Barley Soup for the Soul

While Mom was nursing her appetite back to health after she lost all desire to eat, she found a recipe for barley soup and we made it together. Making that soup was one of the most stressful things we ever did together as she loosely followed the recipe and interjected what she would do instead. She had to rest midway through the entire soup production and I was left with the remnants of the soup in progress.

Partially following the recipe's directions, complicated by Mom's vague instructions left me in the kitchen not knowing which way to turn. I have no natural instincts when it comes to anything involving cooking. I either follow a recipe to the letter or else I have two "recipes" of Mom's where all I have is her passed down knowledge. I had no idea what to do when those two worlds collided.

I panicked, crossed my fingers and toes, then hoped for the best. It was one of the tastiest soups I've ever made.

In the afterglow of this traumatic soup making ordeal, I realized what a gift it had been to be on the receiving end of Mom's tips. She never professed to love cooking but she made very tasty meals. I didn't appreciate those whimsical comments of "well, I'd do this instead" until we were savoring our tasty soup together afterwards.

Mom's appetite came and went throughout the time that followed. She seemed to enjoy food a little more if it was something she specifically asked for &/or shared her meal with company. So on a following visit with Mom, I tried to replicate the magical barley soup.

I had made the mistake of telling Mom how stressful the initial batch of soup making had been for me. So the next time she left me on my own to tackle the second batch of barley soup. We may have started the task together but before long she left me to my own devices and I did my level best to recreate "our" soup from before.

Needless to say, it was not the same. I don't even think I tasted it. I left one small batch in the fridge for Mom and froze the rest.

She never did comment (to me) one way or the other about my soup but it was still in the freezer when she died. So I packed it up and took it home with me.

One of Mom's superpowers was taking something that didn't taste quite right and knowing exactly what to do to better it. Adding an onion, tomato juice, soup base &/or frying something up would often save a meal others may have thrown away.

I am presently in the process of trying to eat our way through our groceries and Mom's soup kept rising to the surface of something I felt ready to take on.

I tackled it this morning. I added some brown gravy, onion and chopped up some celery (Mom would have NEVER added celery, but I did) and hoped for the best.

I wasn't hungry, but I sampled it anyway. The celery was a little crunchy (Mom may have been right about the celery) and it could be a tad on the salty side. But? It tastes okay. It may even be classified as "good".

I thought of Mom and me in her kitchen making that initial batch of soup. She didn't have the stamina to do the job on her own but having me be her right hand cook was a good compromise. The result was a soup done according to her specifications, I learned a thing or two but most of all, it is the memory I hold onto. Even though I felt a blog titled "56 Years of Mother/Daughter Bonding Undone With One Batch of Soup" coming on at the time, it is still a little nugget from last year I have retained.

This morning, I stirred up Mom's soup and thought of that day. I remembered the relief in watching her eating and enjoying a rather hearty meal together.

Mom would comment, "Some live to eat; I eat to live". Food was never a source of entertainment or comfort to Mom. She ate what she needed to eat, enjoyed her cookies, an occasional O'Henry chocolate bar, Drumsticks and my sister's chocolate fudge at Christmas. But for the most part, food was not a big ticket item on Mom's things-that-brought-her-joy list. She ate to survive.

She did her level best to eat enough to survive but her illness took over and her relationship with food never quite recovered.

I sit here in my kitchen, taking in the aroma of Mom's barley soup and I'm grateful. Grateful for Mom's Barley Soup for the Soul.