A Stones Throw
Try making these fresh, flavorful soups. You won’t be eating alone.
By Cathy Orr

I grew up in a time when listening to stories read from books and records launched my imagination into faraway times and places. Nowadays, TVs, PCs, and IPODS monopolize the ears of our youth, but they don’t compare to lying on your back listening to a mesmerizing, faceless voice dramatize classics like Black Beauty, The Call of the Wild, The Jungle Book, and The Wizard of Oz.

A lesser known story, but a favorite one for me, is Stone Soup, a short story written by Marcia Brown in 1947. And it was Danny Kaye’s vivid narration on a 78-rpm record that inflamed my childhood mind, and the spirit of the story to life and does not fail to capture the moral of the fable, that with creativity, kindness, and patience, a relationship can blossom, fostering community. Food has brought people together for eons. We have our own soup recipes we hope will bring you together with AC—recipes to warm you and yours during what are, for many, the coldest months of the year. So stock your cupboard, and stay warm with these sure-to-please recipes—without the stone of course.

In a nutshell, a traveler talks an old woman living in the woods into allowing him to make her soup using only a pot of water and a small stone—in Kaye’s narration, it’s a nail, based on the Scandinavian version of the story. The old man repeatedly tells her he could make a better soup if he only had a bit of flour, then only a bit of beef and potato, then barley, and milk, and in the end, he and the woman—who initially said she had no food to offer—share a fine feast of rich soup, cheese, bread, and smoked veal.

Danny Kaye enchantingly relates the tale in a thousand voices, bringing characters and the spirit of the story to life and does not fail to capture the moral of the fable, that with creativity, kindness, and patience, a relationship can blossom, fostering community. Food has brought people together for eons. We have our own soup recipes we hope will bring you together with AC—recipes to warm you and yours during what are, for many, the coldest months of the year. So stock your cupboard, and stay warm with these sure-to-please recipes—without the stone of course.

FOR THIS CAZA PABLANO STEW RECIPE AND MORE, CLICK HERE

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