Soup Bucket? Again, one of those Afrikaans things that don't translate very well.
This is my mother's "sop emmer".
Why does one need a soup bucket? To carry soup of course! Remember I wrote a post about soup back in October with my 5 minute posts? OK, well even if you don't, I talked about how soup was such a major part of our Ramadaan tradition growing up in South Africa.
When my parents were newly married, they lived 3 streets over from my mother's parents, so during Ramadaan my father would go over with the bucket to get some soup from my grandmother.
My father asked my mother why she didn't just make soup herself instead of him having to go over to her mother for soup. With a straight face she explained that soup took three days to make, so it was best he went to get a refill on the bucket. So off he went with the bucket.
It's a silly story that we heard has children, and have mostly forgotten over the years. Until I needed an enamel container to make lemon pickle the other day. I reached way back into the ridiculous corner cupboard that runs beside the sink, and there it was.
My parents would have been married almost 52 years, so this sop emmer is at least that old. I go years without using it, and then it comes back out of the cupboard again, bringing with it old memories of my parents and grandparents.
The sop emmer plays no role in any of my own memories - I guess by then my mother had learned to make soup herself. In my mother's kitchen, it was always hidden behind the pots, but you'd see it every time you reached into that cupboard. Every now and again, my mother had to move it to reach something else, and she'd tell us the story again.
Maybe I'll keep it out and find more ways to use it - for a while at least.
This is my mother's "sop emmer".
Why does one need a soup bucket? To carry soup of course! Remember I wrote a post about soup back in October with my 5 minute posts? OK, well even if you don't, I talked about how soup was such a major part of our Ramadaan tradition growing up in South Africa.
When my parents were newly married, they lived 3 streets over from my mother's parents, so during Ramadaan my father would go over with the bucket to get some soup from my grandmother.
My father asked my mother why she didn't just make soup herself instead of him having to go over to her mother for soup. With a straight face she explained that soup took three days to make, so it was best he went to get a refill on the bucket. So off he went with the bucket.
It's a silly story that we heard has children, and have mostly forgotten over the years. Until I needed an enamel container to make lemon pickle the other day. I reached way back into the ridiculous corner cupboard that runs beside the sink, and there it was.
My parents would have been married almost 52 years, so this sop emmer is at least that old. I go years without using it, and then it comes back out of the cupboard again, bringing with it old memories of my parents and grandparents.
The sop emmer plays no role in any of my own memories - I guess by then my mother had learned to make soup herself. In my mother's kitchen, it was always hidden behind the pots, but you'd see it every time you reached into that cupboard. Every now and again, my mother had to move it to reach something else, and she'd tell us the story again.
Maybe I'll keep it out and find more ways to use it - for a while at least.
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