Cold Soup and Climbing Numbers

            This morning I woke up thinking about cold soup. I wasn’t dreaming about cold soup exactly, it was more that I was thinking about wanting to make soup—anything to get rid of the dang parsnips. You see, we had accidentally bought a ton of parsnips at the farmers’ market, mistakenly thinking they were carrots. We thought they were interesting “carrots” because they were white (this is not a race issue, promise). Plus, they were in the carrot section, except (unbeknownst to us), there were no carrots to be found. We did not know that, as you might have guessed, because the white “carrots” were, in fact, parsnips. (You might have seen that coming). Later, what annoyed us about this exchange is that the person selling them knew we wanted carrots (we think) because I had said to my husband, with the seller in earshot, “Oh, get plenty of carrots; we need them.” Now if the seller knew what we actually wanted because he heard me, presumably, one can assume that he also knew he was not even selling carrots (which he wasn’t), then something is amiss. Maybe he didn’t know we wanted carrots, in spite of my clear directive. Maybe he wasn’t listening. Maybe he was listening, knew we wanted carrots, and he is just a dick. The funny part is, he probably did hear us (he was standing right there). I think he did hear, but he wanted to get rid of the damn things, too. This resulted in fewer parsnips for the farmer and far too many for me. The parsnip/carrot mistake was revealed that evening when I put a carrot into the salad. It was not a carrot, of course. Yuck.

            Fast forward to a different day, fridge still has plenty of parsnips, and not a carrot in sight. However, with the exception of a root vegetable soup, I know not a single other thing to use parsnips for, until, like a genius, I thought of roasted vegetables, including parsnips, of course, which I did eventually end up making, even though I didn’t want to cook. It is too damn hot to cook, because it’s been 100 degrees. Not hyperbole, it really has been 100 degrees. It’s just that I get sick of making salads all the time.

            This excess of parsnips and complete lack of carrots (due to the cruel farmer, who tricked us into the parsnips purchase) is what led me to think of making soup in the first place, just to use up the damn things. Then once I thought of soup, the only type of soup I could think of is a root vegetable soup, because that has parsnips in it, as well as carrots and rutabaga. The root vegetable soup I know how to make contains only three things: carrots, parsnips, and rutabaga. The fly in that ointment is that parsnips don’t taste great, and rutabaga is weird. I never buy it, except to make root vegetable soup in the winter. In the winter. Oh, and finally, I didn’t have any carrots, thanks to the evil farmer.

In advance of going to farmers’ market, having made zero plans to make root vegetable soup, and, due to my initial naïve innocence of the parsnip fiasco, I didn’t have a rutabaga either. With the exception of root vegetable soup in the winter, I know of no other reason to have parsnips. I assure you 100% (not 99.9 but an honest-to-God 100%) normally I would not have a single one of those damned carrot-imitators in my my home. The thought that I knew zero other things to put parsnips into led me to a deep, existential question. First, how can one make root vegetable soup without either rutabaga or carrots? That sounds hideous. Oh, we had no potatoes or onions either (I forgot the fourth and fifth ingredients), because we didn’t buy any of those at the market either. Okay, so much for hot root vegetable soup sans root vegetables. Parsnip soup is out of the question. That sounds gross, too.

            However, not to be deterred, this morning I weighed my possibilities, losing track of the parsnip challenge entirely. I could make a cold soup! What cold soup could I make? Then I realized, that there are, in fact, no cold soups except gazpacho. I don’t even like gazpacho! (If there is any other cold soup besides gazpacho, I’ve certainly never had it. I don’t think so at any rate). However, now that I’ve been forced to consider the notion of cold soup, I do have some vague memory of going to a swanky place years and years ago where my husband had a cold melon soup. Gross. Also, what kind of swanky place doesn’t have an oven so they can make real soup? Just kidding. So we must return to the notion of gazpacho, or melon soup, which as I’ve already declared is disgusting—the notion of soup, not the melon. Melon is amazing. (You are welcome to form your own opinion, of course). Furthermore, neither gazpacho nor melon soup would solve the actual parsnip problem, so the entire thing was an exercise in futility. 

            Diving further down the rabbit hole (as, apparently my writing tends to do here), as far as I am concerned, there are only two kinds of melon worth eating: watermelon and honeydew. Cantaloupe is just a sad attempt to be honeydew, but frankly, for me it belongs right there in the icky category. I mean, why bother? Cantaloupe is the impostor of honeydew, the parsnip to the carrot. The great pretender.

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            From cold soup to root vegetables to blaming the entire fiasco on the farmer at farmers’ market (he was probably pissed at himself that he had planted parsnips by mistake. Everyone knows carrots are way better) to the notion of the obvious superiority of honeydew, I snapped out of it. It occurred to me that there are way more important things happening in the world than soup of any kind.

            I remembered that we are here together on Day 121 of Covid* so even the notion of soup is a non-starter, as the expression goes. (Come to think of it, those gross cold soups–like melon soup or gazpacho—are, in fact, technically a starter). There are things that honestly matter that are going on in the world, like this hideous virus—as opposed to soups of any kind, cold or otherwise. So, as I came back to a bigger reality, and out from the depths of the parsnip drama (or is it trauma?), I looked up the Covid case numbers on the Internet. I discovered that in Butte County, where we live, we are now at 522 cases, 4 deaths as of July 18. (I’ve been keeping track. Those numbers are current as of Friday, since the counting people get days off, too—as they should). On 6/22 they were 111 Covid-19 cases. On 7/18, 522. Hmmm. I’m no mathematician, but 522 cases is way more–way, way more– than 111. Of course, the whole state (and country) is exploding with Covid, too, whether a gradual increase or a tremendous one, like in Southern CA. Regardless, the spread keeps going and going. I wish I hadn’t even looked. It is so depressing. I just ruined my damn Sunday. Instead of reading about the numbers, I’d rather eat gazpacho.

*To clarify, when I say Day 121 of Covid-19, I am referring to the first closure in CA by Governor Newsom, not the first day it was identified.