Soup In Winter Quotes

Greenwich is a funny word, isn't it? All green and witchy. Like soup.

I’M LOSING FAITH IN MY FAVORITE COUNTRY Throughout my life, the United States has been my favorite country, save and except for Canada, where I was born, raised, educated, and still live for six months each year. As a child growing up in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, I aggressively bought and saved baseball cards of American and National League players, spent hours watching snowy images of American baseball and football games on black and white television and longed for the day when I could travel to that great country. Every Saturday afternoon, me and the boys would pay twelve cents to go the show and watch U.S. made movies, and particularly, the Superman serial. Then I got my chance. My father, who worked for B.F. Goodrich, took my brother and me to watch the Cleveland Indians play baseball in the Mistake on the Lake in Cleveland. At last I had made it to the big time. I thought it was an amazing stadium and it was certainly not a mistake. Amazingly, the Americans thought we were Americans. I loved the United States, and everything about the country: its people, its movies, its comic books, its sports, and a great deal more. The country was alive and growing. No, exploding. It was the golden age of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The American dream was alive and well, but demanded hard work, honesty, and frugality. Everyone understood that. Even the politicians. Then everything changed. Partly because of its proximity to the United States and a shared heritage, Canadians also aspired to what was commonly referred to as the American dream. I fall neatly into that category. For as long as I can remember I wanted a better life, but because I was born with a cardboard spoon in my mouth, and wasn’t a member of the golden gene club, I knew I would have to make it the old fashioned way: work hard and save. After university graduation I spent the first half of my career working for the two largest oil companies in the world: Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell. The second half was spent with one of the smallest oil companies in the world: my own. Then I sold my company and retired into obscurity. In my case obscurity was spending summers in our cottage on Lake Rosseau in Muskoka, Ontario, and winters in our home in Port St. Lucie, Florida. My wife, Ann, and I, (and our three sons when they can find the time), have been enjoying that “obscurity” for a long time. During that long time we have been fortunate to meet and befriend a large number of Americans, many from Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation.” One was a military policeman in Tokyo in 1945. After a very successful business carer in the U.S. he’s retired and living the dream. Another American friend, also a member of the “Greatest Generation”, survived The Battle of the Bulge and lived to drink Hitler’s booze at Berchtesgaden in 1945. He too is happily retired and living the dream. Both of these individuals got to where they are by working hard, saving, and living within their means. Both also remember when their Federal Government did the same thing. One of my younger American friends recently sent me a You Tube video, featuring an impassioned speech by Marco Rubio, Republican senator from Florida. In the speech, Rubio blasts the spending habits of his Federal Government and deeply laments his country’s future. He is outraged that the U.S. Government spends three hundred billion dollars, each and every month. He is even more outraged that one hundred and twenty billion of that three hundred billion dollars is borrowed. In other words, Rubio states that for every dollar the U.S. Government spends, forty cents is borrowed. I don’t blame him for being upset. If I had run my business using that arithmetic, I would be in the soup kitchens. If individual American families had applied that arithmetic to their finances, none of them would be in a position to pay a thin dime of taxes.

While Molly and Joseph Anning suffered materially that winter, with many days of weak soup and weaker fires, Mary barely noticed how little she was eating or the chilblains on her hands and feet. She was suffering inside.

All day the storm lasted. The windows were white and the wind never stopped howling and screaming. It was pleasant in the warm house. Laura and Mary did their lessons, then Pa played the fiddle while Ma rocked and knitted, and bean soup simmered on the stove. All night the storm lasted, and all the next day. Fire-light danced out of the stove's draught, and Pa told stories and played the fiddle.

Lady Middleton piqued herself upon the elegance and extravagance of her table, and all her domestic arrangements; she loved to surprise English visitors with displays of hospitality native to her homeland, such as flavouring her soups with monkey urine and not telling anyone she had done so until the bowl had been drained.

She a nice lady ol auntie … but ol moms was somethin else, she really somethin else. Harrys eyes were closed and he was leanin back remembering how his mother always protected him from the cold wind in the winter when he was a kid, and how warm she felt when he got in the house and she hugged the cold out of his ears and cheeks and always had a bowl of hot soup waiting. … Yeah, I guess the old lady was pretty groovy too. I guess its a bitch being alone like that. Harry Goldfarb and Tyrone C. Love sat loosely in their chairs, their eyes half closed, feeling the warmth of fond memories and heroin flowing through them as they got ready for another nights work.

In winter it is impossible to be still. Even sitting by the fire, one is watching the coals, stirring the soup, fighting - always fighting - the eager frost.

At first he told them that everything was just the same, that the pink snails were still in the house where he had been born, that the dry herring still had the same taste on a piece of toast, that the waterfalls in the village still took on a perfumed smell at dusk. They were the notebook pages again, woven with the purple scribbling, in which he dedicated a special paragraph to each one. Nevertheless, and although he himself did not seem to notice it, those letters of recuperation and stimulation were slowly changing into pastoral letters of disenchantment. One winter night while the soup was boiling in the fireplace, he missed the heat of the back of his store, the buzzing of the sun on the dusty almond trees, the whistle of the train during the lethargy of siesta time, just as in Macondo he had missed the winter soup in the fireplace, the cries of the coffee vendor, and the fleeting larks of springtime. Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors, he lost his marvelous sense of unreality and he ended up recommending to all of them that they leave Macondo, that they forget everything he had taught then about the world and the human heart, that they shit on Horace, and that wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.

February Soup by Stewart Stafford The February fog, Turns all into blobs, Orange street lights, To Valentine's Night. When the wind strays, Fog's mantle is grey, Laying misty bouquets, On barren, muddied days. The daffodils of March, Can cheer up Plutarch, Adorned in Kelly green, No sign of foggy screens. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

Dear Patton: I've been feeling blue lately but I wasn't sure if it had anything to do with the amount of rain we've had over the last few weeks. What are your thoughts on that? Ms. Diller Cary, NC Dear Ms. Diller: Rain can have a profound effect on someone inclined toward melancholy. I live in Los Angeles, and, as of this writing, we've just experienced three weeks of unending late-winter storms. The sky has been a limitless bowl of sludgy, hopeless gray. The ground, soaked and muddy, emits burbly, hissing spurts with every step, which sound like a scornful parent who sees no worth, hope, or value in their offspring. The morning light through my bedroom window promises nothing but a damp, unwelcoming day of thankless busywork and futile, doomed chores. My breakfast cereal tastes like being ostracized. My morning coffee fills my stomach with dread. What's the point of even answering this question? The rain--it will not stop. Even if I say something that will help you--which I won't, because I'm such a useless piece of shit--you'll eventually die and I'll die and everyone we know will die and this book will turn to dust and the universe will run down and stop, and dead dead dead dead dead. Dead. Read Chicken Soup for the Soul, I guess. Dead. Dead dead. Patton

This final task required a specific tool and he’d chosen a bread knife. It’d been used for that too; winter soups with a

It’s different and bold. It stands out amongst a blank world of black, white, and gray. Orange is the early morning sun stretching across the sky and the color of a burning ember standing tall in the middle of a beach bonfire. It’s leaves in the fall, carrots in Nana’s vegetable soup on a cold winter day, tulips in the spring, and the ladybugs in the middle of the grassy park on a hot summer afternoon. Orange is life. It’s unexpected but beautiful.

I don't want these. They're mud and they've got no color. Or at least the color is different from what I'm used to. Take any American city, in autumn, or in winter, when the light makes the colors dance and flow, and look at it from a distant hill or from a boat in the bay or on the river, and you will see in any section of the view far better paintings than in this lentil soup that you people have to pedigree in order to love. I may be a thief, but I know color when I see it in the flash of heaven or in the Devil's opposing tricks, and I know mud. Mr. Knoedler, you needn't worry about your paintings anymore. I'm not going to steal them. I don't like them. Sincerely yours, P. Soames

After all, everyone wanted warmth. Especially a stray dog that had frozen in the bitter cold so many times that the mere sight of salted roads made him tremble in the anticipation of snow, of the coming of winter. Taxian-jun looked imposing, but only he himself knew the truth. That he was nothing but a laughable stray. A stray that had always been looking for a place that he could curl up at, a place to call 'home', but he spent fifteen years looking and he still couldn't find it. And so, his love and hate become laughably simple - If someone gave him a beating, he would hate that person. If someone gave him a bowl of soup, he would love that person. He was only so simple, after all.

Early on, Zinkoff's mother impressed upon her son the etiquette of throwing up: That is, do not throw up at random, but throw up into something, preferably a toilet or bucket. Since toilets or buckets are not always handy, Zinkoff has learned to reach for the nearest container. Thus, at one time or another he has thrown up into soup bowls, flowerpots, wastebaskets, trash bins, shopping bags, winter boots, kitchen sinks and, once, a clown's hat. But never his father's mailbag.

Unlike the classical Greeks, for whom the fruit symbolized the inescapable cycle of bitter death, with a remorseful Persephone returning to the underworld for her six months of required winter, Marjan liked to believe the old stories of Persian soothsayers, who held a different vision of the tart fruit's purpose in life. She liked to remember that above all else, above all the unfortunate connotations of death and winter, the pomegranate was, and always would be, the fruit of hope. The flower of fertility, of new things and old seasons to be cradled.

There must be some kind of internal time distortion effect in here, because when I look at myself in the little mirror above my sink, what I see is my father's face, my face turning into his. I am beginning to feel how the man looked, especially how he looked on those nights he came home so tired he couldn't even make it through dinner without nodding off, sitting there with his bowl of soup cooling in front of him, a rich pork-and-winter-melon-saturated broth that, moment by moment, was losing - or giving up - its tiny quantum of heat into the vast average temperature of the universe.

Clive convinced himself that it wouldn’t be long before we’d be able to predict all their [the moths] equations of cause and effect, then perhaps even map out each and every cell, and configure them in their entirety as robots, in terms of molecules, chemicals and electrical signals. And what fed this particular obsession was Pupal Soup. If you cut through a cocoon in mid-winter, a thick creamy liquid will spill out and nothing more. What goes into that cocoon in autumn is a caterpillar and what comes out in spring is entirely different—a moth, complete with papery wings, hair like legs and antennae. Yet this same creature spends winter as a gray-green liquid, a primordial soup. The miraculous meltdown of an animal into a case of fluid chemicals and its exquisite re-generation into a different animal, like a stupendous jigsaw, was a feat that, far from putting off, fed Clive’s obsession. He believed it made his lifetime ambition easier because, however complex it might be, it was, after all, only a jigsaw, and to Clive, that meant it was possible. For all the chemicals required to make a moth were right there in front of his eyes, in the pupal soup.

Special combo, you got it," I say into the phone. "Which one?" "The winter melon soup." Winter melon is symbolic of a wife- a special order of the soup means someone's is about to be abducted. A special order of egg fried rice? Someone's kid. Fried pot stickers? A husband. Shanghai chow mein with chopped-up noodles? Someone's doomed to have their life cut short, the promise of longevity broken.

Everyone eats his words by himself although we’re all eating together. There’s no thought for the hunger of others, you can’t hunger together. Cabbage soup was our main food, but it mainly took the meat from our bones and the sanity from our minds. The hunger angel ran around in hysterics. He lost all proportion, growing more in a single day than grass in an entire summer or snow in an entire winter.

You might want to sit in public squares and people watch for an hour in one place and a month in another. I can tell by the way you're peeling that grapefruit. You want to get lost. Somewhere where they have ordinary life you can join in. Slip right in there and have a bowl of soup in the clothes you have on now. Go hear a concert you read about stapled to a telephone pole. There are lots of places like that in the world.

John Berryman: The Song of the Tortured Girl After a little I could not have told - But no one asked me this – why I was there. I asked. The ceiling of that place was high And there were sudden noises, which I made. I must have stayed there a long time today: My cup of soup was gone when they brought me back. Often ‘Nothing worse now can come to us’ I thought, the winter the young men stayed away, My uncle died, and mother broke her crutch. And then the strange room where the brightest light Does not shine on the strange men: shines on me. I feel them stretch my youth and throw a switch. Through leafless branches the sweet wind blows Making a mild sound, softer than a moan; High in a pass once where we put our tent, Minutes I lay awake to hear my joy. - I no longer remember what they want. - Minutes I lie awake to hear my joy.

My energy and curiosity may be renewed but the larder isn’t. There is probably less food in the house than there has ever been. I trudge out to buy a few chicken pieces and a bag of winter greens to make a soup with the spices and noodles I have in the cupboard. What ends up as dinner is clear, bright and life-enhancing. It has vitality (that’s the greens), warmth (ginger, cinnamon) and it is economical and sustaining too. I suddenly feel ready for anything the New Year might throw at me.

If you ever believe anything I say, Isolde Gilbert, please believe this: You are a remarkable human being. You are the flash of a bluebird’s wing in winter that steals my breath.” He said the words gruffly, fiercely, as if he resented having to draw them from his lungs. “You are draped in bravery and grace. No pampered English miss would have donned a selkie’s skin and saved my hide yesterday. And instead of crumbling under the unknown of our current situation, you made soup from lentils and kneaded

Roasted Tomato Soup Serves 4-6 This soup is perfect for those cold winter nights when you want to relax with a comforting grilled cheese and tomato soup combo. The slow roasting of the tomatoes gives it tons of flavor. If you have a garden full of fresh tomatoes, feel free to use those instead of the canned variety. Stay away from fresh grocery store tomatoes in the winter, as they are usually flavorless and mealy and won’t give you the best results. This creamy soup also makes a luxurious starter for a dinner party or other occasion. 1 28 ounce can peeled whole tomatoes, drained 1/4 cup olive oil 1 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning 1/2 small red onion, chopped 2 cloves garlic, rough chopped 1/4 cup chicken broth 1/2 cup ricotta cheese 1/2 cup heavy cream Add the tomatoes, olive oil, herbs, and broth to your slow cooker pot. Cover and cook on low for about 6 hours, until the vegetables are soft. Use either a blender or immersion blender to puree the soup and transfer back to slow cooker. Add the ricotta and heavy cream and turn the cooker to warm if you can. Serve warm.

Needless to say, cooking for a man with such a delicate palate can be challenging and every once in a while I like to make something that isn't served with a glass of milk and a side of applesauce. This can be difficult with a husband with such discriminating taste buds. Difficult, but not impossible, if you're willing to lie. Which I am.   During the winter months I love to make soups and one of my favorites is taco soup. It has all of the basic food groups in one bowl; meat, veggies, beans, and Fritos. It's perfection. I've been warming bodies and cleaning colons with this recipe for years. However, when I met my husband he advised he didn't like beans, so he couldn't eat taco soup. This was not the response I hoped for.   I decided to make it for him anyway. The first time I did I debated whether to add beans. I knew he wouldn't eat it if I did, but I also knew the beans were what gave it the strong flavor. I decided the only way to maintain the integrity of the soup was to sacrifice mine. I lied to him about the ingredients. Because my husband is not only picky but also observant, I knew I couldn't just dump the beans into the soup undetected. Rather, I had to go incognito. For that, I implored the use of the food processor, who was happy to accommodate after sitting in the cabinet untouched for years.   I dumped the cans of beans in the processor and pureed them into a paste. I then dumped the paste into the taco soup mixture, returning the food processor to the cabinet where it would sit untouched for another six months.   When it came time to eat, I dished out a heaping bowl of soup and handed it to my husband. We sat down to eat and I anxiously awaited his verdict, knowing he was eating a heaping bowl of deceit.   “This is delicious. What's in it?” he asked, in between mouthfuls of soup.   “It's just a mixture of taco ingredients,” I innocently replied, focusing on the layer of Fritos covering my bowl.   “Whatever it is, it's amazing,” he responded, quickly devouring each bite.   At that moment I wanted nothing more than to slap the spoon out of his hand and yell “That's beans, bitch!” However, I refrained because I'm classy (and because I didn't want to clean up the mess).

It is the pomegranate that gives 'fesenjoon' its healing capabilities. The original apple of sin, the fruit of a long gone Eden, the pomegranate shields itself in a leathery crimson shell, which in Roman times was used as a form of protective hide. Once the pomegranate's bitter skin is peeled back, though, a juicy garnet flesh is revealed to the lucky eater, popping and bursting in the mouth like the final succumber of lovemaking. Long ago, when the earth remained still, content with the fecundity of perpetual spring, and Demeter was the mother of all that was natural and flowering, it was this tempting fruit that finally set the seasons spinning. Having eaten six pomegranate seeds in the underworld, Persephone, the Goddess of Spring's high-spirited daughter, had been forced to spend six months of the year in the eternal halls of death. Without her beautiful daughter by her side, a mournful Demeter retreated to the dark corners of the universe, allowing for the icy gates of winter to finally creak open. A round crimson herald of frost, the pomegranate comes to harvest in October and November, so 'fesenjoon' is best made with its concentrate during other times of the year.

The plunge was easier than the pull. The serrated edge caught the flaps of skin on the way out. It wasn’t the nature of the blade; he’d chosen specific tools for the torture and wasn’t about to skimp on the final cut. Most would have picked the sharpest. The sharpest would allow smooth entry both into and out of the body. He’d used the sharpest on the torso; four quick stabs just above the waist and one to pierce his side. No water; only blood. This final task required a specific tool and he’d chosen a bread knife. It’d been used for that too; winter soups with a rustic loaf, hearty bacon sandwiches in the family home. Use only a little pressure, move it back and forth, letting the edge do the work. That was the easy way to do it, but this wasn’t

I go to one of my favorite Instagram profiles, the.korean.vegan, and I watch her last video, in which she makes peach-topped tteok. The Korean vegan, Joanne, cooks while talking about various things in her life. As she splits open a peach, she explains why she gave up meat. As she adds lemon juice, brown sugar, nutmeg, a pinch of salt, cinnamon, almond extract, maple syrup, then vegan butter and vegan milk and sifted almond and rice flour, she talks about how she worried about whitewashing her diet, about denying herself a fundamental part of her culture, and then about how others don't see her as authentically Korean since she is a vegan. I watch other videos by Joanne, soothed by her voice into feeling human myself, and into craving the experiences of love she talks of and the food she cooks as she does. I go to another profile, and watch a person's hands delicately handle little knots of shirataki noodles and wash them in cold water, before placing them in a clear oden soup that is already filled with stock-boiled eggs, daikon, and pure white triangles of hanpen. Next, they place a cube of rice cake in a little deep-fried tofu pouch, and seal the pouch with a toothpick so it looks like a tiny drawstring bag; they place the bag in with the other ingredients. "Every winter my mum made this dish for me," a voice says over the video, "just like how every winter my grandma made it for my mum when she was a child." The person in the video is half Japanese like me, and her name is Mei; she appears on the screen, rosy cheeked, chopsticks in her hand, and sits down with her dish and eats it, facing the camera. Food means so much in Japan. Soya beans thrown out of temples in February to tempt out demons before the coming of spring bring the eater prosperity and luck; sushi rolls eaten facing a specific direction decided each year bring luck and fortune to the eater; soba noodles consumed at New Year help time progress, connecting one year to the next; when the noodles snap, the eater can move on from bad events from the last year. In China too, long noodles consumed at New Year grant the eater a long life. In Korea, when rice-cake soup is eaten at New Year, every Korean ages a year, together, in unison. All these things feel crucial to East Asian identity, no matter which country you are from.

They began with a winter soup, lovingly cooked in a copper pot with a shinbone left over from Sunday lunch- But the witch brought in a light bouillon, simmered with the sweetest of baby shallots and scented with ginger and lemongrass and served with croutons so crisp and small that they seemed to vanish in her mouth- The mother brought in the second course. Sausages and potato mash; a comforting dish the child always loved, with sticky onion marmalade- But the witch brought in a brace of quail that had been gorged on ripe figs all their lives, now roasted and stuffed with chestnuts and foie gras and served with a coulis of pomegranate- Now the mother was close to despair. She brought dessert: a stout apple pie, made to her mother's recipe. But the witch had made a pièce montée: a pastel-colored sugared dream of almonds, summer fruit, and pastries like a puff of air, all scented with rose and marshmallow cream, and served with a glass of Château d'Yquem-

As soon as I was immersed in my work, cutting up the kabocha squash for the winter butternut squash soup, dicing the carrots to braise in orange juice, and starting another giant vat of chicken stock, I allowed the aromas and natural muscle rhythms of the kitchen to sweep me up in what I loved. I calmed down and experienced--- as corny as it might sound--- the joy of cooking. I was in love with food, obsessed with it. Food wasn't just fuel; it could heal a broken heart, it could entertain, it could bring you home. Magic happened when a perfectly balanced dish came together. A beautiful symphony of flavors. Salty, sweet, acidic, crunchy, colorful, soft, hard, warm, cold. It should take you on a journey. Once I had an Italian dish called Genovese, consisting of braised rabbit over thick noodles with a carrot and pea sauce. It was so beautiful, earthy, clever, and delicious, and it warmed you from the inside. It was what I liked to call a "circle of life plate.

John Fire Lame Deer, a Lakota medicine man, wrote gut-wrenchingly about what the bison meant for his people, and what happened when they were destroyed: The buffalo gave us everything we needed. Without it we were nothing. Our tipis were made of his skin. His hide was our bed, our blanket, our winter coat. It was our drum, throbbing through the night, alive, holy. Out of his skin we made our water bags. His flesh strengthened us, became flesh of our flesh. Not the smallest part of it was wasted. His stomach, a red-hot stone dropped in to it, became our soup kettle. His horns were our spoons, the bones our knives, our women’s awls and needles. Out of his sinews we made our bowstrings and thread. His ribs were fashioned into sleds for our children, his hoofs became rattles. His mighty skull, with the pipe leaning against it, was our sacred altar. The name of the greatest of all Sioux was Tatanka Iyotake—Sitting Bull. When you killed off the buffalo you also killed the Indian—the real, natural, “wild” Indian.

Carrie could not remember how long it was since some other person had cherished her. Had said, 'You look tired.' And, 'How about a little rest?' She had spent too many years being strong, looking after others and their problems...The day progressed, and through her window Carrie watched the weather and was glad she did not have to be out in it. Snow showers came and went; the sky was grey. From time to time she heard the faint keening of wind, whining around the old house. It was all rather cosy. She remembered as a child being ill, and in bed, and the awareness of others getting on with the business of day-to-day life without herself having to participate in any sort of way. Telephones rang, and someone else hurried to answer the call. Footsteps came and went; from behind the closed door, voices called and answered. Doors opened and shut. Towards noon, there came smells of cooking. Onions frying, or perhaps a pot of soup on the boil. The luxuries of self-indulgence, idleness, and total irresponsibility were all things that Carrie had long forgotten.

The last meal aboard the Titanic was remarkable. It was a celebration of cuisine that would have impressed the most jaded palate. There were ten courses in all, beginning with oysters and a choice of Consommé Olga, a beef and port wine broth served with glazed vegetables and julienned gherkins, or Cream of Barley Soup. Then there were plate after plate of main courses- Poached Salmon and Cucumbers with Mousseline Sauce, a hollandaise enriched with whipped cream; Filet Mignon Lili, steaks fried in butter, hen topped with an artichoke bottom, foie gras and truffle and served with a Périgueux sauce, a sauté of Chicken Lyonnaise; Lamb with Mint Sauce; Roast Duckling with Apple Sauce; Roast Squash with Cress and Sirloin Beef. There were also a garden's worth of vegetables, prepared both hot and cold. And several potatoes- Château Potatoes, cut to the shape of olives and cooked gently in clarified butter until golden and Parmentier Potatoes, a pureed potato mash garnished with crouton and chervil. And, of course, pâté de foie gras. To cleanse the palate, there was a sixth course of Punch à la Romaine, dry champagne, simple sugar syrup, the juice of two oranges and two lemons, and a bit of their zest. The mixture was steeped, strained, fortified with rum, frozen, topped with a sweet meringue and served like a sorbet. For dessert there was a choice of Waldorf Pudding, Peaches in Chartreuse Jelly, Chocolate and Vanilla Èclairs and French ice cream.

You... you were telling me about your diet?" "Well, mostly I was raised on milk, potatoes, dulse, fish-" "I beg your pardon, did you say 'dulse'? What is that, exactly?" "A kind of seaweed," MacRae said. "As a lad, it was my job to go out at low tide before supper and cut handfuls of it from the rocks on shore." He opened a cupboard to view a small store of cooking supplies and utensils. "It goes in soup, or you can eat it raw." He glanced at her over his shoulder, amusement touching his lips as he saw her expression. "Seaweed is the secret to good health?" Merritt asked dubiously. "No, milady, that would be whisky. My men and I take a wee dram every day." Seeing her perplexed expression, her continued, "Whisky is the water of life. It warms the blood, keeps the spirits calm, and the heart strong." "I wish I liked whisky, but I'm afraid it's not to my taste." MacRae looked appalled. "Was it Scotch whisky?" "I'm not sure," she said. "Whatever it was, it set my tongue on fire." "It was no' Scotch, then, but rotgut. Islay whisky starts as hot as the devil's whisper... but then the flavors come through, and it might taste of cinnamon, or peat, or honeycomb fresh from the hive. It could taste of a long-ago walk on a winter's eve... or a kiss you once stole from your sweetheart in the hayloft. Whisky is yesterday's rain, distilled with barley into a vapor that rises like a will-o'-the-wisp, then set to bide its time in casks of good oak." His voice had turned as soft as a curl of smoke. "Someday we'll have a whisky, you and I. We'll toast health to our friends and peace to our foes... and we'll drink to the loves lost to time's perishing, as well as those yet to come.

And these two very old people are the father and mother of Mrs Bucket. Their names are Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina. This is Mr Bucket. This is Mrs Bucket. Mr and Mrs Bucket have a small boy whose name is Charlie Bucket. This is Charlie. How d’you do? And how d’you do? And how d’you do again? He is pleased to meet you. The whole of this family – the six grown-ups (count them) and little Charlie Bucket – live together in a small wooden house on the edge of a great town. The house wasn’t nearly large enough for so many people, and life was extremely uncomfortable for them all. There were only two rooms in the place altogether, and there was only one bed. The bed was given to the four old grandparents because they were so old and tired. They were so tired, they never got out of it. Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine on this side, Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina on this side. Mr and Mrs Bucket and little Charlie Bucket slept in the other room, upon mattresses on the floor. In the summertime, this wasn’t too bad, but in the winter, freezing cold draughts blew across the floor all night long, and it was awful. There wasn’t any question of them being able to buy a better house – or even one more bed to sleep in. They were far too poor for that. Mr Bucket was the only person in the family with a job. He worked in a toothpaste factory, where he sat all day long at a bench and screwed the little caps on to the tops of the tubes of toothpaste after the tubes had been filled. But a toothpaste cap-screwer is never paid very much money, and poor Mr Bucket, however hard he worked, and however fast he screwed on the caps, was never able to make enough to buy one half of the things that so large a family needed. There wasn’t even enough money to buy proper food for them all. The only meals they could afford were bread and margarine for breakfast, boiled potatoes and cabbage for lunch, and cabbage soup for supper. Sundays were a bit better. They all looked forward to Sundays because then, although they had exactly the same, everyone was allowed a second helping. The Buckets, of course, didn’t starve, but every one of them – the two old grandfathers, the two old grandmothers, Charlie’s father, Charlie’s mother, and especially little Charlie himself – went about from morning till night with a horrible empty feeling in their tummies. Charlie felt it worst of all. And although his father and mother often went without their own share of lunch or supper so that they could give it to him, it still wasn’t nearly enough for a growing boy. He desperately wanted something more filling and satisfying than cabbage and cabbage soup. The one thing he longed for

Best Beef Soup Ever This hearty and yummy winter soup is good any time of the year. 8–10 cups (1.9–2.4 L) water 2 large onions, quartered 5 pounds (2.3 kg) short ribs with bone cut into 1-inch (2.5-cm) chunks (results in 2½ pounds, or 1.1 kg, beef chunks) 1 tablespoon (18 g) kosher salt

Hundreds of ladybugs had taken shelter from the winter in the crevices of the decayed windows. From there, they broke into the apartment in commando squads. My joy at that first sighting of the ladybug spreading its lower winglets on the rim of the jam glass, flashing three spots of fortune, soon turned into something tragic and Greek, a bloodied slaughter. Like in Ajax, I had to pluck ladybugs from my toothbrush every evening and in the morning shake out my shirt that, overnight, was infested with too much luck, and at lunch, I'd fish kamikazee-ladybugs out of my soup bowl, their Etna's crater in the middle of the round kitchen table. When I shut my eyes and held the hose to my ear and heard the little crackle of tiny bodies sucked into the eye of the tornado, I couldn't remain neutral. Putting away the vacuum, I consoled myself with sentences of friends who, after a beer or three, like to repeat to me the axiom that sooner or later, living in the city, each person discovers himself to be the murder of his own happiness. They were genuine Berlin ladybugs, they'd occupied the windows illegally like my friends in apartments from which they were later evicted.

Indeed, on their respective days of owning the tongue, each of the neighbours could not help but echo the mouth of the previous owner. The Italian family eventually developed a taste for the occasional cardamom tea, the Filipino adventurously spread some Vegemite on his pan de sal and, at one time, the Australian couple stirred fish heads into their sour soup. Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan began hosting summer feasts by the barbie, and the Turkish baker even serenaded his wife with songs about love and volcanoes as he prepared a tray of almond biscotti for the oven. You see, the tongue had an excellent memory. Even when it had moved to a new mouth, it still evoked the breath of spices, sweets and syllables of the former host. It was never known to forget anything, least of all the fact that it was once the soft, pink flesh of a South Coast mollusc; it yielded itself to a higher good one winter night when the ocean was formidably wild.

This soup, which is great for really cold winter days, would have been a very easy one to prepare out on the prairie. In the winter, I will make a big pot of this soup in the late morning and just leave it on the stove until late afternoon. That way, anyone can grab a mugful at any time. Serves 4 to 6 2 bunches (about 10) spring onions, trimmed ¼ cup (60 ml) sunflower or vegetable oil 1 yellow onion, coarsely chopped 3 russet potatoes (about 1½ pounds/680 g), peeled and quartered 1 quart (960 ml) chicken broth Salt and freshly ground black pepper • Cut the spring onions in half crosswise, dividing the white and green parts. Coarsely chop the white parts and set aside. Finely chop the green parts and set them aside separately. • Heat the oil in a medium pot over medium heat. Add the yellow onion and chopped white parts of the spring onions and cook, stirring often with a wooden spoon, until soft, 8 to 10 minutes. Add the potatoes and broth and season to taste with salt and pepper. Increase the heat to medium-high and bring just to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the potatoes are soft, 30 to 35 minutes. • Allow the soup to cool slightly. Working in batches, puree the soup in a blender or a food processor until very smooth. Return the pureed soup to the pot and cook over medium heat until hot. Adjust the seasonings to taste. Garnish individual servings with the reserved spring onion greens.

Winter comes, and our cupboard shelves in the snug stone cellar are an art gallery of crimson and green and brown and white jars. We have canned raspberries, blueberries, peas, beans, a few beets, some apple sauce from windfalls, grape jelly, fifty quarts of canned yellow corn, many quarts of beef stew and beef soup stock, also pork. A five-gallon keg of cider sits in the corner. In a wooden bin are twelve bushels of Green Mountain potatoes, and we have bought three barrels of apples. Our rutabagas, most of our beets and carrots are stored in layers of sand. There are bushels of onions and a hundred Danish Ball Head cabbages laid out on rough shelves.

I had a dream where I was in a place that served steak and mashed potatoes and the soup! The pasta soup was heavenly even better than my mother’s homemade recipe. Every spoonful of the soup reminded me of the sun. The mashed potatoes were so smooth that they could slide down my gullet. The steak was medium-rare, my favorite, and every bite reminded me of the steak my mom made but it was one hundred and one times better.  And there was also iced tea and every sip of it felt refreshing like a cold, winter morning with the sun shining merrily and my mom and I throwing snowballs at each other. I  ate and drank until I could eat no more. I felt as if my stomach was about to combust. But then in came the tiramisu. It was better than anything I had ever tasted. The rich smell of coffee wafted up from it. It reminded me of the coffee shop my mom went to when I was little. Despite the fact that my stomach was about to explode I managed to fit in three more slices of tiramisu before I could eat no more. But then came the Ice cream. It was my favorite flavor, mango. The ice cream was silky and sweet. It was like I was on a sunny June morning, a ray of sunlight shining in my face. The sensation intensified as mango juice dribbled down my chin like sunlight itself. I managed six scoops before I was sure my belly would explode. Every moment of eating the ice cream was sunsational. Finally came the float. It was vanilla ice cream on top of some Fanta even though my mom insisted root beer was one hundred times better. It tasted amazing. It was like the early spring making our ice crack in the pond on which my mother and I go ice skating every winter. It was happy but also sad at the same time as if my old life called back for me.

So will you really come south with me?” Douglas asked the earl over dinner. “Or was that merely an evasive tactic?” Emmie glanced up at him sharply, as did Winnie. “I don’t know.” The earl frowned at his soup. “It’s tempting, but I don’t want to ask one of my geldings for that effort again so soon… and I would miss my Winnie.” Winnie’s face creased into a bashful smile, but she said nothing. “Though I would be gone only for a few weeks, I suppose. Could you spare me, Win?” “Would you come back?” “I would come back. I give you my word I’d come back, and before winter, too.” “You’d go to see Rose?” Winnie asked, brow knit. “I suppose that would be all right. She is your niece.” “And you are my Winnie,” the earl reminded her, but beside Winnie, Emmie was blinking hard at her soup. “Emmie?” The earl turned his gaze on her. “Will it suit for me to make a short trip south?” “Your roof and your stone walls are well under way,” she said, “and harvest is still some weeks off. I’m sure Rosecroft could manage without you for a few weeks.” But what about you, the earl wanted to ask. He honestly could not tell if she was angry with him for contemplating this journey, or relieved or indifferent or… what? “I will think about it,” the earl said, his eyes on Emmie.

AMERICAN LEGION FUNERAL HOT DISH 1 pound ground beef ½ onion, chopped 1 cup frozen sliced carrots 1 cup frozen cauliflower 1 cup frozen chopped broccoli 1 can cream of mushroom soup 1 can cream of chicken soup 3-4 stalks celery, chopped 2 tablespoons soy sauce ½ teaspoon white pepper 1 12-ounce bag chow mein noodles Preheat oven to 325°F. Fry hamburger and onion in large cast-iron pan, breaking hamburger up into small pieces. Drain and place in large baking pan. Mix vegetables, soups, celery, soy sauce and pepper, then combine with meat in pan. Fold in ⅔ of chow mein noodles (8 ounces), cover and bake for about an hour. Sprinkle remaining chow mein noodles on top. Put cover back on and bake another 15 minutes.

PORTUGUESE KALE SOUP Feeds 6 to 8 This hearty soup is sometimes called Portuguese penicillin in the New England Portuguese community. I can see why. With this much goodness in it—Spanish chorizo, bacon, beans, and fresh kale—you have to feel good after a bowl of this soup. It’s meaty and delicious. In the middle of the winter, this soup satisfies. 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil 1 pound fresh Mexican chorizo, sliced 4 thick slices bacon, diced 2 medium onions, peeled and diced 2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced 1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped 2 cups chicken stock (if you’re using boxed stock, make sure it’s gluten-free) One 15-ounce can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed 1 pound Lacinato kale, leaves stripped from the stems and cut into chiffonade Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper Cook the chorizo and bacon. Set a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Pour in the oil. When the oil is hot, add the chorizo and bacon. Cook, stirring frequently, until the meat is crisp, about 5 minutes. Remove it from the oil. Cook the aromatics. Turn down the heat to medium. Add the onions and garlic to the hot oil. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions are soft and translucent, about 7 minutes. Stir in the oregano and cook until the scent is released, about 1 minute. Cook the sweet potato. Throw the sweet potatoes into the Dutch oven and cover them with the stock. Simmer until the potato is just tender to a knife, about 15 minutes. Blend part of the soup. Pour one-third of the soup into a blender. Cover well. Remember the soup will be hot, so take care. Puree the soup. Pour it into a bowl. Continue with another third of the soup. Pour the pureed soup back into the Dutch oven. Finish the soup. Add the cooked chorizo and bacon to the soup, along with the cannellini beans. Heat the soup over medium heat. Add the kale. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the kale is wilted, about 3 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Feel like playing? The sweet potato adds a tiny bit of sweetness to the soup, adding complexity to the taste. But if you wish, you could use russet potatoes instead.

If he had driven to the south coast on a different afternoon, I thought. If he had driven there on one of those afternoons when I was there with Jock during the autumn and winter, instead of one of the days when I wasn’t there. And if we had walked toward each other and caught sight of each other, and I had thought, Oh look, there’s Johannes Alby, and he’d thought, Oh look, there’s Dorrit Weger with her little dog. And if we had stopped and chatted, and if I had invited him back to my house for a cup of coffee or a bowl of soup or some pasta. If it had started like that. If it had started then.

In just a bony fistful of years, classical Russian food culture vanished, almost without a trace. The country's nationalistic euphoria on entering World War I in 1914 collapsed under nonstop disasters presided over by the 'last of the Romanovs': clueless, autocratic czar Nicholas II and Alexandra, his reactionary, hysterical German-born wife. Imperial Russia went lurching toward breakdown and starvation. Golden pies, suckling pigs? In 1917, the insurgent Bolsheviks' banners demanded simply the most basic of staples - khleb (bread) - along with land (beleaguered peasants were 80 percent of Russia's population) and an end to the ruinous war. On the evening of October 25, hours before the coup by Lenin and his tiny cadre, ministers of Kerensky's foundering provisional government, which replaced the czar after the popular revolution of February 1917, dined finely at the Winter Palace: soup, artichokes, and fish. A doomed meal all around.

Neve didn’t know why she’d bothered trying to shine some light on the darkest, most secret places of her psyche. In fact, she didn’t even know why she’d come to the pub to suffer this emotional abuse when she could have been tucked up on her sofa with a nice bowl of home-made vegetable soup and the new issue of the London Review of Books. She got to her feet and stuck out her hand in Max’s general direction. ‘It was nice to see you again but I really have to go now.’ ‘Oh, don’t be like that.’ Max took her hand but only so he could stroke her knuckles. ‘You really have to stop taking everything so personally. It must be exhausting.’ ‘Goodbye,’ Neve said sharply, removing her hand from Max’s grasp and snatching up bag, coat, scarf, hat and gloves, and wishing that it wasn’t winter because it was impossible to make a speedy getaway when you had so much cold-weather gear to put on first. ‘Tell Bridie to put your drinks on the Slater tab,’ she added, because God forbid that Max should think ill of her. Or more ill of her.

I love cold winters with lots of snow and ice! They remind me to stay inside, read great books, feast on hot soups and just be calm for a while,” I heard Leila say. “It’s a time when I get to dream without being interrupted by bright sunshine calling me to get outside and play.”Leila was in the process of reorganizing her closet to get her wardrobe ready for the winter season.

It still got cold during the winters then, sometimes. Umma and Apa had argued about paying for parking. By the time we had wormed our way into the crowds around the rink, our breath like clouds in the late fall air, they were angry with each other, but their bickering had ceased during that electric moment when the tree was lit up, its branches filled with thousands and thousands of multicolored stars. Afterward, we got big bowls of hot oxtail soup in Koreatown to warm ourselves up, and on the drive back home, I fell asleep in the back seat to the sound of their voices, soft and amicable again.

« bouffer. Soupe populaire. Restos du coeur. Chier. Coins sombres. Chiottes publiques gratos. Boire. Robinets métro. Fontaines publiques. Pisser. Coins sombre. Murs. Pioncer. Métro. Cartons. Bouche d'aération. Marcher. Se réchauffer. Boire. Pisser. Faire manche. Chier. Date journaux. Pioncer. Compter jours. Bouffer. Restos du Coeur. Trouver fringues. Secours catho. Emmaüs. Penser à Claire. » (p.173)

176 Winter rain at night Sweetening the taste of bread And spicing the soup.

The soup on the wood stove smelled divine. Finn had never understood what hunger was. She had known thirst, and felt a certain lacking during the winter months when the sun was out less, but it was nothing like the pain she was feeling inside her belly right then. She wondered how humans ever got anything done with such incessant pain.

I have just taught Soli to make borscht! Yesterday I bought beets with big, glossy leaves still caked with wet soil. Naneh washed them in the tub until her arthritis flared, but she's promised to make dolmas with the leaves. After we closed Soli tucked the beets under coals and roasted them all night. When I woke up I smelled caramel and winter and smoke. It made me so hungry, I peeled a hot, slippery one for breakfast and licked the ashes and charred juices off with my burnt fingertips. Noor, bruised from betrayal, remembered borscht, remembered stirring sour cream into the broth and making pink paisley shapes with the tip of her spoon, always surprised by the first tangy taste, each time anticipating sweetness. Her mother had called it a soup for the brokenhearted. She marveled at her father's enthusiasm for borscht, when for thirty years each day had been a struggle. Another man would've untied his apron long ago and left the country for a softer life, but not Zod. He would not walk away from his courtyard with its turquoise fountain and rose-colored tables beneath the shade of giant mulberry trees, nor the gazebo, now overgrown with jasmine, where an orchestra once played and his wife sang into the summer nights.

Her reputation as a cook spread without her knowledge- for the soups she brought to the bakery in a lidded tin for her midday meal, for her stews, for the scraps of dough that she turned into what the Russians called pelmeni and the Jews kreplach, dumplings stuffed with chopped meat and onions. She prepared hot borscht with beef in winter, shchi or cold borscht in summer, chicken cooked with prunes or a tsimmes with sweet potatoes, carrots and prunes.

If I didn’t see my winter coming, then at least I have caught it in the early stages. I am just a little lost, that’s all; just a little clouded over, like my windows. I’m determined to go into it consciously, to make it a kind of practice in understanding myself better. I want to avoid making the same mistakes again. I am almost wondering whether there could be a pleasure in it, somewhere, if only I’m well enough prepared. I can feel the downturn coming; I know that baking and soup-making can’t sustain me forever. It will get worse than this: darker, leaner, lonelier. I want to lay down a bed of straw beneath me to cushion the blow when it comes. I want to make everything ready.

Bagna càuda with a plentiful variety of steamed winter vegetables and a rich anchovy sauce, thinly cut slices of warmed salt pork, a tofu and leek gratin, rice cooked in an earthenware pot with vegetables and chopped oysters, and miso soup--- the dishes had a vitality to them which came from using only the freshest ingredients, and though the seasoning was unobtrusive, all the flavors had pleasing depth. Weren't oysters supposed to be good for fertility? Rika thought as she brought to her lips a mouthful of rice enriched with soy sauce, whose smell put her in mind of the sea, shooting a glance over at her friend. She realized that she had more of an appetite than she could remember having in a long time, and that if this was largely owing to how delicious the food was, it was also in part to do with the way Ryōsuke ate, as if in a state of ecstasy.

I love you, like I love soup on a cold winter’s day. How it warms me, makes me feel at ease.

For Ernest’s fiftieth they ate lunch in the garden with all of their friends: winter-melon soup, slippery chicken, ice cream in coconut halves.