What is there better than a hot cup of soup when you’ve got a lousy cold and sore throat? Next to plenty of rest and lots of fluids, you can’t beat it. Actually, it’s great on any cold day in January.
Can you remember, as a child, coming in from an afternoon of sledding or ice-skating, and smelling the aroma of simmering soup on the stove?
At St. Anne’s, we serve soup several (11) times during our five-week menu cycle. Our residents enjoy tasty:
- Split Pea Soup
- Chicken Noodle Soup
- Beef Noodle Soup
- Chicken Rice Soup
- Cream of Potato Soup
- Cream of Broccoli Soup
- Beef Vegetable Soup ~and~
- Tomato Soup
The experience of making soup can also be enjoyable. The writer of this post recalls standing over a hot kettle of broth next to her mother, forming and dropping dumpling/noodles into it, having used the simple recipe of 1 egg per cup of flour, a little salt and just enough water.
What is also fun about soup is that there is room for creativity and resourcefulness. If you have a little extra meat or some leftover vegetables, you can just throw them in the kettle.
Bringing out produce, processed and frozen or canned the previous fall, also adds to the enjoyment of soup-making. There is gratification in pulling out home-processed items (that you worked hard on months before) and enhancing your pot of soup with them.
Another great thing about soup is that it gets better as it ages. Can you remember that kettle of soup that sat on the back step in wintertime for several days until it was all eaten? It always got better with time, and the outdoor refrigeration system worked great.
So whether you’ve got a bit of a cold, or the January weather is just getting to you, why not put on a pot of soup…or stop over at St. Anne’s some evening. We might just be able to tell you: “Soup’s on.”
Sr. Christina M. Neumann
Now you have me in the mood for soup,I will
have to go home after work & make up a batch.
Now I just have to figure out what kind.
It was always a tradition to save a poultry carcass or ham bone in the freezer for later use in soup. My memory was of shoveling snow in winter and coming in to a cup of hot creamy tomato soup – of course there were very few varieties of canned soup at that time. Mo mother, being of Russian descent, made wonderful borscht (beet soup, with added beet greens) and kapusta (cabbage soup). Dr. Oz recently discussed the health benefits of chicken soup (from canned to homemade). Chicken contains an amino acid called cysteine, which is similar to acetylcysteine (a drug prescribed for bronchitis), which thins mucus in the lungs. Carrots contain beta-carotene, convert it to Vit. A to fight off infection. And, onions contain quercetin, an anti-oxidant, which is also a natural anti-histamine & anti-inflammatory.
Who would have guessed that something so tasty could also be so very good for you!