The Stone Soup——does it ring a bell? I am sure it must, as it was one of those lovely stories that we heard during our adolescent years. I used to love this one, particularly because the story taught me something really important. I will come to that moral in a bit, after I have eloquently narrated the story (I know I know, you must have by now remembered the story; I am only doing this for the sake of narrating it my ishtyle! :P)
The Stone Soup story is a very old fable, the origins of which are not fully known. I obviously do not know when the story was first told, but when I searched for it on Google I found versions of the Stone Soup story from post-war Eastern Europe, North America (reeling under during the Great Depression) and a Portuguese version too. The story has definitely moved around the world, even to Northern Kenya! This aptly shows how popular it must have been and I have no doubt about that, given that the story appeals to the entire human populace (if I may say so). The Stone Soup is a story about making something from nothing, a story of “unity in adversity.” A simple mixture of stone and boiling water takes the form of a delicious soup with the addition of a little bit of this and a little bit of that. At heart, the traditional story is a trickster tale. Typically, the person who starts preparing the soup is a stranger who is denied the food he requests from someone living in a house. In many versions, including in the American Civil War version, the stranger is a soldier looking for food.
Ahem ahem...now that I have managed to generate a little bit of curiosity for the actual story, I won’t waste time in narrating this age-old fable, a personal favorite of mine, and this is my personal favorite version of it!
And since I am of the strong belief that all stories MUST begin with “Once Upon a Time,” here I go...
Once upon a time, a kindly old stranger was walking through the land when he came upon a village. As he entered, the villagers moved towards their homes locking doors and windows.
The stranger smiled and asked, "Why are you all so frightened? I am a simple traveler, looking for a safe place to stay for the night and a warm place for a meal. "
"There's not a bite to eat in the whole province," he was told. "We are weak and our children are starving. Better keep moving on."
"Oh, I have everything I need," he said. "In fact, I was thinking of making some stone soup to share with all of you." He pulled an iron cauldron from his cloak, filled it with water, and began to build a fire under it.
Then, with great ceremony, he drew an ordinary-looking stone from a silken bag and dropped it softly into the water.
By now, hearing the rumor of food, most of the villagers had come out of their homes or watched from their windows. As the stranger sniffed the "broth" and licked his lips in anticipation, hunger began to overcome their fear.
"Ahh," the stranger said to himself rather loudly, "I do like a tasty stone soup. Of course, stone soup with cabbage -- that's hard to beat."
Soon a villager approached hesitantly, holding a small cabbage he'd retrieved from its hiding place, and added it to the pot.
"Wonderful!!" cried the stranger. "You know, I once had stone soup with cabbage and a bit of salt beef as well, and it was fit for a king."
The village butcher managed to find some salt beef . . . and so it went through potatoes, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and so on, until there was indeed a delicious meal for everyone in the village to share.
The villager elder offered the stranger a great deal of money for the magical stone, but he refused to sell it and set out to continue his travels the next day.
As he left, the stranger came upon a group of village children standing near the road. He gave the silken bag containing the stone to the youngest child, whispering to the group, “It is not the stone that is magical, but the villagers that had performed the magic. Use the stone wisely when you wish to feed yourself and others who are starving."
Doesn’t it sound lovely? There's even a Stone Soup Poem that I found...
As a little kid, I wondered at first if the stone was really magical. But as I grew older, I learned the hidden meaning(s) of this story. We have all been taught to share, to care and to work together with others. But this story and its simplistic approach taught me much more—that it is important to share and care when we are all facing some adversity, some difficulty, some hurdle, some crisis! That’s when we are all so weak, and that’s when we need each other’s support. By working together, with everyone contributing what they can, a greater good can always be achieved. And so I coined the term “Unity in Adversity.”
Now before I get preachier, I want to share what is My Veggie Stone Soup all about. It is my endeavor to share my own cooking experiences through this blog, my experiences of sharing food with all those around me.
O.K. honestly speaking, some of these are not just harmless ‘cooking experiences’ but truly my (mis)adventures in the kitchen. But c’mon, I have been cooking so much lately that why not share my recipes with whosoever wanting to try them out? This thought obviously prompted me to sit down and write these very lines for your eyes to read, but most importantly I want to thank my dearest dost Snigdha for the inspiration that I drew from her Life on Simmer. I got hooked on to the idea of writing a food blog only after reading her wonderful blog.
So coming up are some lovely recipes from my kitchen, and I swear they will be simple enough to try and delicious enough to feed your guinea pigs. Ha ha ha..yes, it is most critical that you do find a bunch of such good-natured food-lovers who will try your cooking and let you experiment with their palate. And mind you, good-natured is important because you don’t know how your cooking will turn out to be. As far as I can assure you, there is nothing to really worry about here. I will have tried all of these recipes before I post them, and will hopefully not post my disastrous ones for you to try.
As I gear up to cook up something today, I’ll leave you with Julia Child’s charming wish-
“Bon Appétit!”
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