Читать книгу Beyond Delicious: The Ghost Whisperer's Cookbook - Mary Ann Winkowski - Страница 12

EVE DIDN’T LOOK AT IT AS ANYTHING but a labor of love, but ever since her mother had died she’d been left to care for her father. He was suffering from dementia, and his thoughts skipped wildly from topic to topic, never resting on any single one for very long. He certainly couldn’t manage alone, and Eve was only too willing to help.

It was his anger that made her wonder if she was really up to the task. One of the topics his thoughts seemed to flit to more often than the others was—of all things—pickled-beet soup, and when he started rambling about that, Eve knew it wouldn’t be long before the anger came. He never did anything violent, which is why she’d not seriously looked into a home for him, but he did yell during these outbursts. The strangest thing was, when he was yelling he also seemed to be at his most lucid. His thoughts seemed connected and logical and, in fact, very much as if she was only hearing one side of an argument.

An ongoing argument about pickled-beet soup.

He would even look into the room as if there was someone there. He’d follow this invisible someone with his eyes, shouting and interjecting—and being cut off mid-sentence—just as if there was really someone there to yell at. That scared Eve, too, but for other reasons beyond her father’s mental health. It made her think about ghost stories and the uneasy theories that said some crazy people might not be crazy, they only seem that way because we can only hear half the conversation.

It was at that point that she called me. She’d had enough and she had to know who was crazy: her or her father. Or both.

As it turned out, her father certainly had dementia and Eve wasn’t crazy to wonder about ghosts. Eve’s grandmother was also living with her, watching over her son. Eve had been convinced it was her mother—her father’s wife—but it wasn’t. It was her grandmother, who’d had three girls and one boy and doted on her boy above all the others.

Grandma wasn’t helping her boy’s mental health—or physical health—by being there, though, and at first she was affronted when I told her this, but then she calmed down.

“I’m just upset because he’s not getting his pickled-beet soup,” Grandma explained.

“Pickled-beet soup?” I wondered, glancing at Eve. Eve nodded slowly.

“That makes sense—he’s often yelling about beet soup.”

When I looked over at him, his eyes weren’t looking at us; they were following his mother. He could see and hear her just as well as I could. Grandma smiled sweetly at her boy then turned back to me.

“I keep telling him that soup will make him feel better, and that’s when he gets upset. No one can make his soup like I can. Not even his wife could, and Eve certainly can’t.”

I told Eve what her grandmother said, and Eve agreed that she wasn’t much of a cook.

“But will she try, if I give her the recipe?” Grandma asked me. “Please? For my boy? Will she try and make his soup?”

Eve agreed to try, and Grandma agreed to cross over once she’d given us the recipe. Two weeks later, Eve called me to tell me how the soup had turned out.

“The house doesn’t smell so good,” she admitted. “I had to move the pot to the detached garage while it’s stewing, but you wouldn’t believe it, Mary Ann.” I could hear her getting a bit emotional, but she gathered herself and explained, “When he ate that soup, my father actually cried with joy.”

She paused, then added, “It must be an acquired taste.”

Grandma’s Pickled-Beet Soup

6 large or 10 small beets

4 cups lukewarm water

1 slice sour rye bread

Salt and pepper to taste

Dash of sugar (optional)

Scrape and dice the beets. Cover with water and place slice of bread on top. Cover loosely and let stand for 4 days in the warmest part of the kitchen. The liquid should be sour and tasty by that time (depending on the weather). Should mold appear, carefully skim it off. Discard bread and season soup to taste. May be served hot or cold with sour cream, if desired. Tightly covered, it may be stored in the refrigerator for later use.