Part of savoring life, of rolling it around on my tongue before I gulp it down, of enjoying the Author of every good gift, is noticing the food I make and eat. God didn’t have to create food delicious, or varied, or downright beautiful to the eye. We could simply refuel, like a car. But instead it satisfies so much more than our stomachs.
I could rhapsodize for a while about the gift that is table fellowship (or kitchen fellowship, for that matter: some of my best conversations have occurred in the kitchen), but right now I want to rhapsodize about something else instead.
It began with a pot of bliss-inducing soup (and perhaps, subconsciously, this blog). “I almost wanted to write poetry about it,” I told a friend.
“You should write that poem,” she said.
And so I did. (Never mind the article I’m working on, or the Indian dal that should be made, or the lesson plans that’s yet unwritten. Procrastination, pure and simple. But delicious just the same).
Soup
is not veggies in clear water
with a hint of pale chicken breast
like tumbled, colored rocks
in a salty ocean broth.
Soup is roasted
chicken whole, braised and browned and crisped
with onions and garlic, all carameled.
Soup is fresh parsley, plunged into broth,
turning Ireland-green
and six whole cloves, brown and prickly,
dropped one by one into the pot,
with a wisp of bay.
It is turnips, gloriously, curiously fragrant
simmered and fallen into beautiful ruin beside
plain white potatoes, carrots, celery, pumpkin,
and red-gold kumera.
It is hours and steam and the whole house filled with
anticipation.
Stew
won Esau’s birthright,
sparked Isaac’s blessing,
And now this soup
Master-crafted by an Aussie chef
Has eked a poem out of me.
Elisabeth Adams 