First off, not a fan.
My husband and I have had talks about vegetable soup. His memories are a bit fonder. His father did most of the cooking growing up. As his mom was a nurse, the two of them could work their schedules so that one parent was home with the kids most of the time. This was one of the reasons my father-in-law did a lot of the cooking and became quite good at it. Also, his Navy time where he worked in the kitchen. He would sit and chop vegetables for what seemed like forever. Each piece very precise and similar in shape and size. If I were to guess, this was from his Navy days, small pieces cook faster not to mention the military is known for uniformity. If there was meat in the vegetable soup, it would be hamburger but more often than not, it was meat free.
Now in my house, when this pot came out from behind all the day to day use pots, I knew two things 1) we had company coming or there was little to no food until payday and 2) I was going to be hungry.
Can I just say how discouraging it was to try and find a picture of this pot, and it is not exact? I swear ours had actual handles but the coloring with the fad red to brown is spot on. I finally ended up entering vintage red stock pot. Vintage bah!
I regress, if no company was coming I knew it was a long time until payday and we would be seeing soup the next few days. This vegetable soup had any vegetable that could be found in the crisper, regardless of age and bags of cheap frozen vegetables, rarely was there meat, even hamburger in this soup. The one served for company always had hamburger. When I reflect back, I am not sure I ever remember anything getting chopped to put in the soup; more an opening of cans and frozen bags of vegetables. Maybe a fresh onion or two.
I find it interesting how the same food can trigger so very different memories in people. Apparently, my paternal grandmother made vegetable soup as my cousin excitedly texted on of the cold winter days that she was making our grandmother’s recipe. My text bubble said, great! Enjoy!! My thought bubble said, Damn glad we are 3 hours apart!
kkdonk 