Family Soup

My mother and I made our traditional family vegetable soup today.   I’ve written about this soup before, mentioning that it’s vegetable soup only so far as it has vegetables in it.   The name implies it is only a vegetable soup, which isn’t true as we like to put as much ham into it as we can cram.

We make it every year about this time, using the bone from the holiday ham and surrounding ham remnants as part of the recipe.   We use a pressure cooker to make the overall soup making time shortened significantly.    It used to take a lot longer with an older, less-efficient pressure cooker and different ingredients that took more time to prepare.    These days it’s a fairly quick process, but the end product still tastes the same as I remember from my childhood.

My children typically want to have nothing to do with the soup until they try it, remember it, and then ask for two more bowls.   That was the situation tonight.     We have a lot left over, which is the plan from the start.   It will be a popular item until it’s gone in a few days.

The Big Boy Update:  My son said tonight after finishing his second bowl of soup, “I reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee<deep breath>eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally like this soup.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My son is in a Lego after school enrichment class.   We didn’t sign my daughter up for it because of her vision impairment and also because she hasn’t shown the Lego obsession my son has in the past.   But she wanted to do some Legos today and after school I went and we selected, “girl Legos” (something she didn’t realize they had).   I explained there were some sets she might like.   We found an Elsa and Anna Frozen set and a Little Mermaid set.   She and dad worked on one while I was out and had finished it when I got home.   She was very proud of it and spent lots of time playing with it with her brother when he got home.