Souper Friend

I am making a big pot of soup on this cold, raw Georgia night.  Soup makes the house smell good and it evokes memories of all the women with whom I've discussed soup.  Goodness, everyone has a secret ingredient; everyone has a touch to make their soup "Oh, so good"; and everyone has a family soup recipe that they know I'll just love.  

Shortly after I married Bill (1974 = many moons ago) I started learning about soup.  The first recipe I "learned" was Navy Bean Soup.  Sarah Ellen Ritchie, one of the fellow members of my 6th grade teaching team at Milford Township School, was my instructor for this first soup.  Ellen grew up in Newnan, GA and she knew things I never even knew I was supposed to think about.  I would have just gotten two cans of Campbell's Bean Soup, thrown it in a pot, and called it a night.

Ellen looked over the top of her reading glasses after hearing my "canned cooking plans" late one afternoon and told me that there was no way I was going to make soup like that.  Soup, she declared, would solve all the world's problems if made correctly and served with the appropriate sides.  HUH?    Ellen was old enough to be my mother and young enough to be an buddy-- she opened a world to me that I never knew existed.  Bill and I were living in Nevada, Iowa, it was our first winter of being married, and I attended "Ellen's Navy Bean Bootcamp".  I made this soup almost every weekend that entire winter until I passed her rigorous approval.  I got an A+ in Navy Bean Soup.

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Ellen's Bean Soup

Cover one package of dry great northern beans with water.  Let them soak for at least 24 hours.  Rinse the water at least twice.  Four hours before you want to eat, start this soup.  This isn't a recipe you can throw together when you get home from work.

1.  Chop one sweet onion finely.

2.  Sauté the onion in one stick of butter (not margarine, not olive oil, not goose geese) until transparent in your cast iron Dutch oven.  (You don't have a cast iron Dutch oven?  How do you cook?  No, it has to be cast iron. Go and get yourself a cast iron Dutch oven, you will have it the rest of your life.)

3.  Add ham (Use good ham that you froze from a ham you cooked for your family.  Save all the little pieces.  Save the bone.  Save the meat.  You must trim the fat from the bone before you put the bone in the soup.  YES, do not let any pieces of fat float in your soup.  Mrs. Ritchie will come and get you.) Add as much ham as you can afford.  Cut the pieces of ham the size that your family likes.

4.  Wash the beans a final time and make sure that any bad beans have been taken out.  Cover the beans with water a final time and pour this entire mixture into your cast iron Dutch oven. Beans, onions, and butter.

5.  Cook slowly for at least four hours stirring frequently.  (Bean soup scorches very easily and the entire batch will taste bad.  Low and slow is how you go.)  Leave the lid off if you have too much liquid for your taste-- each family has their own criteria for soup-- you must determine this.

6. Remove two cups of soup and mash it with a fork.  Add it back to your soup pot.  It will thicken the soup without adding any fillers.  Discard the bone.  MAKE sure there is no fat pieces floating around!

7.   Serve with freshly ground pepper and warm cornbread.  Don't salt-- the soup will be salty enough from the ham.

This is a soup that can be made on a Sunday afternoon and served for most of the week.  It gets better with age.

I have successfully cooked this mixture in the crockpot after step #4.  You won't have to worry about it scorching-- just make sure that you look at it when you get home from work to see if you need to take the lid off to make it thicken up.  I do feel guilty if I don't use my cast iron Dutch oven!

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Ellen passed away from cancer late in the summer of 2001.  I visited her in Wisconsin durning the early summer of 2001 when she was so sick. Ellen had harassed me through most of my professional career with the mantra that a woman must be able to take care of herself and a woman must get as much education as possible.  She asked if I had finished my dissertation and at that point, I told the biggest lie of my life.

The lie:  I told her I was done with my dissertation and I would be graduating from THE University of Georgia that December with my Ed. D.  She was so happy.  The truth:  I had rewritten the D#%$ dissertation a million or so times and I was getting ready for my final defense in September 2001.  I knew that she wouldn't be alive to hear me say that I was completely done.  I did finish, I did my final defense on September 17 (Pat Blascovich's birthday) and I did graduate from UGA that December.  I knew that if I didn't finish, Ellen would come and haunt me until I did.

Ellen taught me lots about life.  If you do something, do it well.  Play bridge, serve great desserts, a warm tomato from the garden is one of the pleasures of life, use the library, buy furniture that is comfortable and make sure ALL your lamps make reading pleasurable.  If you have on sandals - make sure your toenails are painted, "Nobody's Fool" is one of the best books ever written, and always make soup  that's delicious.  If you do anything, do it well!