Kazia Jankowski - big world | small kitchen

Subscribe via FeedBurner Email:

Strawberry Soup

High up on my parent’s cookbook shelf, there’s a small, hardbound-and-battered cookbook. Its red and white cover resembles the Polish flag, and its yellowing pages are full of dated recipes from that Eastern European country. I suspect that my parents bought the book in the early years of their marriage. That was when my father, a Connecticut Jankowski, was actively trying to reconnect with his ancestors, and my mother was trying to learn the food of Dad’s heart.

When I flip through the cookbook these days, I’m happy that, for the most part, the book never made it past the initial part of my parent’s marriage. Not that I wouldn’t have survived a childhood of horseradish-stewed fish, grilled eel, and pickled beef, but I can only imagine the middle school stares and crinkled noses I would have received when I opened my lunchbox.

Of course, there are a handful of recipes that have made it out of the red-and-white book and into my collective family history. Strawberry soup, for one.

This simple blend of strawberries, buttermilk, sour cream, and sugar occupies a space somewhere between dinner and dessert. Between yogurt and a smoothie. But despite its sweet-tart, berry tastes, and suspiciously early morning or post-dinner flavors, this is a soup—at least according to my family tradition. It’s served in a bowl and eaten with a spoon. And like, say the cool cucumber or avocado soups of contemporary American childhoods, it made its way on into our family summer lunches and barbecues.

In mid-July or early August, I’d sit on our back patio—dry Colorado heat stifling the air, fans blowing, dad cursing over the barbecue—and I’d temper the warmth with spoonful after spoonful of chilly, pink soup. With each slurp, I’d picture skinny, blond girl halfway across the world doing the same. In my imagination, she’d also be on an outdoor patio, but hers was covered by a strong wooden roof and surrounded by raspberry bushes. She’d look just like the girls we’d seen the summer I was seven, and we traveled to Poland. Her name might be Kazia, too. Or perhaps she’d go by the full, old-fashioned, Polish name, Kazimiera. Either way, she enjoy those cold bites of fruity soup almost as much as I did.

Today, I’m more likely to eat strawberry soup hunched over my computer or alone at my high-top table, long after the sun has gone down and the heat has mellowed. But even then, caught up in the pressures of adult life, one spoonful of strawberry soup slows me down. I can taste the innocence of summer: bright berries, icy milkiness, and sunny memories of Mom and Dad.

• home
• about
• RSS
• all text and photo copyright 2010 kazia jankowski
• design by dm