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CHICKEN SMEDLEY.

Article Excerpt
My father once made soup. Barley soup. This was, give or take, forty-five years ago. The soup was red, so tomatoes must have been involved--also, I'm guessing, carrots, celery, onions, a turnip, maybe some soup bones, probably garlic, plus a few impulse grabs off the spice rack. He made it on a Sunday afternoon when I was sick and in bed and, unaccountably (blizzard? tornado?), he wasn't playing golf. I have no idea what my mother, the designated chicken-noodle-soup-to-sick-children bearer, was up to that day.

Nor do I remember anything about my father's soup's medicinal value (I got well, but who knows), only that it was the best I had ever tasted. My vivid sensory memory of that gustatory episode, I think, derives from this essential ingredient: surprise. As a matter of domestic policy, Dad's self-assigned task--insuring that ample provisions were in the larder--by no means extended to preparing a meal and putting it on the table. The pot of soup was more or...