Page 10 - Caroline Wright Cookbook

PAGE 8
Introduction

I make soup because it is a part

of me. I make soup because I see

it differently than other people.

When people brought me soup when I was sick for a professional food writer and cook, espe-
— that magical time when the cooler out front cially one who isn’t cooked for that often, which
of my house filled three times a day for months in itself was a comfort: to find that brain surgery
in a seemingly endless flow — I was a broken had left my passions intact.) Sometimes a note
person. I had just experienced brain surgery in a accompanying the jar would give me a hint of
town where I had moved only recently, shuffling its backstory, other times I would create it all on
around my house where I spent my days trying my own. I would imagine the cook making it as
to figure out how to hold my children as close as a weeknight meal for their family and scooping
possible without my stapled skull scaring them. out a jar for me, a stranger, and become over-
They were days in which I reserved as much time whelmed with the generosity and love in that
and energy that I could to build LEGO with my humble act. It was as if the soup kept me
oldest son and brace myself for the purity of his company; it spoke volumes to me in every bowl.
questions as we worked. This is to say that I was The soup sparked my imagination first, which
a woman who lived mostly inside my head, ex- quickly lit what can only be described as my life
amining my body like the strange science project force as my family and dear friends will tell you:
it had suddenly been reduced to, and was in a my creativity. I loved it so much that I not only
process of a metamorphosis. Soup, as it arrived wanted to keep swallowing it forever, but I also
on my porch like the divine gift it was, was almost wanted to share it in all the ways that I knew how.
exclusively what I ate at the time and was the As if I was the one making soup to feed myself
nourishment for this person I was becoming. and my family and scooping out a jar or two for a
stranger who needed it.
The practice of reheating soup for a meal, slosh-
ing it into a bowl, was so consistent it became When I was well enough to cook again, I made
casual. My mind would wander as I filled my soup. Tons of it. For strangers who became
spoon, noticing the ingredients and how they friends. Then, together, we wrote a book called
were cut, the flavors, and what I could surmise to Soup Club; the strangers who found it made soup
be a recipe origin. (This is something of a hobby of their own that they, in turn, wanted to share.

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