From the nostalgia department:I've got an experiment thawing in my fridge. Nothing sexy, just a container full of leftover vegetables and gravy and the rinsed remains of spaghtetti sauce jars. Each was added to the bin separately as they became available, and collectively they replicate my great grandmother's "recipe" for vegetable soup. Grandmom's soup was quite simply the best ever. Served with a loaf of fresh bread and homemade butter there was no better cure for the blues or any given physical ailment. It was delicious, healthy and incredibly frugal (as befits a Depression survivor, who raised her three kids to hale adulthood during that time).

My experiment is to see if I can replicate Grandmom's soup. Clearly, hers must have been at least slightly different each time, since leftovers are never predictable. I remember rinsing spaghetti sauce jars (she made her own, natch) with water and adding that in, and I have a very vivid memory of Grandmom dumping the last inch or so of beef gravy from the gravy bowl on top of some dinner's leftover limas. Strata by strata the container filled up until finally the thawed contents were warmed, fortified with the addition of maybe some broth (but maybe not), salt and pepper and perhaps a bit of chopped onion or cooked pasta or rice. That's it. Every time different and every time perfect.

The basic procedure I remember well and have followed since late winter. And now my freezer soup container is thawing and I have my fingers firmly crossed. It's not so much that I don't think the resulting soup will be good, because I know it will be (or, if not, I can make it so). It's that I know that I can never capture her kitchen, with the oilcloth covered table and her three daily newspapers spread around, along with the cooling cup of coffee (she poured but never finished) and throaty been-around-the-block-a-time-or-two laugh. These, I fear, were the soup's true seasonings.