Wonderful to get your good wishes and observations, everyone--and, yes, Athenaus, I thought Andrew Smith did a superb job with his History of Soup and used (and cited) him as a reference on that last rumination of mine.
I am so pleased to get the Passover soup references, too, as it's just a matter of time until I get to that subject. I'm counting on lots of stories and family recipes, please.
Finally, I'd like to tell Nancy the story behind my nickname--it's a poem by the 19th century German physician Heinrich Hoffman in his pretty macabre collection called Struwwelpeter (actually and incredibly made into a musical comedy by a Brit a few years ago)which I loved as a child and so did my children:
The Story of Augustus Who Would Not Have Any Soup
Augustus was a chubby lad;
Fat, ruddy cheeks Augustus had;
And everybody saw with joy
The plump and hearty, healthy boy.
He ate and drank as he was told,
And never let his soup get cold.
But one day, one cold winter's day,
He screamed out--"Take the soup away!
O take the nasty soup away!
I won't have any soup today!"
Next day begins his tale of woes;
Quite lank and lean Augustus grows.
Yet, though he feels so weak and ill,
The naughty fellow cries out still--
"Not any soup for me, I say:
O take the nasty soup away!
I won't have any soup today."
The third day comes; O what a sin!
To make himself so pale and thin.
Yet, when the soup is put on table,
He screams as loud as he is able--
"Not any soup for me, I say:
O take the nasty soup away!
I won't have any soup today."
Look at him, now the fourth day's come!
He scarcely weighs a sugar-plum;
He's like a little bit of thread,
And on the fifth day, he was---dead!
If you'd like to see the accompanying illustrations, you can find them on
www.soupsong.com/iaugustu.html. So, my apologies for taking on such a bizarre handle, but it's got a lifetime of family associations...and certainly has a great deal to say about one's need for soup!
