This evening, rainy and cold in East Hampton, I prepared homemade chicken soup for the first tine in my life. Growing up back in Holden, during the early 1950s, all I knew was Campbells Chicken Noodle Soup (sometimes Chicken with Rice) and I loved it. Our farm at 257 Shrewsbury Street was not far from the Chaffins School, which was really just down the hill, and often I walked home for lunch. That seems strange to say, because I must have been in third or fourth grade, probably eight or nine years old. Already, by then, we had patrols, with leaders assigned by the school to get kids home safely. Patrol leaders had crossed white straps to wear. But for lunch, I guess, I just took off from school, crossed Holden Street, scooted across the intersection of Holden and Shrewsbury Streets, and got on the sidewalk that was on the left-hand side going up Shrewsbury. And then, I just walked; it no more occurred to me that someone might abduct me or attack me than that a a tiger might bound out of the familiar, friendly woods. This was the land of friends and neighbors and beloved fields, stretches of woods, and even the old pig nut tree, its roots obtruding on the sidewalk just before one started climbing the Shrewsbury Street hill. Arriving home, it was almost always our housekeeper, Agnes Boyle, who served me lunch at the kitchen table, And it always was Campbells Chicken Soup, milk from Pinecroft Diary, and that hearty food of the pioneers, a pile of white Wonder Bread. In time, I started to stay at school for lunch, but I never would eat the lunch served by the school. Down in the cafeteria, in the basement of Chaffins, neighborhood ladies would gather to cook the lunch. The only one I recall I cannot name: I knew her as Grandma Anderson--the mother of Henry and Irene Anderson who lived across from us, and grandmother of Norman Anderson, a childhood playmate. I only can imagine that the Swedish ladies must have made an exceptional school lunch. But I had a kind of horror that I might be served something I could not eat; and I had grown up with a genuine terror of missing a meal. As a result, I carried around, then, and most of my life, an extra 30 pounds of so as a buffer against starvation. At any rate, I recall seeing one school lunch (called the hot lunch) and it was Welch Rarebit. It was a big, heavy cracked, liked a giant Saltine, and over it was poured a sort of sauce, which looked and smelled to me awful. What if I was served THAT? And so, I started bringing my lunch in a paper bag and buying nothing more than a little carton of milk for five cents. (The hot lunch was 25 cents.) The baggers ate together at a table in a smaller back room. Not segregated, certainly, but self-segregated. The only fellow bagger whom I recall is Errold Moody; everyone called him Cap. But there were others. We began a sort of competition as to whose bag included more exotic food, so I always was urging my mom to be creative with my bag. Well, this post is about chicken soup. When I got myself to New York City, at about 26, and married, at 31, it was to a Jewish woman. I could write a world of background about this, but not now. Trudie Weissman, from Coney Island, had been a bit of a rebel from her tradition, at one time macrobiotic, but by the time we married she was back to tradition, including the legendary Jewish chicken soup, about which has accreted legends. She cooked it--nothing at all like Campbells--with a whole chicken; fresh carrots, celery, onions, maybe turnips, certainly fresh parsley, a bay leaf, and other spices, and usually served it with rice. I loved it. My mother, a fine New England cook, never had made it. But she had made, many times, beef stew, and the principles were exactly the same: cubes of beef, carrots, celery, onions, potatoes, parsnip, and spices. Only a year or so ago, at my advanced age, I took a crack at beef stew, loved it, and now I have cooked chicken soup. The one ingredient of both beef stew and chicken soup that I insist upon is parsnip, a much-neglected vegetable, but one with a flavor I have learned to love.My soup tonight seemed a bit on the bland side, and I realized that I had gone easy on the salt (my second Jewish wife, Robin, has had her influence). I considered dousing my bowl with salt, but decided that I would focus on the flavors that were there. I have at least three big meals of chicken soup to freeze, which is one of the benefits of both beef stew and chicken soup. As I think back, now, I believe I understand why my mom made beef stew and why Trudies mom made chicken soup. When I was growing up, beef was the premium meat and my parents certainly could afford it. My mother almost always served red meat--steak, roast beef, lamb chops, and only occasionally chicken in exotic style (southern fried chicken). It was a matter of what you could afford. Good beef cost more than chicken. If we had a truly luxurious roast of beef at least two Sundays a month, it was an affirmation of prosperity. Trudie grew up in other circumstances, but the food she loved was no less delicious and special. In my two most recent books, one on Holden and one on Worcester, I talk about food as a child perceives it, as it defines our ethnic background, and as we grow up loving it. For example, for all my mothers focus on beef, she regularly cooked my fathers favorite food, galumpkies, which derived from a childhood of true scarcity, but which was Dads favorite food--and mine, too. I have yet to try to cook galumpkies.
Posted on: Sun, 07 Dec 2014 01:27:35 +0000
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