When I was growing up, on Saturdays we always had soup for dinner.
Mom did the weekly grocery shopping on a Saturday morning and when she came home with the fresh meat, it was just natural for her to put on a big pot and make soup stock and ultimately a delicious soup.
Making soup on a Saturday was probably convenient for her because it required little attention as we did the other household chores.
And I bet putting away the fresh meat also tempted her into cooking some of it.
I will always remember how nurtured I felt as the aroma of the long slow simmering of the stock filled the air with deliciousness.
I still make soup on a Saturday in my own home.
I never realized until I was an adult that all soup has to have soup stock and that the long slow simmering that was done in the beginning, was the making of the soup stock.
I just thought that that was the process of making soup.
It wasn't until later in life that I realized that you could actually make the soup stock ahead of time and subsequently the soup-making process would be quick and easy.
Summertime is an especially good time to make soup stock, when you have lots of vegetables from the garden or the farmer's market.
It is such a versatile process and almost anything goes.
You hardly can spoil it, if you know the very few rules of making stock.
I know that there are many different brands of stock available today in the markets, but nothing compares with the one that you make at home.
For one, you know what you have put in and most likely there will be nothing in it that you cannot pronounce or don't even know the meaning of.
I try to buy organic whenever possible but every time I pick up an organic item in the grocery store, I am always wondering how confident I can be that what is actually in the package is what they promised on the label.
When I make my own soup stock, I can feel secure in the knowledge that there is nothing harmful in it.
Start a tradition today.
Nurture your family with soup.