Bean Soup

I learned early on in life that if my family (and friends count as family) is gathered, there will be food. Sometimes there will pizza and salad and breadsticks from our favorite carryout. Sometimes there will be homemade lasagna dinners and Baked Alaskas or hams and turkeys and way too much of everything. Occasionally there will be a simple plate of cookies or bread and coffee. Always coffee (to the extent that I own a Mr. Coffee machine and I don't drink coffee daily or ever, when I'm at my house). But there's always food.

And no one was better suited at this mixture of food and family then my Grandma MacDonald. There were always Hydrox cookies in the crystal jar (similar to Oreos but different, and oddly, better when I ate them at Grandma's house) or sour cream cookies with the raisin in the middle. Or toasted cheese sandwiches after we worked in the yard. Or mixed veggies from the freezer, heated in the microwave, that went with every dinner. She always had food and I truly believe that's what brought us together a lot of the time. Family dinners. Celebrations. Long breakfasts when out-of-town guests were readying to leave for home. (Her homemade waffles were a favorite of, well, all of us.)

So last summer I asked my mom if I could have all of Grandma's recipes. Her boxes and books and papers thrown together in a folder. Some were singed from where Angela had caught the recipe book on fire once on the stove. Some were scribbled with so many notes we never did figure out which version was best. But I collected them and then spent the next six months with my Mom and Angela sorting, organizing, typing and organizing them into one book. One book we had printed and shared with family and friends at Christmas. I love the idea that Grandma's recipes (some even in her own handwriting) are sitting there on my shelf, just waiting to be used. And use I have...

The first recipe I made from the book was Grandma's bean soup. I don't remember eating it a lot when I was younger but we'd have it when there was leftover ham or it was cold for months on end and we'd already gone through the potato soup and vegetable soup recipes multiple times. So this winter I set to making bean soup.

It turns out, it's rather easy. A little prep, a little stirring and a lot of simmering. And voila! a wonderful meal that's surprisingly inexpensive (we even found a clearance piece of ham at Target! Froze half for another batch and the pot of soup became even cheaper!).

As we sat down to eat that first bowl of bean soup a few weeks ago I couldn't help but think about Grandma. About each time she'd made soup or a roast or a pot of spaghetti and how it brought us all closer together. I love that something as simple as food, something we all need anyway, can do that. I love that.