“Soo—oop of the e—e–evening, beautiful, beautiful Soup!” the Mock Turtle crooned to Alice. As for me, I could take soup of the morning and soup of the noon as well. Some kind of soup is the usual breakfast of many European farmers, and at least one other eccentric American believes, with me, that it’s a great idea.
In his diary-cum-cookbook, The Haphazard Gourmet, novelist-journalist Richard Gehman wrote of his bean soup, “A bowl of it will make anyone fit to do all his chores, take on new ones, settle the race crisis, or invent something more revolutionary than the wheel.” I recommend Mr. Gehman, his book, and his bean soup to you most heartily. He once made a marathon bean soup that lived for three weeks by adding different bits of stuff each day which he ate daily at one meal or another. I too recommend this notion, which may be applied to my bean soup and a few others in this chapter. Once a soup base has been established, you can change its character again and again by adding leftover meats, stock, different vegetables, beans, or whatever strikes you as a good idea. This kind of perpetual pot is a good thing to have around if you, as I do, have people wandering in at odd hours for something to eat.
