Cheating-on-Winter Pea Soup

French Friday’s with Dorie

My grandmother only made two kinds of soup.  One was the kind that comes out of a red and white can while the other was what she charmingly referred to as “refrigerator soup”.  Not surprisingly, the canned kind was Campbell’s, and if we were lucky it would be Tomato with Rice, my favorite.  If we were not so lucky, she might treat us to one of her now infamous soup concoctions that involving a seemingly random combination of differing Campbell’s varieties. One such ‘recipe’ was her infamous Lobster Bisque Babs, made of four different varieties, which four we never learned.)

Refrigerator Soup got its name from the fact that she made using whatever she happened to have on hand in her refrigerator. Grandma made it a point never to buy anything for soup making and never once followed a recipe. If it was in the refrigerator, it could be made into soup.  Half a baked potato, some leftover steamed broccoli from a doggy bag, two pieces of breakfast sausage and a scrap of stale cheese could become a pretty delicious soup in her hands.

She was really quite a genius at it.  Of course, the downside to her soup-brilliance was that if you allowed yourself to love any particular concoction, you always knew you would never have it again. Ever.

Nothing ever went to waste at my Depression-era grandmother’s house. She was, after all a woman who would turn orange rinds into candy gifts for her friends. This refrigerator soup was a key strategic element to her disciplining bag of tricks as well. If you left any scraps on your plate she would scold you and either remind you about the starving children in China and share stories of the Great Depression. Then, amazingly, those scraps would become tomorrow’s soup.  Or, if they were not actually soup worthy (a rarity) they would then flavor her next batch of  stock.

Refrigerator soup was usually always pureed but sometimes it was cubed or shredded, or chunky, but it was always good, no, great, and it never tasted random, even though it usually was.  Thinking back on it I now can’t help but wonder why she ever felt the need to buy soup in a can  when she could spin kitchen scraps into soup gold so easily.

Perhaps she had the belief canned soup was actually a luxury? The kind of luxury that only someone of her generation could understand.

Cheating-on-Winter Pea Soup

I couldn’t help but think of refrigerator soup while going about this week’s French Friday with Dorie assignment. It too is made from stuff you might just happen to find in your refrigerator.  Half a bag of peas, an onion, some old lettuce.  I could almost hear Granny laugh at me for driving to the market and buying a bag of frozen peas to make it.  “Don’t buy anything! Just use that block of spinach you’ve had in the freezer for over a year now!  You can garnish with some chopped up almonds and season with….”  Adding lettuce to the brew would have really pleased her.  Its something I never would have thought to do with soup but here it lends an hint of spring freshness to what might have tasted like the canned pea soup she would have also valued highly. Good soup Dorie!