The Best Soup You’ve Ever Eaten

We discovered Mulligatawny Soup in the late 1970s when we worked for CF Braun & Co in Alhambra, California. They had it on the menu every couple of weeks, and we always ordered it. While all the soups in the CFB cafeteria were delicious, this one was especially satisfying. Rich and hearty, it tasted different than any other I’d ever tasted, and I couldn’t figure out what ingredients made it so unusual.

I finally found a recipe and tried it. This version was close, but I had to tweak it a bit to get it closer to the flavor I remembered

Whenever I have a turkey or chicken carcass, I cook it down to make stock for this soup, and I often have some in the freezer for a quick fall meal.

In my book, Ghost Writer, Nan cooks Thanksgiving dinner, and Helen teaches her how to make this soup from the leftovers.

The ghost, Max, waxes poetic about his memories of eating it. So I hope you’ll enjoy making and eating it as much as we have over the years. The recipe can be multiplied. Here it is:

Mulligatawny Soup

In a deep kettle, sauté:

1 medium onion

¼ cup butter

Add:

1 medium carrot, diced

1 stalk celery

1 green pepper, seeded and diced

1 medium apple, pared, cored and sliced (I like Granny Smiths best)

1 cup cut-up cooked chicken or turkey

Stir in gradually:

1/3 cup flour

1 tsp. curry powder

1/8 tsp. mace

2 whole cloves

1 sprig parsley, minced

2 cups turkey or chicken stock

1 cup cooked tomatoes

Salt and pepper to taste

Simmer covered ½ hour. Serve hot.

Serves 6

Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow

 

I've rarely mentioned it... Actually, for many years, it was a joke and a little bit embarrassing.

In school, I was "the smart one." I was a life member of the National Honor Society, won a couple of scholarships, concentrated hard on the academics, and made outstanding grades. I designed the emblem for our high school’s senior sweater and had my picture in the paper often during my senior year.

So how did I also win the Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow contest?

My friend, Marie Mazetta, was a homemaking student. When they announced that there’d be a test for the Betty Crocker Homemaker of the Year, I had no intention of entering. But Marie wanted to, and she didn't want to go alone. So I finally agreed to go with her.

It was a multiple-choice test, and I really thought I'd blown off the answers. I was the first one finished, and I left. The part I hadn't counted on was that I'd been doing most of the household tasks for years: cleaning, shopping, budgeting, etc.

No one was more shocked than I when my name was announced as the winner!

I received a cute little gold pin and a certificate. And I thought it was a hoot!

However, about fifteen years ago, I decided to wear the pin to work to show it to someone, and I lost it. I hadn't realized how much that silly thing meant to me until it was gone. After searching for several years, and finding several that looked the same but were a larger size, I finally located another on eBay and purchased it.

The 'new' one is now back in the shadow box where I'd kept my original one, and my world seems complete once more.

Silly, the things that seem to define you. I never recognized that this award, another in the long string of awards I've won over the years, actually mattered to me. Perhaps, it was because it was so unexpected. Perhaps it was because it demonstrated a different skill set than I was normally recognized for. But, for whatever reason, that silly little pin became more precious as the years went by.

I ran across the ‘wrong’ ones one day shortly before Christmas a couple of years ago and realized that I knew women who embodied the values measured by the competition: “family relationships, spiritual and moral values, child development and care, health and safety, utilization and conservation, money management, recreation and use of leisure time, home care and beautification, community participation, and continuing education” (Copied from the Betty Crocker website http://www.bettycrocker.com/community/forums/27/32621.) My sister-in-love and two nieces had truly created homes where friends and family gather, where children are welcome, where nurturing and love can be found.

So I decided that each of them should have one of those little pins to remind them of what a special gift ‘homemaking’ is and how much I loved and admired them for doing so for their families.

Isn’t it strange how things we thought were unimportant take on significance as we get older? Is there anything in your life experience that has become more important in later years?