It didn’t take much persuading to convince my wife that today was a good day for soup, but it might have been harder if I had asked to make some, so I took the easy route and took her to La Tejanita. It's not that La Tejanita makes a great caldo (broth soup) but it's close enough to stir up old memories of my mom's soup.
It seems like every time a cold front (we used to call them northerners and it didn't matter what direction it came from) came in; my mother would get my step- father to take her to Dick's, so she could pick out a soup bone. My mother never ran low on spices, and she used whatever vegetables she had in the refrigerator as her other ingredients that she threw in her only soup pot.
It wasn’t cold enough to put on the other gas stoves(if they weren't already put up), so the kitchen was always the warmest spot in the house. My step-father had already removed the duct tape(poor man's weather stripping) from the window sills and front door frame and we were already prepared for summer which was still officially two months away but this is south Texas.
We weren’t surprised to smell the aroma of soup cooking when we got home from school. My mother always made masa tortillas (a thicker corn tortilla) to go with it. It was very satisfying the first night, but we would get the same soup tomorrow if we didn’t finish it all up. Afterwards, our old dog gnawed on that big soup bone for a week and then buried the remains. What a silly dog because I can’t ever remember him digging it back up. I do remember teasing him as he was gnawing that old bone and his little growls let me know that he didn’t like it one bit.
Some of those nights my mom would make us a pot of chocolate, and we would put some big marshmallows in it. Today we use the packages of chocolate but do they even sell the big marshmallows anymore? It doesn’t matter because it would probably drive my blood sugar off the charts.
As I get older I can’t wait for summer because these old bones don’t tolerate the cold winds like they used to..
