“Sure,” I said, imagining a batch of hot chocolate chip cookies. “Do you have any flour?” I asked. She shook her head no. Well cookies are out, I thought. “Do you have any potatoes?” She went to the freezer and pulled out a package of frozen hash browns. “Do you have any carrots?”
We opened the refrigerator. The vegetable bin was empty. We checked the freezer. Wedged behind several pre-packaged meals we found a partial bag of frozen mixed vegetables and a pound of hamburger. Armed with these and one wilted onion we headed for the sink. “Okay," I grinned. “Let’s make soup.”
While my granddaughter stood near the stove and proudly tended the sizzling hamburger, I cut up the onion and gathered as many vegetables as we could scrounge along with a can of stewed tomatoes.
We both learned something new that day. My granddaughter learned great soup doesn’t always have to originate from a can and I learned about soy beans. Even after cooking several minutes in boiling hot soup, chewing through soybean pods was like trying to chew through burlap.
