Soup

 

I made Italian sausage soup yesterday.... a family favorite, easy and comforting. All day, as I added ingredients, I was beset by nagging wrongness. For the past several years, whenever any of us made a big dish meal, the kind of thing that graced the table back when we were dairy farming, we planned on enough for Mom and Dad.

Everyone has always cooked in our family, both sides. Grandma Montgomery was famous for her spaghetti sauce, enough to feed all of her six offspring and their extensive families. Fresh cut French Fries ditto. So many wonderful meals were eaten in her small Gloversville kitchen, kids milling around underfoot, waiting impatiently for the first fries out of the fryer, or kibitzing in the adult conversations

Grandma Lachmayer combined the best of home-style German and Irish cooking, along with many specialties of her own. My heart is  happy that her round oak dining room table, where generations of comforting meals were served far longer than I have been alive, sits in the center of our dining room now.

Ralph's mom spent many of her younger years in a top-notch restaurant and was creative, resourceful, and just plain good at what she did. She knew how to fill a harvest crew up to face the field, and fed us by that formula.

But yesterday I made the soup...and ached. No dish set aside to take up to Johnstown to be frozen for future use or enjoyed right away. No thoughts of making biscuits or cookies, or applesauce to send along.

There were blessings...Matt and Kegan came down and cut up enough wood that the boss won't have to touch a saw for a few weeks....they also got some hay and brought him plywood to fix the barn door. He was tickled that it only took him a few seconds to tend the stove this morning.

Mom sounded pretty good yesterday morning, although as the day progressed she got so tired.

 And she hates the food. Will only eat her yogurt that Matt took her and peanut butter sandwiches. Maybe it's the Covid, but today I am going to call the home and ask if we are allowed to bring her up a home-cooked meal. I don't know what is allowed under the disease restrictions. 

I do know that none of us were able to see Dad from the 15th of December when he was hospitalized until the end....and now we spend an incomprehensible number of hours every day on the phone with everyone from contact tracers to funeral directors, trying to put out fires, set up processes, and track down his missing possessions. 

I hope this new year treats us all better than the one we just staggered away from. Much love from Northview Farm to each and every one of you.