The smell emanating from the kitchen is telling me it’s definitely autumn on the smallholding as we’ve been making large batches of soups and broths. With all the complexity in the world this simple act feels wholesome and restorative. From collecting produce from the garden and pantry, chopping and dicing, frying and simmering, blending or not, then pouring the unctuous liquid into a bowl, the whole process is as calming as mantra meditation but produces more of an Mmmm… than a Hummm…
In the soup
The climate news meanwhile is unrelenting. Year on year there have been an escalating number of videos of vehicles being washed away in catastrophic flooding. Some folks are now describing this as ‘car soup’ which, as the brilliantly creative and alarm-bell ringing Yellow Dot Studios point out, is ‘fittingly absurd and sort of haha’.
Watching the footage from disasters such as Hurricane Helene in the southeastern US, monsoon floods in Nepal or Typhoon Krathon in Taiwan we’ve now reached ‘house soup’ which seems less comic and more tragic but makes painfully captivating viewing, nonetheless.
These floods aren’t natural, and they aren’t once in 100-year events anymore, this ‘Biblical’ rainfall is man-made, and most importantly, fossil fuel made. Insurance companies are counting their losses and many folk will simply be uninsurable against the next disaster.’
As soup, or consommé, is often considered a starter on the menu it makes me wonder what horrors might be served up by our restless planet as a main course or even what on earth our just desserts may be.
Tomato soup
There was some good news last week, after 142 years the UK has finally stopped producing electricity from burning coal. The Just Stop Coal protests actually worked… no, wait, it’s Just Stop Oil that we really need now as our use of coal has been dwindling for years.
I really am starting to despair at the treatment of the JSO peaceful protestors. Sending two young activists to jail for a couple of years for throwing some tomato soup at Van Gogh’s sunflowers when they didn’t cause any serious damage seems entirely out of proportion to what the fossil fuel executives are getting away with. The judge’s sentencing didn’t even dissuade others as three more brave activists have already repeated the soup throwing action on Van Gogh’s artwork, and it will happen again and again until urgent and meaningful climate action is taken.
Van Gogh
Maybe Van Gogh would actually be pleased to some extent, not by the human-induced climate crisis, but because these acts are an incredible form of expression, and his art is in the press 136 years after he completed it. He created the paintings in beautiful Arles, in the south of France, a region which is, like so many other places, starting to increasingly suffer from floods and wildfires. As we watch cars, homes, trees, livestock and anything else that gets in the way that is not firmly fixed to the bedrock being washed downstream the water turns muddy as it also erodes away the nutrient-rich upper layer of topsoil leaving nutrient-depleted ground which even sunflowers may struggle to thrive in.
In fact, Heinz could learn something from Andy Warhol’s Campbell soup project. Apparently, after considering litigation of the use of printed imagery deriving from their commercial products, the Campbell Soup Company embraced Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup can’s theme. Heinz could do the same and promote the use of their soups to ring the climate alarm. After all, there is no such thing as bad marketing.
Primordial soup
The actions of Just Stop Oil have been condemned in global media outlets. Yet this political dissent goes beyond trying to grab attention. The symbolic defacing of famous artworks represents the threat of climate and ecological destruction on our own culture and heritage. Unlike any other mammal on Earth, over thousands of years humans have evolved with, and maybe partly because, of Art.
I used to teach and promote the need for STEM, Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. However, I now refer to STEAM and celebrate the A for the Arts. STEM focuses on real-world learning through investigations, problem-solving, and evidence-based explanations – all absolutely fine. But STEAM has a process-driven focus and requires the use of vital soft skills in addition to academic knowledge.
After several years of calling for climate education and climate action with dozens of letters to my MP stating the scientific evidence and hard facts that the climate emergency was a serious risk, my wakeup call was the arrival on centre stage of Extinction Rebellion in protests across the UK back in 2019. Their energy, costumes, music, theatrics alongside the sheer scale of their actions was mind boggling. Art is part of being human and gives us powers of communication that my hard science headed attitude had not appreciated until then. There is no time to waste, and we need to go full STEAM ahead. Now, when I’m teaching science, I often encourage the use of art.
Bad soup
Traditional Chinese medicine claims that edible bird’s nests work as a remedy for illnesses like tuberculosis, asthma, and stomach aches. Despite any scientific evidence it also states that edible bird’s nests might improve libido, strengthen immune function, enhance energy and metabolism, and stimulate circulation.
Edible bird’s nests, also known as swallow nests, are bird nests created from solidified saliva by edible-nest swiftlets, which are harvested for human consumption and have been used as a delicacy for over 400 years, most often as soup.
Birds nest
Birds nest soup is one of the most expensive animal products consumed by humans, with prices up to about £8,000/kg. Indonesia is the largest bird’s nest producer and exports around 2,000 tons per year. That’s an awful lot of lovely little birds working tirelessly to produce little nests for their eggs only for all of their efforts to be gathered up and boiled down on a pan for humans to guzzle.
The industry globally is an estimated £6 billion but the price nature pays is far higher. Some swiftlets are now endangered, and local ecosystems are disrupted, just another example of greed and overconsumption wreaking havoc – we can’t lay all the blame at the feet of the fossil fuel executives. Some soups definitely don’t need a fly in them to put me right off and I’m very pleased to confirm my plant-based soups, broths, stews, chowders and potage’s don’t contain bird spit.
The saying ‘chicken soup is good for the soul’ didn’t consider the soul of the chicken – and my lovely ladies would definitely squawk if anyone dared suggest they don’t have a soul or wanted to chop them up and boil them down. I’m pretty certain the swiftlets would agree.
Soup kitchen
Keith Floyd once said: ‘A home is a place where a pot of fresh soup simmers gently on the hob, filling the kitchen with soft aromas . . . and filling your heart, and later your tummy, with joy.’ Hubster has grown around twenty large uchiki kuri winter squash and several more crown prince squash, so my kitchen is filled with the heady, sweet smell of roasting vegetables and pots of soup bubbling away on the stove.
The kitchen is my happy place, and we’ll have plenty of spiced lentil squash stew, Mexican squash and corn chowder, or my favourite, squash soup with nutmeg and melting strings of gruyere cheese which is delicious with some home baked sourdough bread.
If the tide doesn’t turn on the overly enthusiastic sentencing of peaceful protestors, I might even start supplying different flavours of vegetarian orange soup to climate activists, I personally don’t want to get arrested but those brave folk who are willing to give up their freedom to raise the alarm on threats to the future for humanity (and swiftlets) is something I wholeheartedly understand and support. Solidarity in peace and rage rebels. Viva la resistance.
Note to self: Remember to have a word with the HT about consequences of throwing food in the dining hall. It’s horrendously wasteful, messy and the children need to understand they could get into serious trouble if they try the same actions in a public space… although if I were an ex-teacher of the Just Stop Oil activists my bowl of soup would runneth over with pride.
