Aunt Rambles — vegetable soup

Try as I might I couldn’t come up with a subject to talk to you’uns about this morning and John said to tell you what we wuz a-doin’.  A good friend and his mother is having a bunch of their kinfolks in fer dinner today and we’re a-makin’ vegetable soup fer ’em.  Now you know dinner here in Alabama means the meal in the middle of the day.

Lots of what we use in the soup wuz growed in our garden and people that eats it says it taste-is different from other vegetable soup.  We have a big roaster that we allays use when we make soup — I can’t make a little.  First off John digs in the freezer and brings out two packages of tomatoes, one package of field peas and a package of okra.  We put hit in the roaster with a little water and I add salt, garlic powder and dried onion.  For some reason we don’t lack to see fresh onion a-floatin’ around in the soup.  Ain’t that silly? But hit jest the way it is.  We put one pod of very hot pepper in — I break hit in two and tell the ones eatin’ that the ones that finds the two pepper pieces gits to wash the dishes.  You can bet yore bottom dollar that nare one will admit to findin’ the pepper pieces.

Atter that simmers a while, I add a large can of Veg-all and some peeled and cut up Irish potatoes.  Then later I put in a can of whole kernel corn and a handful or two of macaroni.  The corn and macaroni is last to go in ’cause they are prone to stick and I don’t want that.  Lately I add a tad of sugar and I ain’t allays done that.  An old lady told me some years ago that sugar would change the taste — I couldn’t believe that.  I ast my friend in Georgie that has her education in foods and she said, “Yes, it does enhance the flavor.”  Duh!

This here is country cookin’ and country livin’.