And that reminds me.........

Well, Sunday I redeemed myself by making homemade vegetable soup and cornbread, and as I sat down here to decide what I was going to write, the vegetable soup reminded me of a "soup" story.  This story was written down by the family "historian/scribe", my sister Barbara, years ago, and I'm sure she did a better job than I'm going to do, but I'll give it a shot -- because it's a cute story.

I was about 10 years old, and it was a cold, snowy, blustery day.  My nieces and nephew and I had been playing outside and were very happy to come in to my Mom's nice warm kitchen, smelling deliciously of her homemade vegetable soup.  We gathered around the kitchen table, bowls of soup in front of us, my mom and four of my sisters ladling soup into their own bowls, pouring cups of coffee and talking away.

Suddenly in the middle of their conversation, my three-year-old niece, Evonne, piped up with, "Pidah in my tsoup!"  The conversation continued, so she tried again, "Pidah in my tsoup!"

"What's she saying?"

"I don't know; sounds like she's saying there's a spider in her soup!"

"Well, there is!  There is a spider in her soup!"

No one knew how the spider came to be in her soup, but the soup was disposed of, a fresh bowl was given her, and talk turned inevitably to such topics as -- places in the earth where spiders might be eaten -- times of famine in which perhaps we might be happy to have spiders to eat, etc.  My seven-year-old nephew, Bill, always a picky eater anyway, stated, "Well, I  wouldn't eat it!"

My seven-year-old niece, Sheila, (definitely her mother's daughter!), tried a compromise.  "Well, if you cut its head off...."

Bill:  "I still wouldn't eat it!"

Sheila:  "Well, if you cut its legs off...."

Bill:  "I still wouldn't eat it!"

Sheila:  "Well, if you drained all the blood out!"

Bill:  "I STILL wouldn't eat it!"

At which point Sheila's mother, my sister Dennice, offered reassuringly, "That's okay, Sheila.  Sometimes no matter how you prepare something, the men won't eat it!"