Page 27 - Caroline Wright Cookbook

PAGE 25

Jeff

Santa Fe, NM

My husband, Michael, and I never serve soup to
guests. It’s not that we think one shouldn’t serve
soup at a dinner party, but in our house soup
exists in a different category of food. It’s private
and functional. Making our weekly soup lunches
is one of the quiet ways we care for each other,
a part of our household rhythm that requires no
negotiation, just an hour or so of pleasant labor
for one of us on a Sunday.

Soup has been with us since we moved into our
first apartment together, when our soup jars
would travel with us by foot, subway, and cab
rides to our jobs in Manhattan and back home to
Brooklyn. Soup was with us when the pandemic
hit, and in the midst of all the horror, we delighted
in the novel experience of eating lunch together.
Soup was with us when we decided to leave New
York and settle in New Mexico, and when we
arrived, a heavy pot and cooking utensils were
the first things we bought as we waited on our
moving truck.

Life is so different from when we first learned
how to love one another in Brooklyn. We got
married, made a new home together, and
made new friends. A couple of our new friends
recently served us soup at a dinner party, and
the old-fashioned gesture of a soup appetizer felt
like both a surprise and a reminder. Who knows
where and how soup will be with us next?

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