For the first time in my life, I made chicken soup. Real chicken soup, like not from a can...
... And it reminded me of making mud pies when I was little.
My grandpa's house in Wall Twp. had fruit trees all over. A pear tree on the corner near the driveway, a giant mullberry tree that dropped little clothes-staining bombs on our playclothes. There was a blueberry bush that we plucked berries from to snack on when we were hungry, and a bee-infested apple tree that threw runty sour apples on the ground.
These were our ingredients.
My sister and I would fill a shallow plastic bucket with mud, letting it bake in the sun as we went out and collected the ingredients. Then we'd bring them back to our kitchen which was near the dog's house and consisted of an industrial sized aging wooden spool that we used as a table.
And then we started cooking. It was just like a cooking show. Now that we had all our ingredients, we set to work building our cake.
In a separate bowl, we'd mush up the mulberries into a blood purple paste that would stain our fingertips for weeks. This would be the icing.
We'd use the rock to dissect the pears, picking out the seeds and brown spots. "Get some leaves," I'd say and she'd go running off to get the garnish.
We'd go through the blueberries, tossing away the mushy ones and the ones that weren't ripe yet, keeping the good ones.
By that time, the sun had baked the mud pie into a semi-solid brick of dirt that was hard on top, but gooey in the middle. It was perfect.
Flipping the bucket upside down and gently removing the pie was the hardest part... cause if it fell, our pie was ruined and then we'd just forget about waiting for another pie to bake and we'd make soup. Little kids don't have much patience, and we were no different.
We'd put it on the table, pour the mulberry mush over it as icing, then set to work decorating it with leaves, pears and blueberries. On top, we'd sprinkle slivers of ripped up grass. I remember getting done and thinking that it was the most beautiful thing we'd ever made.
But it must have looked really bad.
Even the dog, who was straining at the end of his leash the whole time we were cooking didn't even want a piece when we tried to feed him.
So, 19 years later I'm in the kitchen making real soup, thinking about those mud pies.
It made me really sentimental, missing those long days of playing outside in the sun, saving animals, climbing trees, exploring the woods with our dog and baking beautiful mud slash fruit pies.