Vegetable soup day

Ingredient roll call

I don’t always eat Dinty Moore and Chef Boyardee, sometimes I cook. Today was one of those days. It was chilly and blustery. A perfect day for soup.

My mom has given me a handful of recipes, and this one stands out from my youth. We called it vegetable soup, even though there’s beef in there.

As a kid, the house would be filled with the smell and I’d linger ’round the kitchen to get a taste. Thing is, it wasn’t until after the slow simmerin’ process that everything would blend together. It was a tease, perhaps, but for great things to follow.

When we finally sat down to eat (usually on bamboo trays in the ‘family room’), we’d take crackers and slather them with (real) butter and put spoonfuls of the thick soup on ’em.

Bread now accompanies the soup, which lasts for a while in the fridge, and gets better each day. I don’t put the cabbage in, it doesn’t sit well. Other than that, I tend to follow the steps and it seldom fails, unless I get too generous with the pepper.

My Mom’s Vegetable Soup from her Mom