Late Summer Soup

The cute guy and I had a spontaneous party yesterday. We were real. The guests were imaginary. It was the soup that spurred us on.

First we gave Gretchen a seat at the table because it was her tomatoes that I'd slow roasted and added to the broth. The cute guy gave her the yellow bowl. Jesse got the next seat for the huge red carrots that were impossibly sweet for being so big. We decided to invite the entire Rancho Gordo crew after that for the Yellow Indian Woman beans that gave the soup it's heartiness. They got the party rolling.

I remembered the turnip man. He wore his trademark overalls and sat on the stairs without complaint; drank his soup from a cup. The only thing he said was, "Nice you used the greens too."

We invited the guy with the Bolinas beard that once demonstrated making kohlrabi salad with garlic, olive oil, lemon and salt in Pt. Reyes. He'd sold me the leeks I'd used. Nodded his head in approval at the first spoonful. And David Little, the potato man; it would not have been a party without him. We love those potatoes. He got the big blue bowl.

I nearly forgot the woman from Petaluma I'd bought the walla walla onions from. "They're sweet," she'd said, mimicing taking a bite of one. She was right, the onion didn't make me cry. We included the guy that sells roast chicken from the truck at the table too although only the carcass had made it's way into the broth. In fact I gave him my chair and a soup bowl from Cattlemans.

My friend Ann from Brentwood and her son arrived and we raved over their garlic. "No one else grows it as good," we told everyone. She smiled eating with our only silver spoon.

The last guests were Uncle Don and the cute guys pink wigged cousin. They had loaded him up with backyard jalapenos and I had loaded up the soup. "Have another bowl," the cute guy kept saying. I offered to send them home with some. They declined.

Instead everyone showed up again tonight for the leftovers.

So good.