Potato Soup - A Quiet Seventeen-Day Story

And a heart felt holiday verse

[The last of the soup — 17 days later.]

Potato Soup - A Quiet Seventeen-Day Story

And a heart felt holiday verse

By Jim Reynolds | www.reynolds.com

As my readers know, I made a couple of big pots of potato soup seventeen days ago. These were the largest cooking vessels I could find around here — so large, in fact, that I had to call my wife in Orange County to ask where she hides these seldom-used giants of the kitchen.

Her temporary absence from our mountain place was the nudge I needed to return to a rhythm I perfected early in adulthood: cook once, eat for days. Back then it was survival. Now it’s convenience mixed with nostalgia. And truthfully, I just like the soup — its humble, steady flavor never seems to wear out its welcome.

Those pots — some would call them mini-vats — were set on the stove on November 8, the same day the original story went out. They were the kind of steaming cauldrons that make the whole house smell as if someone’s mother is about to walk in. AI later analyzed the photos and estimated the cost at about thirty dollars, which turned out to be almost exactly right. A gallon of milk, a pile of potatoes, carrots, celery, onions, butter, a few sliced hot dogs — familiar ingredients doing familiar work.

From there, November settled into its own shape. Each day had a bowl. Sometimes I reheated it to volcanic temperatures; sometimes I ate it lukewarm because impatience won. And yes — some days I didn’t heat it at all. I just took a bowl from the fridge and ate it cold.

They have a name for that, by the way. I’ll come to it.

The soup thickened a little more each day, the way all good potato soups do, as if the ingredients were quietly coming to terms with one another. Expert tip: if you ever want to thicken it instantly, just add potato flakes. My repetitive eating habits weren’t about austerity so much as continuity — the quiet pleasure of something predictable, possibly warm, and uncomplicated.

But there’s a step I haven’t mentioned yet: I had to go to the produce section at Safeway and pick out the time-tested ingredients. This is not my usual habitat. My wife does most of the cooking and knows this terrain well. I only know it because potato soup requires it. My natural territory is the perfunctory magazine rack on aisle four.

I’ve talked about the soup. Now a word about the person behind the memory: my mother.

In her later years, after the kids were grown, she treated a trip to the grocery store as a tiny social appointment. She’d dress up, carry a couple of quips the way others carry coupons, and keep a private score of whether they landed with the familiar person behind the register. She loved people, and Safeway was one of the places where they reliably showed up. Nothing theoretical about it. She simply enjoyed the passing exchange and the personal connection it provided.

Back to the soup.

And when you stack this stretch of soup against the modern alternatives, the contrast becomes its own soft lesson.

McDonald’s every day for seventeen days would run between $170 and $200. A reasonable sit-down restaurant? Over $300. Add a Starbucks latte each day and you’ve tacked on another $100. Modern convenience charges admission — one receipt at a time.

Meanwhile, the potato soup carried me nearly three weeks for about a dollar a bowl. In 1970, the same stretch would have cost maybe twenty cents. The world gets louder, faster, more expensive — but a pot of soup still holds its own against the noise.

Nothing symbolic, nothing grand. Just seventeen days held together by something warm, familiar, and good. A small ritual that asks very little and gives enough.

A poor man’s vichyssoise.

[Together, again, we finish it off. Note the sliced-up Oscar Mayer wieners.]

A Timely Spud Grook

A pot that stretched through half a month,

A frugal feat, but not a stunt.

The taste was plain, the comfort deep,

A bowl before I went to sleep.

Some nights I warmed it; some I didn’t—

Vichyssoise by accident, not intent.

The days marched on, the pot held steady,

Always waiting, always ready.

And in that warmth, your presence stayed—

In simple things that life has made.

For every quip and every cheer…

Happy Thanksgiving, Mom.