Soup On A Snowy Day

Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.

--Ludwig Von Beethoven

Finally, the weather gods have relented and snow has fallen on the mountain! I’ve been stoking the stove with log after log. The animals are hunkered down as close as they can get to the flames without setting themselves on fire. And I’m heading into the kitchen to take my apron from its hook on the end of the antique pie cupboard, in preparation for making soup.

It’s one of the delights of life to make soup on a snowy day. Up from storage in the coldest part of the house come the beautiful winter squash, turnips and garlic from last summer’s gardens. I lay them out on the kitchen counter – a big slab of Columbia marble that was quarried just four miles from here and that began its life at the bottom of an ancient sea. This conjunction of the ephemeral and the eternal never fails to move me. Whether I am pure of heart or not, this soup has its beginnings in love. David had labored long and lovingly over the gardens to bring this cache into being and I always handle soup ingredients like the precious substance and sustenance that they are. On this day of cold, of cloud racing up the draws ahead of an icy east wind, we will dine on the stored sunshine of summer. It doesn’t get any purer than that!