Soup's On!

Are you enjoying this holiday season, or are you feeling the stress? If you are having a week like mine, you are probably doing a bit of both. Like many of my mixed-up friends, my family celebrates both Chanukah and Christmas. This year the lunar and Gregorian calendar collide, and the first night of Chanukah shares the spotlight with Christmas Eve. For those of us who overdo, it’s a level of excess unlike any we’ve seen in recent years.

I’m hosting my older sister and nephews this season and decided to make a nice Jewish dinner on Christmas Eve. I made two kinds of rugelach a few days ago rather than attempting homemade jelly donuts, also known as the difficult to pronounce sufganiyot. I even made my own applesauce to go with the potato latkes that will grace my table.

All we really want to eat is latkes. They are crisp and greasy and salty and truly delightful. They also sit in your gut, daring you to digest them, while you wonder why we celebrate a minor Jewish holiday by eating the equivalent of a Waffle House side dish. We have to have something else to balance out those potato pancakes, and I thought matzoh ball soup and a salad might help move things along.

I like to make my own stock. I don’t do anything unusual. I am not browning fatty backs and wings to bring out the flavor. I do not roast my onions and carrots to a delicious caramel before adding them. I just kick it old school with my chicken, veggies, seasonings, and water and let the whole pot simmer away on the stove.

With all the extra food in the house for the double holiday, I didn’t have room in my refrigerator for a big stock pot. I do have an extra fridge in the garage that is usually stocked with beer and old sodas that no one wants to drink. When we have company or holiday meals, our food overflow goes in the outside fridge. I had my husband rearrange his odd assortment of beer to make room for my stock pot and, interestingly enough, a honey baked ham that I plan to serve alongside the turkey breast for Christmas dinner. We don’t keep kosher, but we are also not big ham fans. Chances are good that thing is going to see the trash can Christmas night, minus a slice or two.

After the stock finished cooking, I let it cool for a little while before removing the chicken and pouring the broth through a strainer to remove the tired, old veggies that gave their all to the cause. With the stock safely transferred to another pot, it was ready to go in the outside fridge. I carefully lifted the pot of hot chicken stock and carried it towards the garage door. My daughter, S, held the door for me and scurried down the short flight of brick stairs to open the fridge door.

I took a step or two, and my heel caught on the third step.

Have you ever noticed that when you fall, you feel like it happens in slow motion? I lost my balance and fell back oh so slowly, trying to figure out a way to break my fall without spilling the stock on my daughter or myself. Make no mistake, that broth was simmering away mere minutes before. It was still plenty hot and ready to do some damage.

I fell down, landing hard on my butt and scraping my calf on the brick steps. I would like to say I didn’t spill a drop of soup, but I did. I spilled three drops. S was terrified, but honestly, other than the scratch on my leg, I was fine. I saved myself and the broth.

I perfected the art of falling with food when I was nine. A friend of mine had invited me to join her family on their boat, and we stopped at a sandy spot along a creek to play on rafts and have lunch. Her father grilled hot dogs for everyone, and I got it in my head that I wanted to eat mine in the small inflatable boat they had tied to the pontoon. It was moving gently with the current, and when I turned around to plop down in the middle, I fell, missing the little boat entirely. I landed hard in the water, in over my head. Somehow, I managed to save my hot dog, my right hand clutching it high in the air above the water’s surface.

That’s how I felt, holding that pot of hot broth. I was triumphant over tragedy, saving the soup, dodging what could have been not only an unfortunate loss of homemade stock, but also narrowly avoiding a severe burn a few days before Christmas Eve. It was a Christmas and Chanukah miracle, all wrapped into one clumsy fall.

Enjoy whatever holiday you want, however you choose to celebrate it. Maybe yours will cross over like mine, with a pot of matzoh ball soup right next to the honey baked ham in the fridge.