By GORDIE LITTLE, Small Talk
Here's the soup scoop. I love it — all kinds of soup.
Broccoli and cheese soup is my favorite, although squash soup is in the top two. And come to think of it, plain tomato soup and a toasted cheese sandwich make for a mighty tasty lunch.
DELICIOUSLY SIMPLE
Awhile back I received an e-mail message from former Plattsburgh resident Bruce Behan, who now resides in Indiana. It was terse and to the point: "I remember you did the expos-ay on the North Country origins of the michigan (which, I may note, was given some press in Gourmet Magazine). I was wondering if you have ever done any research on the origins of that other staple of the North Country table, macaroni soup."
Nope. The only connection I have had with it concerns the motion of my huge soup spoon and a very loud slurping sound when it passes my lips and enters my cavernous mouth.
Come to think of it, I do see it on the menu of most restaurants hereabouts. It's generally listed as "hamburger macaroni soup" and is deliciously simple to make with hamburger, macaroni, onions, canned tomatoes, salt and pepper. But I never considered it either local or even regional.
Bruce and I exchanged notes on the topic. He said he had it once or twice a month when he was growing up here. He said most other families he knew did the same. He saw it on the menu of just about every "beanery" in this area, but never outside Clinton County.
He mentioned several now-defunct Plattsburgh diners and small eateries that featured hamburger macaroni soup many decades ago. I agreed. He went on the Internet, as did I, and found many variations but none quite like ours. He speculated that at least as far back as the Great Depression when times were especially tough, families were trying to stretch that pound of ground beef as far as they could. Bruce's mother told him cooks could feed a lot of people "on a nickel's worth of hamburger."
He mentioned the Italian migrant workers who came to pick blueberries on the Altona Flat Rock many years ago. Migrants also picked apples in Chazy and Peru. He added, "It was said you could tell a lot about a family's finances by their macaroni soup. The better off they were that week — the more hamburger in the soup. The worse off — the more macaroni. Food for thought (pun intended)."
TOO MUCH PEPPER
Makes perfect sense. I did my own informal survey of restaurants and senior citizens. The consensus seemed to agree with Bruce's assessment. Our friend Lu Murphy, who worked in Malone when I was in Moira as a teenager, tells us they served hamburger macaroni soup at my favorite hangout, The Karmelkorn, in the early '50s. Karmelkorn and hamburger macaroni soup — how's that for a culinary combination?
Lu reminded me that the soup was also a staple in homes and restaurants north of the border around Ormstown and Hemmingford, Quebec, when she was a child.
At breakfast one recent Sunday morning, Millie Sears said her late mother, Phoebe LaMar, raised all of her children on lots of hamburger macaroni soup. We laughed aloud as she recounted how her late father tried to make the soup one time but put in so much pepper that no one would eat it.
Our friend Weslene Goodman is originally from AuSable Forks and now resides in Las Vegas. She writes, "I have made mac/hamburger soup for years. It was a meal we could afford growing up. My kids loved it as well. I have also added a dab of butter."
She says when she makes it these days, she sometimes uses V-8 juice with her browned hamburger and macaroni and even adds vegetables.
Then there is Kaye, who says her macaroni soup is different. She starts by browning beef chunks, adding water or beef broth, onions, chopped celery, macaroni, white rice and finally — canned tomatoes. She recommends salt and pepper to taste. Even our grown kids who no longer live here seem to be able to smell it from their distant homes and come a knockin' at mealtime.
She does it that way because it was her late mother Leona Vaughan's recipe. When there's turkey in the house, she cooks up the bones, uses the turkey leftovers and makes the soup precisely the same way as she does with the beef.
Leona also made what Kaye calls "the best vegetable soup ever! She canned it and it was always a treat to bring a jar up from the cellar."
And, there was Soupy Sales, who has nothing whatever to do with this subject.
Have a great day and please, drive carefully.
Gordie Little was for many years a well-known radio personality in the North Country and now hosts the "Our Little Corner" television program for Home Town Cable. Anyone with comments for him may send them to the newspaper or e-mail him at gordandk@aol.com.
