Sally Breslin: My Life: THE SOUP'S ON...AND ON...AND ON

For some reason, I’ve always been obsessed with soup. I absolutely have to eat it every day, even in the middle of summer when it’s 95 degrees outside.

My fascination with soup began when I was three and had an electric toy-stove (yes, it actually plugged into the wall and was designed by sadists to teach children what first-degree burns felt like). My mom would give me the scraps from whatever she was cooking for dinner, so I could make a little pot of soup with them and surprise my father when he got home from work.

It wasn’t until my father discovered where I was getting the water for the soup that my soup-making days came to an abrupt end. I mean, I was only a little kid who couldn’t reach the sink, so I was forced to get the water from the only place I could…the bathroom bowl.

You would think my mother would have figured it out much sooner and stopped me...so I wouldn’t have been accused of trying to kill my father.

Anyway, my tastes in soup always have been a bit weird. When I was a kid, all my friends were hooked on Campbell’s chicken-noodle soup, but I never was a big fan of it. Back then, the chicken in it amounted to about five miniscule cubes of something that had the consistency of bubble gum. And the noodles were more like stiff spaghetti, all in a salty broth. Not exactly gourmet fare.

So my two favorite Campbell’s soups when I was growing up were tomato and one called chicken gumbo, which had, of all things, okra in it. As a New Hampshire kid, I had no idea what okra was, but I really liked it in that soup.

As I said, my tastes were kind of weird.

When Campbell’s came out with their Chunky brand of soups in 1970, however, I was hooked. Technically, the Chunky Beef soup was more like stew, but it was one of my favorites. I also liked the Chunky clam chowder. There was no need to add milk or water to it – it was great heated up straight out of the can. Sure, the clams could have been less rubbery, but the flavor was excellent.

Luckily, my mother also created some great homemade soups, her specialty being chicken-tomato-macaroni. I could have eaten the entire pot of it every time she made it, but unfortunately, my parents also wanted their share.

I noticed that some of my friends’ mothers, however, weren’t quite as talented at making soup. One time, when my friend Linda invited me over for lunch and told me her mother was making soup, I leapt at the opportunity. Well, the soup turned out to be her mother’s ‘unique’ recipe – hamburger and lettuce soup. In a word, it was disgusting – clumps of hamburger floating on top of a grease slick surround by limp, soggy, lettuce and chopped onions that had absorbed a lot of the grease.

The woman should have been arrested for cruelty to children.

After I was married, my husband made the mistake of taking me to lunch at a Greek restaurant called Theo’s. That was the day I tasted my first bowl of their chicken-lemon-rice soup…and I instantly became addicted.

I soon craved that soup so much, I had to have it at least two to three times a week. The only problem was the cooks made it only on Saturdays. It got to the point where I was so desperate for their soup, I’d drive to the restaurant every Saturday, even during blizzards, and bring a big Tupperware container with me. Then I'd say, “Fill it up with chicken- lemon-rice soup – to go!” Drooling, I’d bring the container home and eat the soup for the next three days. And when it was gone, I'd count the hours until Saturday would arrive again so I could stock up on some more.

But alas, one fateful day, the owners of the restaurant returned to Greece and took their secret family-recipe for the soup with them. Desperate, I visited other Greek restaurants in the area and tried their chicken-lemon-rice soup, but nothing could compare to Theo’s.

Nowadays, I make a simple daily soup for myself (simple, mainly because I’m lazy).

I chop up potatoes and toss them into the pot. Then I take a few boneless, skinless chicken-tenders and using meat scissors, snip them into bite-sized pieces and toss them in, too. I add salt, pepper and water, and simmer until everything is cooked, then I add the final ingredient to the pot – a generous amount of V-8 juice. I figure, why spend my time peeling and chopping a bunch of vegetables when V-8 has eight of them already combined in liquid form, all in a convenient bottle?

I simmer my concoction until it’s fairly thick, and then I eat it. The next day, I go through the same process all over again because I like the soup only when it’s fresh. In fact, I already have today’s pot of it simmering on the stove as I’m writing this.

Because of my soup addiction, I’ve eaten so much chicken in the past few years, I’m pretty sure I’ll be sprouting feathers and laying eggs any day now.

But considering the current price of eggs, I guess that might not be such a bad thing.

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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net

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