Author: Kacie Cotter-Harrigan

Hello my Foodie Friends! We are in that time of year where we plan for meals that warm us up during the chilly days and plan for the upcoming snow days. I reflect on many winter days that include my fondest childhood memories playing in the snow. I enjoy sharing this story with you each winter. I grew up during a time when the average household included at least four children, and you were literally thrown outdoors to play and told not to come back home until the streetlights came on. Playing in the snow included making homemade sleds to slide down the golf course hills, making snowmen, and of course, building the best snow fort in the neighborhood.  In our house we divided up the tasks to ensure that our “fort” could withstand repeated attacks of snowball wielding elementary school kids. In the creation of our snow fort, my brother Danny was the engineer, and he mapped out how high and thick the walls should be. My youngest brother Billy was the builder and shaped the inside of the fort for the chairs, refrigerator, and snow TV. The baby of our family Patty was the support staff.  Since I was the oldest of the Reardon children clan, I was the recruiter and went door to door finding my soldiers and builders. We were not allowed to use the phone back then (adults only), so when I came to the door and knocked you could hear a stampede of children in the house trying to get to the door. My first stops were Dave and Karl’s houses, and they lived next door to each other.  They were my age but were already almost as tall as most of our fathers at the age of six. Dave turned out to be 6’8” and Karl is 6’6”. If you want your walls to be the highest, I thought, get the tallest kids. Our first forts were wrecked at night by teenagers until my brother Dan came up with the idea of putting water on the outside walls and it would turn them into ice.  You could hear the howls of the mean teenagers when they kicked the walls, and they didn’t give so easily.  By the end of the long winter day, we all needed something warm to take the chill out of our bodies. 

Soup during the winter months is like having a big warm hug! Although we enjoy soup year-round, it is when the chill is in the air that we truly embrace a variety of these belly-warming concoctions. It’s the comforting feeling that happens in our home whenever we make soup, that makes it so desirable. Soup was a meal that my mother made often to serve our household of seven people (five being young children). Coming in from school in the afternoons or a day of play outside with our neighborhood kids, I could taste the soup through the aroma. A soup that is dear to my heart that evokes Italian childhood memories of my mother’s cooking is the Italian Wedding Meatball Soup. She would make her own homemade chicken broth. Chicken broth is a staple in most Italian households. You can rest assured that there will be a few quarts in the freezer at all times. You need a really good homemade broth to make pastina, vegetable soups, risottos, sauces, and chicken dishes pop with flavor. There was one essential item that my mother had to have to assist her with the process of making her broth, the soup sock. 

You can fill these cotton mesh bags with your favorite herbs and ingredients for flavoring stocks and soups. The finely woven material holds delicate herbs or expands to accommodate everything from bones to chopped vegetables. When cooking is complete, simply remove the bag – no need for straining! They are made of strong, 100% fine cotton mesh. The soup sock comes in a large size to accommodate all sorts of flavoring ingredients, from bones and whole vegetables to herb leaves. They will not impart odors or flavors into soups or stocks. The best part is that they help with mess–free cooking – no need for straining. The packets of soups socks come in sets of three and they are made in the USA.

Stop by Compliments to the Chef, your Neighborhood Kitchen and Cutlery store located at 33 Railroad Place, to get soup socks and the supplies you need to create your favorite soup.  Remember my Foodie Friends; “Life Happens in the Kitchen!” Take care; John and Paula.