This Week at Smart Markets Springfield Farmers' Market

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It’s time to think soup, and when we want you to think about something, we provide food for thought. This week, we will provide lots of recipes for soup all over the market. Each stand will have one or more recipes for soup.

We’d like for you to think soup for lunch and soup for dinner, soup for a Thermos to take to work or school and soup from a cooler at a game. You can pick up some great bread at the market to go with the soup, and you can make a really good grilled cheese sandwich by combining your favorite bread from Valley View with some cheese from Jacob at Windmill Meadows Farm. We’ve got a recipe for Tomato-Carrot Soup that will be a perfect match.

We have several pureed soups to recommend that are easy to carry in and drink from a good Thermos. We have hearty soups, some with just veggies and some with added meats. And we have recipes for homemade stocks, including this week a really good vegetable stock that is nothing like the oniony stock-in-a-box that you pay big bucks for at the grocery store. You can make vegetables stock from the bits, pieces, and peels of veggies that you serve for dinner all week. Much of what you might add to the compost pile can be used for stock.

I made chicken stock last week and used it to make Minestrone Soup for my husband, son, and granddaughter on Friday evening. With stock already made, I had the soup put together in less than an hour, and we didn’t have to go out in the rain to get dinner. We ate it again later in the weekend with good Italian sausage added to it, and then I used the last of the stock to make a delicious silken sauce for local chicken breasts for dinner last night. It is great to have stock on hand. You can throw together most soups in no time at all.

Here are some to try:

• Red Beans and Rice Soup with Sausage
• Annie’s Creamy Broccoli & Cauliflower Soup
• Winter White Soup, or Creamy Cheddar Soup with Potatoes and Cauliflower
• Annie’s Three Potato Soup with Spinach
• Squash Bisque

Keep your eyes open — there will be good inspiration around every tent corner.

See you at the market!

From the Market Master

I was reminded this past weekend why I am doing what I do now — combining my love of good food and working to help good people into a pretty nice gig. I was reminded by the voices of memory, by the children and siblings of a dear cousin, Barbara A. Jackson, who died tragically and too soon three weeks ago.

My family met to celebrate her life Saturday along the banks of the North Fork of the Shenandoah River at her sister’s farm. Amid all the memories involving her love of food and cooking was one particularly close to my heart. My cousin Barbara was the member of the family who took over the job of making the squash bisque that I took to our Thanksgiving reunions for over 10 years. Finally some years ago she offered to make it herself so that I could bring something new to replace it. And I was quite happy to have her do that. I still make the recipe at home and sometimes bring it to market for sampling, as it is one of our most popular and simplest recipes.

In speaking of Barbara at the gathering, her brother told us a secret about that offer. As it turned out, Barbara hated the chore of making that soup because she almost always made it for a crowd of at least 40 and usually more for our Thanksgivings and other events. I know just how she felt about peeling all those acorn squash. I even told her once that I had tried just baking the squash and then scooping out the softened meat of the squash to add to the soup before pureeing it. But it didn’t taste the same because the squash missed being cooked together with the minced veggies and the potatoes in the broth. So she wasn’t having any of that idea, either.

So we both persevered for all those years until just over a year ago when I learned something new. I happened to watch a segment of Jamie Oliver’s At Home series on PBS and saw him peel the squash for another dish by taking off only about two-thirds of the outer rind, which is just like him — he always avoids removing any part of a vegetable just for show. I had reminded myself just a few weeks ago to let Barbara know about a tip that was worth taking before Thanksgiving rolled around this year.

In his talk, her brother Joe assured us that Barbara didn’t regret her offer at all and stuck with her commitment out of love and out of that nurturing instinct so prevalent in my family. If even one person loved that soup and expected to enjoy it on Thanksgiving, she was not going to disappoint them. I missed my chance to lighten her load a little, but I won’t regret that — she never wanted any of her children or anyone else to regret anything they did, just to learn and move on.

I need to update the introduction you see at the beginning of this recipe. It will mention Barbara as the good and gracious (and old) soul who adopted the recipe as her own and brought it to Thanksgiving dinner for at least 10 years. And I will make it again this year in her honor and in honor of a family that loves to cook and eat good food. Those opportunities to cook and eat together will always be with us as some of our best memories. I hope that it is true for your families.