Category: Soups

Winter Memories and French Cabbage Soup

I still remember how exciting it was when Dad brought home the snowplow for the tractor. He had designed it himself and built it over a few evenings from scrap steel welded and bolted together in the garage where he worked. Attached to the John Deere Model LA tractor, it freed us from a chore we all dreaded. We still had to shovel the porches and paths to the woodshed, chicken coop and storage building, but that was nothing compared to shoveling the driveway and turnaround, especially when the town plow pushed a four-foot-high pile across the end of the driveway.

The arrival of the snowplow is just one of the many memories that I associate with winter when my sisters and I were growing up. We made snow angels, had snowball fights, created snow men and built long snow dragons that we could ride on. We went sledding and tobogganing on the hills along the Namekagon River. Oddly enough, I don’t remember ever being cold when we were out playing.

My mother knitted most of our winter accessories—warm stocking caps, mittens, gloves, scarves, sweaters and socks for all of us. She loved to knit and kept at it until the last few months before her death. I still have and use every winter a pair of heavy wool socks, cream-colored with robin’s egg blue tops, that keep my feet warm at thirty below zero. She gave them to me for Christmas at least twenty years ago. My deer hunting mittens with trigger fingers knitted into them date from shortly after Wisconsin recommended visible orange hunting clothing, so they are at least forty years old but still in excellent condition, if just a little faded.

Those gloves remind me of how concerned Mom was that Dad or I could get shot by someone mistaking us for a deer. She insisted that Dad use a large red bandanna for a handkerchief when he went deer hunting. I protested, so she bought me a pocket pack of red Kleenex. Waving a white handkerchief or tissue really was not a good idea when people with high-powered rifles were in the woods. That flash of white could be mistaken for a deer tail or ear.

Even with such precautions, sometimes bullets came too close. I was seventeen years old and hunting on the bottom of a deep valley north of Mosquito Brook. I was cautiously walking on a deer trail through a brushy ridge when there was a gunshot close to me. While I watched for the deer that I assumed I had jumped I heard a bullet zip past me and another gunshot. That deer must be close, I thought, until another bullet hit a small tree next to me.

I dropped behind an old stump, hollered and waved my hunting cap. The response was another bullet and gunshot. Peeking around the stump I saw a hunter taking aim again from his vantage point a couple hundred yards away and firing again. Another bullet thudded into something near me.

I braced my rifle against the stump, aimed about ten feet above the hunter and fired four shots as fast as I could. The shooter turned and ran. I started after him, losing distance as I climbed the hill. I saw a hunter off to my right and was relieved to see my Uncle Harold approaching. He told me that he had seen a hunter running toward the road who had been joined by another hunter. We walked to Mosquito Brook Road and found a half dozen beer cans where the men had parked their car.

Maybe I shouldn’t have shot towards the man, but then again if he had kept shooting, he might have hit me. Maybe I was lucky that he had had too many beers to shoot straight. The only thing I can say for certain is that it was another example of the luck that has kept me alive for nearly seventy-five years. And it does make a good true story.

Here are some possible titles to other true stories that young people today may find hard to believe. “Why Dad put a pan of hot coals under the car and a blanket over the hood,” “The winter I went skating on the rapids in the Namekagon River,” “Building fires on the lake,” “When my sister stuck her tongue to the mailbox” and “When the snow was so deep, Mom couldn’t get the doors open.” The last two are humorous stories of winter events, though not for my sister or mother.

Another true story could be titled “The many soups Mom made in winter,” for she made a lot of them. Bean soup, vegetable soup, chicken soup, tomato soup, oxtail soup and maybe even “Leftover Soup.” However, I am sure that she never made “French Cabbage Soup.” When she put cabbage in soup, she called it “Boiled Dinner,” and we had it often. Here is where you can find the recipe for my Mom’s Boiled Dinner.

I found the recipe for French Cabbage Soup in the Wisconsin Supper Club Cookbook by Mary Bergin, which my sister Patsy loaned me. The recipe is from Mr. G’s Logan Creek Grille in Jacksonport, Wisconsin, and it makes a rich and satisfying meal on a cold winter day.

INGREDIENTS:

4 T butter
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
3/8 cup chopped onions
1 3/4 cups chopped carrots
1 1/2 cups cubed potatoes
Water to steam the vegetables
1 1/2 quarts chicken broth
1 1/2 cups chopped fresh cabbage
1/4 – 1/3 lb. cooked kielbasa or Polish sausage
1/4 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper

PROCEDURE:

Start by preparing the vegetables. Clean and chop the onion into a quarter-inch dice. Peel or scrub four or five carrots, cut off the stems and cut the carrots into quarter-inch slices. Peel and chop the potatoes into a half-inch dice. Put these vegetables into a large saucepan with about a half cup of water and bring the pan to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and steam the vegetables until they are tender but not soft. Drain them and set the pan aside.

Wash a small head of cabbage (five or six inches in diameter) and remove any damaged leaves. Cut half of the head into quarters, then cut each quarter into half inch slices. You should have about one and one-half cups of cabbage, but a little more is okay.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan or skillet. Blend in the flour and cook it for a minute or a minute and a half over moderate heat to make a thick roux. Using a wooden spoon, stir the flour mixture continuously to make sure that it doesn’t brown or burn. Set the roux aside.

While the vegetables are cooking, cut the sausage into slices an eighth to a quarter of an inch thick and bring the chicken broth to a boil in a soup pot or Dutch oven. Set the sausage aside.

Add the cabbage, salt and pepper to the broth and cook for two minutes.

Blend in the roux and cook until the soup has thickened. Stir in the vegetables and sausage. Bring the soup to a simmer and cook for a minute.

Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

NOTES: This is a soup to serve to people who say they are not fond of cabbage. If you don’t tell them, they may not know that they are eating a cabbage soup.

The original recipe makes about a gallon of soup, but I have cut it in half to produce eight generous servings. If you want a thinner soup or an extra serving you can add a little more broth.

Be careful not to overcook the vegetables.

Like most soups, this one tastes even better on the second day.

Snowdrifts and Chicken Gizzard Noodle Soup

When I think of winters when I was young, I think of snowdrifts. Our house was situated in a grove of jack pines along Phipps Road, but most of the land around us then was open to the winter winds. To the south across the road were fields extending nearly a mile and to the west the jack pines ended halfway to Highway 63, replaced by low brush on the north side of the road. West across the highway were more fields that explained why northwest winds blocked the highway at least a couple of times every winter.

Every fall, workmen installed snow fences at locations where the wind could drift snow over highways and roads. The snow fences slowed the wind and caused the snow to form drifts that were often so compact that we could walk on them. These piles of compacted snow were perfect for making snow caves, and unlike the huge piles of icy snow plowed from city streets that can collapse and kill or injure adventurous children, these drifts were only four or five feet high and consisted of snow resembling light and airy pumice. When a cave roof failed, we just crawled out of the mess and made another cave.

The school bus picked us up where Phipps Road met Highway 63, nearly a quarter mile from our house. After there was enough snow to work with, we built a snow fort at the bus stop to act as a windbreak. I used a shovel to cut blocks of snow and my sisters raised the walls as high as they could reach. I would add the last two or three courses of blocks until we had a comfortable defense against the wind and blowing snow.

Unlike today, school officials did not cancel school just because it was a few degrees below zero. Mothers bundled their children in winter coats with caps and scarves plus stockings for their daughters who had to wear skirts or dresses even in winter. My sister Patsy described an incident that occurred after I was in college and she was nine years old. Patsy and her older sister Betty, a senior in high school that year, were waiting in their snow fort. The bus was late, so Betty sent Patsy home to check if school had been cancelled.

Patsy explained, “I ran home and Mom told me that school had just been cancelled, so I ran back to tell Betty. It was twenty below zero. Betty was wearing a dress that day but had nylons on. She didn’t want to miss school. She had perfect attendance in high school.” Such dedication helps explain why Betty became a nurse.

I sometimes think that my siblings and I have a seasonal addiction to cold and snow. We still live in Wisconsin and none of us migrates south in winter. When friends mention that they will be going south and ask us where we go to escape winter, we tell them we drive north to our cabin because we like the snow. To explain, I like to paraphrase a nineteenth-century promoter from Bayfield, Wisconsin, who listed some of the advantages of winter along Lake Superior: “The lake offers wonderful skating, the roads are perfect for sledding and there’s no rain, mud or mosquitoes.”

I sometimes add how wonderful it is to go for a walk when it is well below zero, to hear the distant boom of ice contracting on lakes and wolves howling somewhere along the brook. I try to explain the brilliance of a sky filled with thousands of stars or the magnificence of the northern lights instead of the monotonous glow of lights from city streets.

Friends respond by asking, “How about shoveling snow and not having any golf courses open?” I tell them that I don’t golf but admit that I do get a little tired of shoveling, especially when a snowplow piles a new load across the driveway just after I have cleared it.

Maybe I could persuade them by explaining how wonderful it is to come in from the cold to a house filled with the smell of freshly baked bread or the fragrance of cinnamon wafting from rolls better than the ones they walk by on their way to an airplane that will deliver them to some swamp or desert transformed into a faux paradise for senior citizens.

If that didn’t work, I could mention the mouth-watering perfume emanating from a pot of chicken gizzard soup like Mom used to make for us kids when we came in for lunch after a busy morning excavating a new snow cave. We had chicken gizzard soup pretty often. Chicken gizzards were cheap and made a tasty soup. Jerri and I made chicken gizzard soup when we were first married for the same reasons.

If I told you that this recipe is the one Mom used, I would be lying. My mother apparently had James Beard’s philosophy about soup: “Look in your pantry and refrigerator and make soup.” The soup slots in her recipe boxes are empty or hold recipes that wouldn’t fit elsewhere.

However, I know what she did, so this is a pretty close version.

INGREDIENTS:

3 T bacon grease, lard or butter

1 lb. chicken gizzards

Dashes of salt and pepper to flavor the meat

2 cups chicken broth

7 cups water

4 chicken bouillon cubes

3 medium carrots

3 ribs celery

1 onion (about 2 inches in diameter)

1 bay leaf

1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

1/8 tsp. salt

4 whole cloves

1/4 tsp. thyme

1/4 tsp. tarragon

1/2 tsp. brown gravy sauce

1 T corn starch dissolved in 1/4 cup cold water

2 T chopped parsley

About 8 oz. uncooked noodles

PROCEDURE:

Gizzards from a market are already cleaned, but I always give them a rinse before starting the soup.  Cut the gizzards into small bite-sized pieces and let them dry on a paper towel while you melt the grease or butter in a Dutch oven over moderate heat.  Put the meat into the pot and season it very lightly with salt and pepper.  Use a wooden spoon to stir the meat occasionally so it does not burn.

After six to ten minutes the meat will have begun to turn brown.  Add the broth, water, bay leaf, ground pepper, cloves, thyme, tarragon and bouillon cubes and bring the pot up to a boil.  Reduce the heat and simmer the meat for two to three hours, until the meat is tender.

Prepare the vegetables while the meat is cooking. Cut the stem and root ends off the onion and remove the dry outer layer. Wash the celery ribs and cut off a little of the top to freshen the cut end. Keep the celery leaves to chop with the ribs. You can peel or thoroughly scrub the carrots and cut off the stem and root tips. Chop the onions into a quarter-inch dice. Chop the carrots into quarter-inch-thick rounds or half rounds. Chop the celery into a half-inch dice.

Test the meat for tenderness after two hours. Test a meaty piece of gizzard. Gizzard meat includes a lot of connective tissue which is perfectly edible, but never becomes really tender. If the fork goes easily into the meat, add the vegetables. If it does not, continue simmering the meat for another half hour or forty-five minutes before adding them.

Bring the soup back to a boil, reduce the heat once more and simmer the vegetables until they are tender. At this point you can either raise the heat and add the noodles or let the soup cool if you want to serve it later. Wash and finely chop the parsley and stir it into the soup before adding the noodles. Cook the noodles in the broth until they are done, usually eight or nine minutes.  Stir in the brown gravy sauce.

Dissolve the corn starch in the water and stir it into the soup.

Taste and adjust the seasoning.

Serve with bread and a beverage of your choice.

NOTES: Barbara told me that she would never eat gizzards, but she was willing to help me with some memories of winter to introduce this recipe. Our younger sister Patsy also contributed details about her winter experiences that I have used in this and other posts. I thank them both.

Finally, as a know-it-all brother, I am compelled to set the record straight about Barbara and gizzards. I have watched her eating mashed potatoes and chicken or turkey gravy on many Sundays and holidays, and I know that Mom almost always included chopped gizzards in the gravy. Sorry, sis.