Creamy Tomato Soup, Woman on Pemetic Mountain, Hayseeders, and Marion Strobel
As I’m writing this, I’m listening to the scanner (because we have a daily news site called the Bar Harbor Story) and there’s a rescue happening for a woman who fell down the Northwestern Trail on Pemetic Mountain in Acadia National Park.
If you know me, you know that I have far too much imagination and far too much empathy and sometimes this combines to make me a bit of a wreck when I listen to emergency response for things like this. I imagine I’m the woman who fell into a ravine, hitting trees, calling for help. I imagine I’m the dispatcher. I’m imagine that I’m the responders, hurrying through the frigid temperatures. Some of these people are volunteers.
I was much better at this when I was an emergency dispatcher and even for the very short time that I was a volunteer firefighter. I am bad at the helpless feeling.
So, comforting is something I’d like to give everyone right now. It’s a way to feel a tiny bit less helpless, I think: a tiny bit proactive in a giant world that can send you tumbling down sometimes, right?
But then . . . but then . . . there are people who stop everything on their Sunday and do all they can to help you up, to take care of you.
That?
That’s pretty damn beautiful.
RANDOM PHOTO FROM MY WEEK
There is this thing that happens every year and it’s sort of my least favorite party and favorite all at once. It’s called the Hayseeder’s Ball. What I love about it is that it started because of some local people being a bit frustrated by the super wealthy people having their own parties, dressed in clothing from before 1960 or just flannel and suspender type things.
So, they made their own. It’s been happening since the late 1890s. And that? It’s cool. Though I don’t know quite how hayseed most of the attendees are.
A hayseed is defined as “an unsophisticated person from a rural area; a bumpkin.” So, me.
As we stood there, having just arrived, talking to one of the guys who works at the hotel that hosts it, a dryer sheet fell out of my winter parka.
It fluttered to the floor. I snatched it up. And I said, “We classy like that.”
He cracked up, doubled over.
And that’s how I roll.
CREAMY TOMATO SOUP
Ingredients
1 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup butter, cubed
3 pounds fresh tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
½ teaspoon oregano
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
4 cups chicken broth, divided
1 cup heavy whipping cream
Directions
Find a BIG saucepan. Think about writing romance. The word “BIG” always seems to be in romances.
Imagine the saucepan is representative of all your future readers longing for a sexy, romantic book that you will give them. Feel good for a hot second before you realize that you’re just imagining.
Put the saucepan over medium heat.
Be impressed still. Look, you’re trying right? Prepublished is just published with a pre. Imagine the plot of your romance. Will there be a pirate? No. Too done. A female pirate? Maybe. That sounds pretty cool, actually.
Melt butter. Put onions in butter. Saute it until the butter is wilty like your sexy pirate’s heart when they meet the naval official determined to stop their pillaging. Worry about the hostile overtones of words like ‘pillaging.’ Keep writing.
Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, sugar, salt, basil, thyme, oregano, and pepper; simmer for 10 minutes, stir it a bit. You could do so many sexy things with tomatoes, sugar, paste, and salt. Make your pirate a chef just like you. Pirate chefs are sexy.
Add flour and 3/4 cup broth. How will you make the government official sexy? Decide this is hopeless as a love interest. Substitute in a merperson. Way better. Maybe a manatee sidekick?
Mix that until it forms a smooth paste. Pretend that paste is a plot.
Admire your work. It smells pretty sexy, doesn’t it?
Stir that pasteyness sort of slowly into the tomato mixture.
Put the rest of the broth in there, too. Sigh in a sort of seductive way as your soup sighs at you.
Make that boil like the unbridled emotions inside of you and also inside of your pirate chef.
Stir for two minutes, or until it gets thick like a sexy sexy pirate chef.
Reduce heat.
Cover and simmer for 30 minutes of will they or won’t they get together.
When tomatoes are tender take it off the heat.
Find the cream. Dump it in. Stir it up. Serve. Feel pretty satisfied.
Adapted from Taste of Home and my Grammy Barnard. https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/fresh-cream-of-tomato-soup/
THE POEM
Grammy Barnard used to fangirl a bit about Marion Strobel, who was an associate editor for Poetry in the 1920s. This poem seems to fit with my mood and my worries today. Hopefully, it will fit for you, too.
Source: Poetry (February 1921)
BONUS PLAYLIST
And since I seem to be stuck a bit in a time period when I wasn’t alive, I’m going to share this playlist from Spotify.