Vegetable Soup

My mother came over to the house today to make our traditional vegetable soup that’s also got ham in it.   She made it easy because she’d already gotten all the ingredients for us.  My daughter and son love her soup and eat it heartily any time we have it.   As a result of the enthusiasm my family has alway had for the soup, we typically make enough to fill the largest pot we own, and we have a very large pot—specifically to house the vegetable soup when it’s made.

My daughter was excited because today she was going to help make the soup.   The last batch, which my mother made to welcome us home from our trip to St. Thomas, was eaten more by my daughter than anyone else.   She had seven bowls one day.  I put my things down and got out the pressure cooker and the large pot as the caught me up on what they’d done so far.

I got home from a committee meeting this morning to find my daughter on a stool at the sink peeling potatoes.  My mother was chopping celery and the remainder of the ingredients were sitting on the island.   I started opening cans and pouring them into the pot.

We use the pressure cooker to speed up the soup making process.   Instead of letting things simmer for hours until ready to eat, we can have the soup done from start to finish in just over an hour.   We’ve been making this soup with various modifications and improvements since I was a child, but the process is largely the same.

But something wasn’t working well with the pressure cooker.   We’d get to the "at pressure” mark but when we’d check on the items in the pot once we’d opened it, they weren’t cooked.   We thought we’d mis-timed things, which was possible because we’d moved from the pressure cooker I grew up with (very outdated and potentially hazardous) to a newer model with more features.

We had to recook the second batch twice and by that point I was taking the top of the unit apart to see what might be going on.   That’s when I noticed the little pop-up plastic piece was missing.   It was a small hole, but that hole was letting air escape from inside the pot which caused it to never get to pressure.

This was a conundrum as it was a specific piece of plastic that fit under and into the hole.   So I got duct tape and taped over the hole.   The next batch we cooked worked exactly like it should.

And once the soup was done my mother, daughter and I had very large bowls with garlic bread for lunch.   My daughter fell asleep on the couch afterwards she was so full and happy.

The Big Boy Update:  I was out this evening running some errands.   When I got home my son, whom I hadn’t seen all day, said, “Thanks for making the soup, mom."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter said as she was going to bed tonight, “tomorrow I want to eat seven bowls of soup for breakfast."