Nebraskaland

56 Nebraskaland • November 2022 MIXED BAG I once met a man who wouldn't eat soup. He said he didn't like it. I stood there staring at him until he finally snapped his fingers to see if I was still alive. How can you not like soup? Feeling a little uncertain about myself, I checked for a definition of "soup." Might just as well try to find a definition for "food." Is there anything that can't be made into soup? I've had cold berry soup with farm workers in northern Finland and hot chokecherry soup on the Omaha Reservation in Macy, Nebraska. I've had corn soup and pumpkin soup with the Pawnee, duck blood soup w i t h L i n d a's Bohemian tribe and buffalo soup with the Lakota. (Out of discretion, I won't reveal which tribe treated me to dog soup.) There's onion soup, cheese soup, potato soup, fish soup, chicken soup, vegetable soup, mushroom soup, split peas, beans, leeks and ramps, etc. etc. etc. My mother made Schnitzsupp' from dried mixed fruit (Schnitz). Ambrosial! Rabbit soup, turtle soup, beer soup, oxtail soup …. I was once faced with the prospect of making chicken soup for a tribal celebration for 400 people. I asked my friend Clyde Sheridan how many chickens I would need, and he looked at me in bewilderment. I've come to understand his confusion. To make chicken soup for 400 people, you need 400 chickens. Or four chickens. Either one. Does it make any difference? Same with buffalo. How many buffalo does it take to feed buffalo soup to everyone at a Lakota Sundance? I guess, as many buffalo as you happen to have. I once watched Pawnee cooks making beef soup in a huge cauldron that must've held at least 50 gallons. They stirred it with a wooden canoe paddle. They had no recipe. "Clean and dice one cow. Add pounds of assorted pasta and bushels of available vegetables. Boil. Stir frequently. Serve." And that's another thing: Soup is the great social leveler. There's no discussion about who gets the fine cuts of loin and who gets neck bones. Make soup and everyone gets everything. Same with chickens. Who wants a drumstick? Who wants a neck bone? With soup, it's "one cup or two?" I used to imagine that Omaha powwow cooks cut up meat for soup with a chainsaw or dynamite. As my father had it, "It's all cow." His mother, my grandmother, kept a "pot au feu," or pot on the fire, a big cast iron pot on the back of the cook stove, ever bubbling, and always ready to accept any offerings from leftovers to trimmings, crusts or crumbs. What did it taste like? Well, like Grandma's pot au feu! Soup is the perfect food, for camp fire and cabin or banquet hall, two guys in a canoe or 400 Omahas at a handgame. For sure, it's the soup du jour. Roger Welsch was an author, humorist, folklorist and a former essayist for CBS News Sunday Morning. He was the author of more than 40 books and contributed to Nebraskaland Magazine from 1977 until his recent passing on Sept. 30, 2022. SOUP' ON! SOUPÇON! By Roger Welsch

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