Everyone has memories that remind them of loved ones that have past- images, scent, touch, taste or sound. It may be a song, or a book, a smell of perfume or a flower in the garden. Well mine is smell and its Grandma's soup.
When I was a child, we went to my Grandparent's house for Christmas lunch every year. The first thing that hit us all as we walked in the door would be the scent of that hearty vegetable soup bubbling away for our entree at the days feast. Over the course of the morning we would all (children and adults) attempt to sneak into the kitchen to have just one mouthful as the smell was becoming to much to bear making us all dripping at the gums. But anyone that came close was met with the biggest metal spoon straight to the knuckles.
Come lunch time, us kids would be itching in our seats as the men were served first, then the ladies and then us kids. She always served them in these gorgeous little porcelain Chinese bowls with matching soup spoons and all you could hear was the clunking and the slurping, clunking and slurping.
So when Grandma passed in '93, we all realised there would be no more soup. We searched through all her cook books and notes, interrogated Grandad for a confession of ingredients but she took that recipe to the grave and we all regretted not having asked her for it.
In '95 Grandad decided it was time for a reno in the kitchen and I helped him dispose and clean out the old. I found at the bottom of a drawer, a list of ingredients that could be grandma's soup. Dad decided to have a go but it wasn't it. It wasn't the smell, it wasn't the taste. He tweaked it over the years but he knew he could never get it right.
So last year in '08, my beloved Grandad passed, and with him the end of an era. The home I have visited my Grandparents in all my 33 years and that they had lived in for 40, would be sold and all our history in that house would soon become a memory. I had the mammoth job of cleaning , sorting, selling and distributing his life's possessions over the next 6 months. It was great therapy and my sister and I loved talking of old times and of possessions that invoked wonderful memories for us. We joked that we would find Grandma's soup recipe in some bazaar spot, that only could be found by the one who suffered the job of cleaning and erasing the lives of two old souls when their time had come. A reward.
So after six months of cleaning 40 years of clutter and paperwork, it was down to a few boxes of paperwork from Grandads Studio that need to get sorted and sent up to my Uncle in QLD. I flicked through folder after folder of every bit of paper work my Grandfather thought must of been important and somewhere between 1969's horse registrations and 1970's tax return was a little scrap of paper with the ingredients to my Grandma's soup! I couldn't believe my eyes. Why on earth would it be here? It had no right being here but that's OK, we are not complaining.
I got on the phone straight away, ringing the other Sisters, my Mum,my Dad and my Uncle, with the news that the recipe had been found, like a lost child or long lost relative.
So I emailed the copy all around and we all gave it a crack. My Uncle was sceptical, Dad says its close and my Sister and I have decided while its very close, it still doesn't pack the punch.....but that's fine we can now spend our years tweaking it ourselves and it will become the Christmas Tradition once again. Mum thinks its because Grandma left the pot on the top of the stove all week (cold)that it ages with time but we are a bit uneasy about that!
What we do have is a wonderful story to accompany some beautiful porcelain and a divine soup and thats what I'm makin' today. Happy Sunday to you.
