The Universe Gets Revenge On Those Who Get Revenge on Their Mothers

A few years ago Mama Poop thought she was doing something nice for me when she bought me a huge soup pot.
But because of the size of our kitchen and the fact that we already had an adequate soup pot, I declined her gift.
She suggested I keep the pot for Passover but seeing as how we never host Seders, I didn't think this was an effective use of resources, so I suggested she return the pot and get her money back.
Knowing Mama Poop as I do, I knew she would never return the pot. Sure enough, several months later I went to her house and saw the pot sitting there. I abducted it, never telling Mama Poop what I had done.

The problem is, I put the pot with my Passover dishes in the basement and forgot all about it.

So this year, when Chase got sick before the first Seder scuttling our plans to go to Step On Me's we had to come up with a last minute meal. I had an idea. I'll make chicken soup. I just need a pot. So I went to Shop Rite and paid $15 for a soup pot and came home to make my soup. Which is about the time I found the other pot. So now I am stuck with two.




I still have to go back to Shop Rite to return the unused pot. But I'm glad everything worked out and the soup was good.

The lesson as always: never try to trick your mom.

My Favorite Soups

1. Grandma's Chicken Soup
This has been and will always be number one on my list. An impossible to duplicate combination of Grandma's love and her secret ingredient. Though I recently learned she used a small pot and made only half a batch. Still the best soup I've ever tasted.

2. Shaw Dining Hall's Beef Barley
You might be surprised to find a Uinversity's dining hall's soup on this list but if you've ever warmed your belly with it on a cold Syracuse day, you'd understand. But you have to get there before Josh because he had a bad habit of filling up a ladle then spilling the liquid out the side, giving himself a delicious stewy portion while leaving behind a watery mess.

3. Golden's Mushroom Barley
Fitting to the delicatessen's name this soup has a golden color not often found in mushroom barley soups. The thick cut mushrooms and thick consistency of the soup make this the better choice than its chicken noodle. But the chicken noodle does have the better menu description. It is listed as "Therapeutic Chicken Noodle (It Couldn't Hurt)". Because of that clever description I often refer to things with no downside as being like Golden's Chicken Soup.

4. Mem's Turkey Noodle
This new contender entered my list only recently thanks to a delicious batch whipped up using the carcass from the Christmas turkey. What made the most recent effort so good was the combination of cold temperatures (both outside and inside Mem and Poppy's house), the use of a very meaty carcass (not just bare bones) and Mem's decision not to skim the fat off the top (though not healthy Mem knows I like a fatty soup). A couple of caveats here: don't serve it too hot (poor Poppy almost burned his tongue) and don't give toddlers the liquid, just the carrots, noodles and meat ("spilled soup on mine bib mommy").

5. Outback’s Potato Soup
Outback is known for its steaks, its Bloomin Onions but not its soup. That should change. This delicious creamy soup comes with melted cheese, bacon and chives on top .

6. Panera Bread Baked Potato Soup in a bread bowl
The soup itself isn’t quite as good as Outback’s and it doesn’t have the bacon or cheese. But what puts it on this list is the bread bowl. The sourdough bread has a nice hard, crusty outside, and a delectable fresh inside made even better when it’s soggy from the soup. But beware because sometimes they don’t scoop out enough of the inside and you hardly get any soup, just a doughy bowl to eat.

7. The Manor’s lobster bisque
I haven’t been there in a long time but I still remember the lobster bisque, which had real chunks of lobster meat. Most Manor-goers forgo any kind of appetizer or pre-main course food in an effort to save room for lobster tails. But I was always shrewd enough to start with a bowl of bisque before diving into the seafood smorgasbord.

8. New England Clam Chowder in a bread bowl at the Big E
Now this one is a little tricky because as you can imagine, the state fair for all the New England states has more than one purveyor of the region’s favorite soup. I don’t recall the particular one I had, I just know that bread bowl wasn’t that great, but the soup was delicious.

9. Mrs. Poop’s Minestrone
A relatively new addition to our menu but another nice one for a cold day. It’s a very hearty soup with a lot of beans and other vegetables. Only problem, if you plan to have more than one bowl you really need a pre-emptive beano or you will be gassy all day.

10. Mama Poop’s Chicken Soup
An all-time favorite. 10th place is not high enough for the soup I basically grew up. I think this is the soup that made this entire list possible but I place it 10th maybe because I’ve had it so many times it no longer seems special to me.

Chef Paul Cooks Beef Barley Soup

Anyone who ever tasted the delicious beef barley soup at Shaw Dining Hall likely tried to recreate it in their own home.
My beef barley soup is a little different, but still good.
I boil a pound of hamburger meat in 8 cups of water, and once it boils I let it simmer for about an hour.
Then I add a bunch of cut up carrots, celery and onions. I also dissolve a cup of beef bouillion in a little bit of water and throw that in too.
I also add a can of whole tomatoes, this is a key ingredient because the juices give the soup the nice red flavor and tomato taste. But Mrs. Poop and I both hate the huge chunks of tomato that result. I'm considering other options but I don't think tomato sauce or tomato juice would work, and crushed tomatoes would be too prevalent in the soup.
The other problem I'm having is with the barley. I can't seem to get it soft enough. I boiled 1/2 cup in a pot of water for about an hour, then added it to the soup where it simmered (along with the aforementioned vegetables) for another hour. But it still isn't soft enough. Next time I may consider soaking the barley overnight.
Regardless of the problems, my beef barley soup is delicious, second only to Shaw's. But since Chase has never had Shaw's, he enjoys the carrots and beef from mine.

Why I Love Soup So Much

Hardly a day goes by that I don't soup of some kind, even in the heat of summer. And hardly a day goes by that I don't feel socially isolated. Now I've come to learn that these two seemingly disparate trends actually have a causal relationship.

The cold shoulder is more than just a metaphor. A new study found that social isolation can actually make people feel cold.

Researchers wanted to learn just how icy loneliness can get. So two University of Toronto psychologists, Chen-Bo Zhong and Geoffrey Leonardelli, asked some subjects to remember a time when they felt socially excluded, such as being rejected from a club, while others recalled memories of being accepted into a group. Afterward, the researchers asked all the participants to estimate the temperature of the room, telling them this task was unrelated to the previous activity and that the building's maintenance staff simply wanted to know.

While estimates ranged from 54 degrees Fahrenheit to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, in general, those who had been remembering emotionally chilly times also literally felt chillier, even though the room's temperature remained constant during the experiment. People who had recalled feeling ostracized estimated the temperature to be about 71 degrees Fahrenheit, on average. Participants who were remembering the warm, fuzzy feeling of social inclusion felt the room to be a balmy 75 degrees Fahrenheit, on average. The discrepancy is a statistically significant difference, Zhong said.

"We found that the experience of social exclusion literally feels cold," Zhong said. "This may be why people use temperature-related metaphors to describe social inclusion and exclusion."

Craving hot coffee
In a second experiment, Zhong and Leonardelli had participants play a computer-simulated ball-tossing game in which some people were passed the ball more often than others, so some volunteers felt included and others felt excluded. Afterward, the participants had to rate the appeal of various foods and beverages, such as hot coffee, crackers, an ice-cold Coke, an apple and hot soup.

The unpopular players were much more likely to hanker for warm items such as soup and coffee than those who had just felt socially accepted. The findings imply that participants who had been feeling left out were also literally feeling left out in the cold, and wanted the warm foods to heat them up.

"It's striking that people preferred hot coffee and soup more when socially excluded," Leonardelli said. "Our research suggests that warm chicken soup may be a literal coping mechanism for social isolation."

The study is detailed in the September issue of the journal Psychological Science.

The researchers speculate that this link between temperature and social inclusion might arise when people are babies.

"For an infant, being closer to a caretaker brings warmth," Zhong said. "When you're a kid, being held by your mother means warmth, and being distant means coldness."

This connection continues throughout life, since when a person is in a room with 10 other people, the ambient temperature is warmer than when in a room alone.

"When we talk about metaphors, they're not just language; they're literally the way we experience the world," Zhong said.