Did you hear it snowed this morning?

In one of the Ender's Game series, somewhere toward the end (they get more weird as they go) Ender and his crew (which includes a boy-aged version of his sociopath brother somehow) are flying toward a home planet of the human race's old nemeses, the Buggers. This is a race descended from ants who don't communicate verbally but chemically. In preparation for this method of communication, the spaceship Ender and gang are flying is equipped with sensors that read the molecules the Buggers send. Anyway, they're approaching and they get this chemical message that resembles heroin. They have to decide if their hosts are trying to convey how happy they are to see them, or if they're trying to dope the pilot of the ship out so they can take them out more easily. I don't remember how it ends.

I was thinking about this last night as I was making soup. I love soup. I love making it and I love eating it. I honed the skill on my mission. At first it was just another comfort food (give those Snickers bars a rest), but I remember at one point making a new trainee who had a viscious stomach problem a bowl of chicken vegetable and hoping and praying that she'd like it, that it would make her feel better, and maybe that it would help her feel welcome in the country and in our companionship. A tall order for a bowl of soup, yes, but I'm satisfied that it did its job.

The moral of the story is this I guess: I wish I didn't have to talk. At least not about my feelings. I wish I could communicate solely through the medium of soup. It comforts in a way that I've never really been able to. And making a good soup is a lot like composing a poem: you add spices and stir and drain, all driven by smell and taste, trying to find a unity which supercedes individual ingredients.


Last Night's Soup
1 med onion

1 small zuchinni

6 C chicken stock

1 russet potato, diced and boiled
3/4 roasted acorn squash, mashed
2 small tomatoes, diced

1 can black beans
1 can garbanzo beans (If I did this again I would cook the beans myself--canned beans inescapably taste like the can. Ick.)

Rosemary, italian seasoning, cumin (I can't leave it alone).

Noodles:
1 egg
1/3 C white flour
1/3 C wheat flour

Sautee onions in a little vegetable oil. Add halved and sliced zuchinni and chicken stock. Boil for 5-ish minutes. Add drained potato, squash (I mashed my squash into a measuring cup and mixed in 1/2 C of broth before returning mixture to pot), tomato, beans, and bring to a boil.

In small bowl beat egg. Add flour until dough-y but not dry. When soup is boiling, drop spoonfuls of dough into soup, continue boiling until the noodles are cooked.

Would be good with a little parmesean.

=It's a chilly Saturday and you're dressed like a hobo and it's ok.