Soup Break

A quick note from the road

It was so hot at Guild Row last December that I had to take off my hat. I think this was the first time I took my bald head out in public.

I’m writing to you from the back seat of my sister’s Honda Pilot as we zoom up I-5 from Seattle on our way to Vancouver. My mom and my cousin and my brother-in-law are all tucked in here as well, and we’re crossing the border to attend a memorial service for my magical Aunt Jacquie, who passed away in March.

This is the second of what will be a five-leg journey this week. Yesterday I flew to Seattle and took the train into the city where, after my sister picked me up, we hopped a round-trip ferry to Vashon Island to go pick up my cousin. I take the red-eye home Saturday night from B.C., and then turn around Sunday to take Amtrak to Champaign for a work retreat, returning home next Wednesday just in time to teach my class at Columbia College, which started this past week. This level of multimodal activity would have been unimaginable this time last year as I headed into the third month of chemo. As I wrote last September :

This last week of summer coincides with the fourth cycle of chemotherapy, and I am spent. I sleep when I can no longer keep my eyes open, several times a day. I lie down when I am too dizzy to stand. I eat when I want, whatever I want, reveling in what is suddenly delicious and gagging on what is not. I spend long minutes staring at a spot of light on the wall. My whole being is organized around the meeting of needs, and the avoidance of pain. I am an animal: instinctive, self-protective, a little frightened.

As the fall roars to life this week, I secretly long for the quiet bubble of treatment, the unchallenged primacy of my bodily needs over the demands of work, family, and the culture at large. But, of course, I am also ecstatic to be on the move and engaged with the world. To not be fatigued, sick, bald, in danger, all the things.

So much so that, of course, I have no time this week for essaying. This will be a short newsletter! But I did want to share some good news, that points to one new way I’ll be engaged with the world this coming year.

While I was in active treatment, I was also spitballing with my friend Andrea Jablonski, a visual artist with whom I collaborated in 2017 on a haunted house/art installation. I had an idea for a new project, one that would take Soup & Bread, the community meal project I’ve been organizing since 2009, in a new and more expansive direction and I wanted Andrea to help actualize it. Well, unbeknownst to me, she went ahead and applied for a grant to fund this endeavor and about a month ago Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs informed us that we had gotten it. Yay!

As a journalist and a teacher I always warn writers to be wary of breathless coverage of what people say they are going to do — because so often it winds up just a bunch of hot air. I hope that won’t be the case for us, but just in case (and because some of the particulars are still to be hammered out) I’m keeping the details close for now. But I’m incredibly grateful to Andrea for taking the initiative (so sneaky!) and to the city for recognizing the value of what we’ve been doing all these years. We will launch this new project with some participatory community events in Chicago this winter, which will (fingers crossed) lead to a larger public reveal next fall and iterate out into a new model of soup-related public programming in 2025. Stay tuned!

And in the meantime please enjoy this delicious bean soup recipe from S&B friend Abra Behrens, author of the phenomenal cookbooks Ruffage, Grist, and Pulp (about, respectively, vegetables, grains & beans, and fruit) and the chef/host of farm dinners at southwest Michigan’s Granor Farm. Abra donated this recipe to a Slow Food event celebrating heirloom beans that Soup & Bread cohosted last December — one of my first ventures out as I recovered from chemo, surgery, and that blasted broken ankle. It was a wonderful way to start to recover my identity as a person in the world.

Bean Potlicker with Root Vegetables

From Abra Berens, who says, “This is my favorite way to use up bean pot liquor from cooking a pot of beans.”

Yields 2-3 qts. soup

• 2 lb. sweet potatoes or any mix of root vegetables (carrots, squash, parsnips work well), cut into chunks

• roasted sweet corn kernels (optional)

• Neutral oil

• salt

• 1 onion, thinly sliced

• 6 garlic cloves, minced

• 4-6 c. bean pot liquor

• 2 c. cooked beans

• sour cream (optional)

• chopped herbs (cilantro, basil, parsley or marjoram work well depending on the flavors you are going for)

1. Preheat the oven to 400ºF. Toss the vegetable chunks with a glug of neutral oil and a big pinch of kosher salt, then. roast until caramelized on the outside and tender on the inside, about 20 minutes.

2. In a medium stockpot, heat a glug of neutral oil over medium heat and sweat the onions and garlic with a pinch of salt until soft and tender, about 7 minutes.

3. Add the reserved pot liquor and thing with 2 cups of water or stock, then bring to a boil

4. Add the roasted vegetables. Bring to a simmer to heat through.

5. To serve, portion the soup into the serving bowls, top with a dollop of sour cream if using, and sprinkle with a handful of the chopped herbs.