Cooking (Minestrone) as Love

What do you do to help when there’s really nothing you can do? If you’re me, you cook. And cook and cook and cook. On Friday morning, my father-in-law, Bill, had emergency quadruple bypass surgery here in Longmont. As I know from personal experience, there is nothing more terrifying than seeing your parent so vulnerable and knowing there is not much you can do to ease their burden. As an in-law (and, really, an “ex” in-law at that), I felt hopeless to help Eryc and his family, and particularly Bill himself, as they struggled through these days of diagnosis, planning, surgery and recovery. The one thing I felt I could do was to feed everyone, and feed everyone I did.

With a mind on easy-to-transport, easy-to-reheat and heart-healthy meals, I made a huge batch of my homemade minestrone, adapted over the years from The New Moosewood Cookbook, an Earth mama classic. I love this cookbook, and this is my absolute favorite soup. Not to be too arrogant, but over the years I have modified it to make it really the perfect soup. I don’t make it as often as I should because it feels time-consuming, although I’m not sure it really does take that much longer than other soups. Just lots of chopping. 

My version is chockfull of veggies—carrots, celery, tomatoes, zucchini—plus garbanzo and kidney beans and a bit of organic whole wheat rotini. I’ve also started adding the leftover rinds I’ve been saving from my Parmigiano-Reggiano for a bit of added flavor. The soup is gorgeous (all of the veggies maintain their beautiful bright colors), delicious and incredibly healthy. The vegetables still have a nice crisp-tender texture, and the pasta and beans add some needed weight. It’s pretty fabulous soup, and feels entirely nourishing for body and soul, which I suppose was my real intention.

In a frenzy of cooking born entirely out of love, I also made homemade blueberry muffins, macaroni and cheese with Swiss chard, salad with mom’s celery seed dressing, dark chocolate brownies with walnuts (thank you Ghiradelli), dinner rolls to have with the soup (thank you Rhodes), homemade pizza with homemade sauce, dark chocolate chip cookies (Tollhouse recipe with Ghiradelli dark chocolate chips), Boar’s Head natural turkey and ham sandwiches, apples, assorted snacks and, for dinner tonight, tortellini with prosciutto and spinach (which I’ll write about later). 

Bill’s surgery was a huge success, and he is recovering wonderfully. Everyone at the hospital is amazed at his progress. Eryc and his family seem to be gradually emerging from a state of shock and breathing that first, deep sigh of relief. Me, I feel happy to have played a peripheral part in what has been an exhausting, but positive, weekend.