RSSJust Once or Twice Is Good for the Soul
Mar 25
Lunch today was chicken noodle soup. It was a small victory since soup options run the gamut of enjoyable to acceptable to downright tragic.
I have become something of an expert at quickly identifying a soup that will satisfy. I can look at the surface of a pot of soup and know instantly whether it will ever touch my lips. Sometimes, I can even tell just by the name. Here’s a pop quiz, see if you guess which flavors of soup would ever fill my gullet:
1) Corn chowder
2) Baked fisherman’s chowder
3) Southwest bbq chicken soup
(1=oh god 2=oh good god 3=not if you paid me)
Usually, soups are a good option for lunch and I can find something in one of the two large vats at the end of the salad cart that does not look regurgitated. True, sometimes the options are between “death in a soup bowl” otherwise known as Manhattan clam chowder and “yesterday’s overcooked leeks floating in a miasma of goop” otherwise known as Italian wedding soup. Other times though, it’s rich beef barley versus vegetable medley (though I’m not a vegetarian, I can usually survive the vegetable medley because everything tends to fuse together and become an almost meat-like symbiote not unlike all things soy).
I’m fond of the chicken noodle soup because I think it’s two primary ingredients are hard to mess up. It does require that one explore to the bottom to find pieces of chicken, spiral noodles, mushy carrots and the occasional celery bit. Though it’s not quite the most flavorific soup ever (nor for that matter, the warmest), considering its institutional origins, I am usually pleased. In fact, today the chicken pieces were quite hearty, another surprise, since there is really no sensation in your mouth like overcooked, sloppy wet chicken globs.
Every week, at least one suspicious flavor shows up on the menu. The dining commons tends to cover up deficiencies in their mass soup cooking methods by using generous amounts of pepper which end up floating along the top of the soup like vagrant seaweed. So imagine my surprise when I see on the menu “pepperpot soup” which is, what exactly? Broth and pepper? That’s pretty much like serving like serving a slice of buttermilk bread and calling it bread and butter because it was baked with margarine. Then one day, I see this prime option: chicken double noodle soup. So to disguise the lack of chicken, we’re doubling up on the amount of noodles. No one is fooled.
The non-vegetarian option soup choice is too often just yesterday’s leftovers in broth. (Hello, Caribbean jerk chicken soup. Really?) Plus, I think the vegetarians are screwed on an almost daily basis. The cream of mushroom soup is a cop out. I’m not wild about the dijon wild mushroom dill soup because too much of it gets in your teeth. And if you think you can’t go wrong with split pea soup (classic!) I would recommend you rethink it. Or try it yourself. I’m pretty sure soup is supposed to stain your teeth green.
Fortunately, at least once a week there is something simple (chicken noodle or beef noodle) to sooth over the rough spots (is it clam bisque or an opportunity to make full use of your health insurance with an emergency room visit?) Any time I can score a soup that runs from edible to hey this is almost decent, I consider it a small victory. And if I’m on top of my game, I run, run, run far away from the rest.
