Sunday Morning




I’m making turkey soup. I put in two turkey legs, 1 stalk of chopped celery, 2 chopped onions, about 20 tiny carrots, about a teaspoon of salt, marjoram leaves and thyme leaves, and about 1 ½ teaspoons of sage (I love sage), 1 large can of chicken broth, and about 4 cups of water. It’s on the stove now just beginning to heat. Once it begins to boil, I’ll turn down the heat and let it simmer for about 45-60 minutes (it depends on when the meat is ready to fall off of the bones). Then I’ll take the turkey legs out and let them cool. Once they’re cool, I’ll take the meat off the bones and I’ll also taste the vegetables, if it seems the flavor has been cooked out of them, I’ll strain the broth, throw out those vegetables, and add new ones to the broth, along with the turkey meat, to simmer for about 15 minutes. Then taste for seasonings, and it should be ready for lunch.


As I always tell Papa, exact measurements – that’s what cooking is all about. It’s basic chemistry. Everybody knows that…





HOWEVER, I rarely use exact measurements. I add whatever I think it needs, then taste, then adjust the seasonings, then taste, etc. And somehow, it usually comes out okay.

I love to cook. I don’t mean that I love to cook everyday, every meal, three meals a day forever. That’s not cooking, that’s maintaining the body.

I mean that I love to COOK.

I love to take the time to choose a recipe, shop, gather the ingredients and plan the approach, savor every action and visualize the outcome.

Yes, it takes ingredients, a plan, and the time and energy to create your special dish, but more than anything else, it takes love. You get out what you put into things (now where have I heard that before?). To create a special dish takes more than a rigid recipe and the correct ingredients. It takes a desire to please those you care about. A desire to see their faces as they first bite into that special dish you’ve spent hours creating just for them. It’s a very special way of loving your family and friends. [Did you notice that everything seems to revolve around family? Our greatest joys and our greatest heartaches. They're so very important.]

But to get back to the turkey soup, it's just now begun to boil, so I've turned it down to simmer. I am barely beginning to get a faint whiff of the turkey and spices scenting the kitchen and drifting throughout the first floor of the house. Not too long from now, the fragrant aroma of turkey soup will reach the second floor where Papa is sleeping.





Do you think it will float into his dreams and make him wish for a big, steaming bowl of freshly made turkey soup? Perhaps with crusty French bread and a salad on the side, and he might even put in a dollop of sour cream to enrich the flavorful broth.


Sitting on the couch in the family room, laptop blogging away, I can see the steam rising from the pot, carrying aromatic turkey soup-scented air throughout the house, and drifting out the door – perhaps the neighbors will come calling any minute to beg a bowl of this delicious nectar now simmering on our stove. Perhaps Alex, Asher and Isabelle will get a faint whiff of this wonderful brew bubbling away on Mama and Papa’s stove and beg Mommy and Daddy to take them immediately to Papa and Mama’s house for a huge bowl of turkey soup that was prepared so lovingly by Mama’s hands – made especially for those she loves…


Wistfully, I glance up to see the soup continuing to simmer and release it’s lovely perfume into the air; and envision scenes of grandchildren running through the house, racing out to playland, then rushing back in, begging anyone in sight to push them on the swings . . . hopefully it won’t be long now before they’ll be back home with us, giving hugs and filling our lives with so much joy our hearts almost burst . . . but that’s a story for another day.



Today it’s just turkey soup, Papa, Mama, Grandma and Grandpa, home alone, the silence broken only by the bubbling coming from the stove and the weather report coming from the TV in the dining room while Grandma and Grandpa have their quiet breakfast.