Perhaps as a reaction to Oprah's Debt Diet playing on the TV, I made "Clean Out the Fridge Soup" tonight, and if I may say so myself it ROCKED. I love soup, anyways, anytime, but in particular when it is rainy and cold, as it is today. We are in Upstate NY I know, but still, 55 on June 9th is pretty damn awful. Soup made things a little better at least.

So, tonight some "Encore Presentation" thoughts from Sue's and my Blog, circa 2006. WOW! We've been writing for a really long time!

Soup is Life is Soup

Soup is just such a simple but wonderful thing. It is goodness in a bowl. It has so many connections with health and wellness, and serves us well as a complete meal in one pot. Complexity and simplicity, inherent to one recipe. Soup is the real deal.

And also, what myriad of life lessons do come from soup! Ingredients go together sometimes with the randomness of immediate availability, as they did tonight. Sometimes ingredients need to be sought out, with great specificity of care and thought.

Then in the cooking process, things simmer, combine and recombine, finally, usually successfully, creating something new altogether. Edible fortitude, new and different, and exciting, comes from things ordinary. Things allowed to simmer emerge anew.

Life is such a balancing act, of balancing my "ingredients." School, Family, Work, Friends, Self, Responsibilites, Activities. These things all go into this crazy soup called my Life. Ingredients need to be added now and then. Seasonings add spice, sometimes too much, sometimes too little. Creative modifictions need to be made, and can be made through the joy and freedom that is cooking and that is life. My soup needs the attention of an occational stirring. My soup needs to simmer, be tasted, allowed time and granted patience. It is at times altered, and changed, and in the end comes a new combination. Forever different, somehow the same, often hard to say how or when, and often too intricate to recreate. Basic and complex all at once. Fresh, and alive. Yes, life surely is a soup, and soup, sometimes, you help make life a little better...thank you!