that time until the late Renaissance and Queen Elizabeth I?  Oh, maybe Eleanor of Aquitaine or Isabella D’Este, but just in passing.

In the seventh century, the Council of Nantes argued that women were “soulless beasts”, defectives (defectives! Now, I ask you!) who could be treated as such by men, their natural masters. Whew! It is only in the last century or so that women have started to reassert themselves beyond the realm of farm, hearth and home, and to shed some of the sentimentality assigned to ‘the soft sex’.  Women became teachers, secretaries, authors, even actresses - these and other professions had been open only to men.  New professions such as nursing - thank you Florence Nightingale - came into being, and they, in turn, spawned other professions: the first airline hostesses had to be registered nurses.

Women have had a harder time breaking into the sciences.  Women physicians had a tough, uphill battle just to get their education, much less practice.  Women were thought to lack the mental skills to compete in fields such as astronomy, physics, or chemistry.  Marie Curie, after years of arduous research and many important discoveries, was one of the first to disprove this idea. Just two years after the prize was established, she became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and she is one of only four people who have been awarded it twice.   Granted, the percentage of women who’ve won the prize still remains relatively low, but we’re working on it.

Over the ages, women were allowed to vote for various things at various times and under various conditions.  In some places they could vote on local issues if they were the head of the household, paid taxes, or owned property outright.  The move toward the unrestricted right to vote or hold political office, usually tied to the literacy rate of a country’s women and to the enlightenment of a country’s men, was quietly led by the Scandinavians. They were closely followed by the United Kingdom and the United States, where the women were a quite bit more vocal about the subject and had a lot more persuading to do. In 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that, among other things, introduced voting rights for women into international law.  Sadly, some countries have yet to get on the bandwagon.

Today we’ve all but finished chipping away at that invisible barrier, the ‘glass ceiling’ that denies many women the positions for which they are eminently qualified in government, banking, and industry. The pay scales may still be a bit askew, but the numbers of successful women are on the rise.  There is an increasing number of women - and men - who are home-makers and hearth-keepers just because they want to be and because they can.  The Feminine Mystique, written almost fifty years ago, uncovered the feminine mistake that made many of us believe that our identities were of value only in relation to our husbands and children.  These days we know better, and young or old, female or male, we can pursue, pretty much without criticism, whatever kind of life makes us happy.

Ladies, let’s give ourselves a round of applause and pat on the back - we really are mah-velous!

TO FELLOW CONNOISSEURS OF FINE WHINES

I hear your whine and raise you one. I do empathize! Whining is what Frank and I seem to do quite a bit of these days.  If it isn’t the weather it’s the coming elections, or the unbelievable things our kids are doing, or the dumb  things other people do. 

       What are they thinking?

              What are they thinking?

                      What are they thinking?

                             What are they thinking?

                                            ???

Not that we know all the answers – far from it! – but in our old age we do enjoy a commiserating whine.

The weather, above all, is Frank’s favorite topic for a whine.  After 75 years in the north he is not too kind when it comes to Carolinas weather. Until we stopped the daily paper he was sure to report to me the high and low and the forecast for the day up in Albany. Not that I cared, and he knew it, but it was information he delighted in sharing out loud. Now I get only the Sunday forecast. I suppose that’s a blessing.

THE INCIDENT IN THE NIGHT

I see by the Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac, a site I check every morning, that today is the birthday of John Steinbeck.  That struck a chord in my writing self.  Steinbeck, usually named when I’m asked as my favorite author, was the first author whose full set of novels I read.  I was lucky in that my parents had most of them on their shelves.

 

Strange as it may seem, the scene I remember most from all I read was one from either Cannery Row or Sweet Thursday.  They are one narrative in my mind, and they are my favorite works of his, perhaps because of the following anecdote.

There on Cannery Row, in a Depression era contest to bring some amusement to an otherwise unamusing time, a man is trying to set a record for flag-pole sitting.  Something about the whole thing was bothering this guy, so in the middle of the night he got up and went out and shouted up to the sitter. The answer was shouted down: “I’ve got a tin can up here.”  You know what the question was, of course.  And for some quirky reason this has stuck in my brain for over fifty years.

As I’ve read other novels since then I’ve often come upon an instance where a character was in, shall we say, a marathon situation.  Often I’ve thought about the incident in the night on Cannery Row. Only rarely has the author satisfied my curiosity, and rarely as well as Steinbeck. I just thought you’d like to know that.

ON WRITING AS A PERFORMANCE

February 24^th prompts me to do up an essay on writing. I’ve been at this blog, this compendium of personal essays, for well over a year now, and February 28^th marks the birthday of Michel de Montaigne, considered by many to be the father of the personal essay. Montaigne was born in 1533, during my favorite period of history, the Renaissance, in a wonderful part of France: Perigord.  Oo la la, think truffles, think wine, think foie gras. Montaigne is called the father of Modern Skepticism.  I’ll raise my glass to that – I am somewhat of a skeptic myself, and a curmudgeon to boot. The title of his huge volume of essays, “Essais”, translates literally as “Attempts”, and attempt is what writers do: attempt to teach, to entertain, and perhaps to sway the reader to a certain point of view.

The critic and writer Stephen Greenblatt said, "The first and perhaps the most important requirement for a successful writing performance — and writing is a performance, like singing an aria or dancing a jig — is to understand the nature of the occasion." I write as I hope I’d speak to you in person, and I always hope you enjoy the performance. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, though I always try to relate the essay to the occasion and the season.

We’ve a bunch of diacritical marks to go along with our written language, but they don’t always convey the exact nuance that speech would carry, nor can they convey the subtle facial or body movements that would accompany a live reading (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

In a live reading I’d never have to use dashes or parenthesis or a semicolon; I’d not have to worry about my spelling or grammar, and long sentences like these wouldn’t be so obvious or difficult to follow.  I’ve always tried to be aware of using proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation, but after a while I just like to say “Nuts to that”.  My nephew is the force behind a popular blog on films. (Check the list of blogs I follow, you’ll know which one it is. Zen Hugs db.) Sometimes his spelling, grammar and punctuation set my teeth on edge – but then I realize that I do know what he’s saying, I do understand it perfectly, and enjoy it immensely, so why carp (or crap, anagrammatically speaking) about it.  But I digress…

...back to my topic: writing.  "Composition is a discipline; it forces us to think. If you want to 'get in touch with your feelings,' fine — talk to yourself; we all do. But, if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce. The secret way to do this is to write it down and then cut out the confusing parts."   A man I really admired, William Safire, journalist, author, a man of many words, wrote that. 

Well, “get in touch with your thoughts” – it’s evident that I’ve presented three other people’s thoughts here.  But they’ve so eloquently said what I wish I could have as I noodled around with this essay.  And as I noodled around with this essay I came upon these excellent rules for essayists:

·          Remember to never split an infinitive.*

·          The passive voice should never be used.

·          Do not put statements in the negative form.

·          Verbs have to agree with their subjects.

·          Proofread carefully to see if you words out.

·          If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of…**

*and do you know why we’re not supposed to split an infinitive? Because in Latin it was only one unsplitable word. But the rules of grammar are not backed up with any punitive governmental legislation, so whatever works works.

** …a great deal of “what was I thinking?” And, just what was I thinking? I suppose I was just making an attempt to suit an essay to the occasion of Montaigne’s birthday.

This essay excepted, (and you’d think it would be just the opposite) I attempt to “cut out the confusing parts” of what I write, and not ramble too much. Maybe I’m trying too hard. Now to get back to our birthday boy Montaigne, he said “The highest of wisdom is continual cheerfulness: such a state, like the region above the moon, is always clear and serene."  Curmudgeon that I am, I do always try to be cheerful.  I think it will help me live longer.

  



at Strawbery Banke, Portsmouth, NH



We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are. 
                                                         Anaïs Nin (whose birthday is today)

SMASHING

Recently I read of Eva Gabrielsson’s wonderful evocation of a Viking curse. (You can read the article here.)  What struck me about the Viking curse, and the article describes it as ‘elaborate’, was the symbolic sacrifice of a horse: she broke a statue in two and threw it in a lake.  She was angry and she wanted to vent and get some revenge.  The whole ritual must have been extremely satisfying; cathartic to say the least.  “I felt immense relief, and so did the others who were with me,” she said, explaining, “It’s a ritual - we lack rituals for grief, for confusion, for rage.” It was easy to conjure up a vision of this angry gal smashing things: smashing things is something I’d often like to do.

Except for the Greeks among us who smash plates, we do lack rituals for grief, confusion, or rage.  I suppose, thinking on the lighter side, I can dismiss confusion, especially at my age, with an offhand mention of “Major Senior Moment”, but the grief and rage deserve something specific to be done in response.  I remember a neighbor from years ago who was so mad at him when her husband died.  Not only did he leave her, his death was, in her mind, due to his complete lack of regard for doctors’ orders after he’d had a massive heart attack.  She was mighty peeved, to put it mildly. I know she ranted and raved, but I’m sure she would have liked to haul off and smash him – or at least a plate or two. 

I'm not ready to put a curse on anyone or anything, but very often I find that I’d just love to smash a stack of plates or throw a few glasses against the wall. Oooo – how immensely satisfying that would be! Frankly, I have thought of it, but I never followed through.  Why? Because I’m the one who’d have to sweep up the mess! I guess I’ll have to get a membership in a gym with a punching bag and take my occasional frustrations out on it.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY
 I captured this rose for you in 2001 at Descanso Gardens
in Southern California

"One day I shall burst my bud of calm and blossom into hysteria." 

                       Christopher Fry in The Lady’s Not for Burning

SING A SONG OF SOUP

       

Soup Of The Evening

  

Beautiful Soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!

by Lewis Carroll, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

In the winter this old gal’s fancy heavily turns to thoughts of soup. Theoretically, soup can be any combination of vegetables, meats, or fish.  Fruit soups are on their own. Soup can be any consistency from thick and chunky gumbo or stew, to thin and smooth consommé. In between you’ll find all manner of broths and bouillons, purées and cream soups, bisques and chowders. 

Though most soups are served hot, some, like vichyssoise, gazpacho, or fruit soups, are served cold.  These last, to me, are summer soups.  In winter we’re talkin’ hot stuff.  Canned or made-from-scratch, soups can be served as a first course or as a meal.  As a meal they’re great with a sandwich, or a big chunk of crusty bread and a salad.

Soup can be as economical or as extravagant as you care to make it: it’s the end of the week, your cupboard is bare, and you’re down to a few bouillon cubes and an egg or two - voila! - egg drop soup.

Or: you’re entertaining a local politician or pundit, and you must come up with a fantastic, money-is-no-object, starter. Short of soups consisting of shark fins and gold - yes, there are such soups - you couldn’t go wrong with a chunky lobster or shrimp bisque. 

Canned soups are not to be sniffed at.  There are many ways to dress them in glory. Think of cream-of-chicken with some frozen peas or corn added in the cooking. Think of Scotch broth with a splash of vermouth. Think of any vegetable soup with a dash of soy sauce or a sprinkling of grated or shredded cheese. Cream of tomato is excellent made with water, not milk, and zipped up with a bit of dried basil and a swirl of sour cream.  You can make any soup thicker by using about a quarter less liquid than called for. Think outside of the can. Other soup ‘zippers’ include rice wine vinegar, celery seed, crumbled bacon, and, of course, croutons.

Soups made from scratch can be made up fairly quickly. Unless you’d like them to sit longer to ‘flavor-up’, or you have large chunks of raw meat in the soup, about an hour is all you’ll need.   Think of what you’d put on a dinner plate per person: a small serving of meat (soup is a meat stretcher), some vegetables, and a starch. Add a flavorful liquid and you’ve got soup. 

The basic starter for most soups: onions. Figure one medium onion for two servings.  Sauté the onions in butter, or oil if you prefer it, until they are translucent. Then add as much liquid as you’ll need - about a cup per serving. The liquid can be canned broth or bouillon, or water and bouillon cubes. The bouillon cube came to us from the French, those masters at both accelerating and slowing the many processes of cooking. Remember that the broth made from cubes will taste different than fresh or canned because it has more salt in it.

Before you consider vegetables other than onions, think of any meat or seafood you’d like in the soup.  If you’ve pieces of raw meat to go in the soup they should be added, along any spices you prefer, at this point. They should be cooked until they are tender.  Because it takes such a short time to cook, seafood will be added after the vegetables are tender and will be cooked until just done.  Pre-cooked meats are also added as the last step and cooked just until heated through.

Old Carrots? Perfect for soup!

Think of small-diced potatoes, barley, noodles, or rice, or a can of any type of beans - pinto, navy, kidney, or garbanzos, for your starch.  Time things like rice and noodles according to the package directions.

Consider the vegetables.  What have you? Carrots? Celery? An old turnip? Some cabbage? Some almost-past-it spinach? How about a can of diced tomatoes? Be sure to adjust for the liquid in the can.  Other than the tomatoes, any canned vegetables or beans you use should be well rinsed before you add them to the pot. Raw vegetables should be cut no thicker than a half an inch. This is the time to add the spices if you haven’t added any meat. Vegetables can stand on their own in a soup. They’ll cook in up to twenty minutes. A soup made only of vegetables can be puréed with an immersion blender for a thick, satisfying bowl-full. 

If you concoct a soup you love be sure to write down what you did. Think about making more and freezing some next time. So there you have it - soup of the evening (or lunch.)  Beautiful soup. 



Picture from a misty morning at my house

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world

        and a desire to enjoy the world.

       This makes it hard to plan the day.

                                                                              E. B. White