The base is some soup bones and beef (I use stringy stew beef) cooked in water until almost tender (the meat, not the bones!). Then in go onions, carrots, celery and barley; out go the bones. Then the real work begins. Meet the rutabaga:
The rutabaga is a homely root vegetable, spotted and unappealingly waxed (on the right) when found in the produce section. Old-fashioned, just like the winter we're having. The young checkout clerk at the store asked what it was. "Rutabaga," I answered. "Have never heard of it," he said. "Like a round, yellow, sweet turnip," I replied. "That didn't help much," he said. Apparently turnips don't get much play, either.
After some energetic peeling, the soft yellow flesh emerges. Soft as in color, not texture.
Rutabagas are hard, hard, hard. And tough to cut.
My knife was stuck in this one for awhile. I eventually got them cut in half and began the laborious process of dicing.
Why do I bother, you ask? Why not just do without? Because. Because the rutabaga brings an unparalleled sweetness to the soup you cannot duplicate.
Potatoes get diced and added, too, but they are easy compared to the rutabaga.
Tomatoes, corn and peas round out the ingredients.
You get this:
Which you then eat, with gratitude for its warming goodness, your hands cupped around the warm bowl. It always reminds me that my mother and busia lived through the Depression. This soup has a use-what-you-have-stretched-as-far-as-you-can quality about it.
On Saturday, Mike and I shared a bowl of it with a young birder friend of ours after a long, cold day. We had been at a Great Backyard Bird Count event hosted by Presque Isle Audubon (read more about GBBC here) followed by some cold, wind-swept birding on the South Pier, where a channel joins Erie Bay to Lake Erie.
Hunched over our bowls in the kitchen, he asked how we got started in birding and we related our tales of dating and picnicking and finding great egrets and cedar waxwings. "Pretty soon we were taking our binoculars everywhere and buying a scope.....," I started. To which he appended "And the next thing you know, you're freezing your a** off on the South Pier looking for waterfowl."
Exactly.
But the waterfowl experience is similar to the rutabaga experience; hard work, but well worth the time.
Highlights:
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| c. Michele Rundquist-Franz |
I have a thing for scoters. Not sure why. Maybe because the male surf scoter (front) has such an elaborately silly bill and the male white-winged scoter (back) looks a little bit like a masked marauder. Both are stunning birds and to, me, seem exotic, especially when they are only feet away.
We got so close because, unfortunately, most of the water in Erie Bay is frozen and these birds were cheek and jowl in a tiny patch of open water at the end of the pier. Not a happy situation for them but a great opportunity to see them in detail.
We also spent some time comparing Lesser and Greater Scaup, something hard to do at a distance. For the first time, I was able to clearly distinguish the field marks that delineate the two.
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| c. Cathy McCullum, The World of Birds |
The Lesser Scaup (left) has "dirtier" flanks compared to the Greater Scaup (right). In addition, the head shape of the Lesser is much higher, almost peaked, while the Greater's is rounded. Not too visible here but on each bird there is a small area in the middle of the tip of the top mandible (beak) that is black. This is called a "nail." The Lesser's nail is narrow; the Greater's nail is wide or splayed out.
You will not be quizzed on this later, so if I've bored you with bird-geek details, just ignore me.
Meanwhile, I will continue to work hard at both birds and soup.
Stay warm.
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