WDM, IA - Green Bean Soup

Speaking of mothers, here’s another mother story - but, this time, it is Gary’s mother.

Gary’s grandparents both came from Czechoslovakia, separately, to America, met in Fort Dodge and raised a rather large family. When her son, Lug, married, Darlene, his new wife, wanting to serve her husband a recipe from home, got this recipe from his mother. Now, when their son, Gary married, being the good new wife that I was, I asked his mother for the recipe for Green Bean soup, which he said he liked. You know, passing down the family recipes. And, here is the recipe she gave me:

This is all I got. There’s nothing more. Now, isn’t that just like an old family recipe? I’ll bet each of you has a recipe tucked away that is just like this.

        ‘Cook beans with plenty of water.’ How many beans? What is ‘plenty?’

        ‘When they are about done, add diced potatoes.’ How many potatoes?

        “Brown bacon, onion until onion is transparent.’ How much bacon? How much onion?

And so on. I also have an old church cookbook and it is just as vague in some spots. Well, I soon figured it all out and it has been one of our favorites for our 39 1/2 years of marriage. It did trip us up once. Gary, who doesn’t have as much experience in the kitchen as I have, made this when I was working and he became the household cook. He looked at that word ‘vinegar’ and put in a cup. WOW. It was good but a bit tart. Luckily he had made a large pot of it.

I made that notation of ‘sour cream’ and somewhere along the line I must have decided that sour cream added a bit of flavor to it. But then, of course, I was adding skim milk instead of half and half. I also decided somewhere that I liked it better if it had been allowed to brown on the bottom of the pan a bit. My sister-in-law, Cathy, who has the same recipe, adds Velveeta cheese to it since she saw her grandmother, from whom the recipe first came, add cheese in her last years. But, she does not let it brown on the bottom of the pan - I wonder why.

Thus, this is a favorite of both of our families and it is what Cathy served us when we ate at her house yesterday. Can anything be better than a bowl of bean soup? Sure - another bowl of bean soup - which is what I and the other three had. Delicious. And, then just one more small taste to finish it all off. Thank you, Darlene and Gizela (Gary’s grandmother) and Cathy. Great meal.