STONE SOUP, LLC

Aha, you're curious about my new company? Funny to be back here on Blogger, a space I have not opened for years. I really just wanted to create a hyperlink for fun to my pretend catering business STONE SOUP which is launching April 27th for our STONES BONES TONES week at Worlds End and then likely closing up shop after May 3rd - that Sunday marking the last day of the Stonewalling course and also the first Coyote Cafe of the season.

A little about me, owner of STONE SOUP, LLC: Retired florist, injured farmer, decent shepherd, failing fundraising director for Worlds End School (dot .org! donate today!) budding evolutionary biologist, soap-maker turned soup-maker!

MAny of you who know me will be confused by this. I have been known to rail against soup categorically. Is soup really a meal? Is anyone ever excited about soup? Name the actual psychopath that orders soup in restaurant. For me, philosophizing on the nature of soup in the canon is also an embodied resistance practice: Worlds End's Coyote Cafe has no soup bowls. If you've dined here sure you may have gotten the occasional soup course, but it is without question is was a last resort vitamix-up designed to move an influx of hakuri turnips or kohlrabi. And it was served in a rocks glass. A move which makes the waiters (me) and dishwasher (me) nuts because we then we run out of water glasses. 

And yet. 

As I was thinking about the dream embodiment class work I wanted for Worlds End this year I envisioned a employing all the senses, touch, sound, taste smell, sight. And getting to know Adam as a stone worker and artist, we talked a lot about movement and song going together - the work song that propels the motion. I thought of Shay who had come for residency the year before and who teaches people to use their voices (feeling exhausted? lie and floor and make noise - any noise - with your voice for 10 minutes. when the timer rings and you get up - you WILL feel different. Our voices - and expression with them - moves things around internally. How many of you have the recurring dream/nightmare of needing to call out to someone/something, but you can't make a sound? Just me, k.)

But bones...so in thinking about stones, I thought of bones because also budding archeologist here duh. When I mentioned bones and making broth from all of our saved chicken bones, feet and lamb bones from the deep freezer to Adam he reminded me that stone-walling...the consideration and moving of so many stones is physically demanding and sipping bone broth site-side would be very helpful in the process. 

I love an excuse to build a fire in the outdoor kitchen - especially when it means I can use my copper cauldron out there. So the performance of soup making started to stir in me, and I thought of the prolific multi-cultural mythology of Stone Soup / the story of a hungry trickster who comes to town with an empty pot. With his 'magic soup stone' he tells villagers of a delicious, transformative soup and convinces them one by one to add a little something for his magic soup...vegetables and potatoes a little meat all eventually go into the pot and suddenly a wonderful feast is had. 

Also stones, bones, tones; I love a perfect rhyme. 

In all sincerity, this course is my favorite education dream yet and I am excited to use the spring season - and all its wild food (nettle, garlic mustard, ramps, etc) to make soups in my big pot. I won't be moving too many stones (bad wrists) but I will be singing; something that is terrifying for me and which is why I'm so grateful for Shay who makes it so easy. Leaning into what is uncomfortable always a good remedy for disrupting a log-jam. 

And for those of you interested, I will demystify how to make chicken stock and bone broth. And how to cook perfect dried beans. 

SR