There is a recipe that everyone has, I believe, that can take any amount of abuse and still have the ability to revive you. For me, that recipe has been lentil soup for the past six-odd years. I can use the best quality home-grown tomatoes or the cheapest dinged-up can from Aldi. I can make it with the best kitchen donor money can buy, or I can happily use the dullest knives to slice limp carrots and eat out of a mug with no spoon. It doesn’t matter. By the end, I will have a warm stew, well seasoned and evocative of nights spent cackling with those I love.
When I first had this soup, it was with Meagan on their whodunnit-themed birthday party (I was not the killer!), and it was served with a rustic rosemary loaf. They told me all about how, to them, there are few things that could show your love for someone more than making and sharing a meal with them. And I could immediately see what they meant. I remember us all around a high, precarious table on rickety stools in Choir Palace (which would one day be my home as well). We ate gratefully out of mismatched bowls with chunks of bread in our hand. After a hard day of sleuthing and figuring out Who Had Done It, talking and laughing together over soup and fresh bread is what we needed.
Meagan taught me the recipe, and I have been making it ever since—with my own modifications as the spirit moved me. A few potatoes here, a splash of worcestershire there, a bit of rosemary, hold the marjoram (who the hell has marjoram anyway?), and that’s basically my version.
A quick tangent: even when our pantry was stocked with holdover marjoram from the previous occupants, I still never used it in the soup. Maybe I’m just stubborn.
Since then, it has been a tradition of mine to make that soup every time I move into a new place. It’s a nice way to prepare a bunch of food so I’ll have something to eat while I settle in without having to worry about cooking too much. But it’s also a good way to remind me of all the ways I am and have been loved. I’m prone to the New City Blues, as it were. My first night anywhere new is full of anxiety, regret, and fear. Eating something familiar like this soup can help a little bit.
For the past four weeks, I have been back at Cedar Creek doing tasks I don’t care for and work that is not teaching me much. So far I have sorted grass clippings (to the species (it’s an exciting thing to get forbs here and there)) and taken soil samples (down to a meter (this one hurts my back)). We’ll do prescribed burns soon, too, but those won’t take too many days.
I must admit, I have felt like I’m floundering for quite some time. I haven’t been able to stick around at a job for more than nine months because I have grown to hate every single one. And every one is harder to find than the last. The job market is not kind to people like me. I have been out of school for three and a half years now, and I’m afraid I have not yet found my way. Part of me is worried that I never will, but I have been somewhat reinvigorated as of late. No harm in trying a few more tacks.
I am considering WWOOFing on a few regenerative farms out of the country. Maybe hopping around from place to place is what I need right now. Maybe it’ll set my mind right. Who’s to say? Stay tuned for more…
But I had lentil soup tonight! I had been meaning to make it sooner, but the energy had been sucked out of me for one reason or another. I was missing it. While this place doesn’t feel any more like home, I will admit it’s a nice thing to know that I can feed myself.
This website is a new home of sorts, though! So I feel it’s only fitting for my first journal entry on here to be concerning that. You can find the recipe I use on my Guides page here.
Anyway, thank you for reading and thank you for being here. I’ll talk to you again soon(ish).
~Olive
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