Spicy Tomato Soup

Once, when my mother was in the hospital, my father, brother, and I were batching and we had to prepare a meal. I think it was a noon meal. We all liked the tomato soup that my mother made for us, so we decided to make tomato soup. The recipe for Mother’s tomato soup was in one of her cookbooks. We found the recipe and had no problem following it until it called for 2 or 3 whole cloves. We looked through the spice shelf, but we found no whole cloves. We did find a container of ground cloves. I remember that we looked at each other and wondered how big a clove might be. The premise was that if we knew how big a clove was, we could substitute a suitable amount of ground cloves. We didn’t really know, but took a guess and put in a teaspoon or two of ground cloves. We heated the soup and dished it up. When we took our first spoonful, we quickly realized that it had way, way too many cloves! It was awful! We couldn’t eat it. But we were hungry and we didn’t want to waste a pot of soup. So we decided that if we doubled the recipe without adding more cloves, it might be saved. We went to the basement and got another big jar of canned tomatoes and doubled the recipe. That helped, but it was still pretty awful! I think we might have eaten a little bit of it, but in the end we had to throw it out. I still don’t care much for the taste of cloves.

As yet, I haven’t found the recipe, so I can’t share it. The cookbook that has the recipe was a hard bound cookbook that I remember as having a dull blue cover. It is still around somewhere because after Mother died, we divided up her cookbooks, and it either went to Maurice, Mary, or me. When we locate it, we can scan the recipe and add it to this story.

This fiasco happened sometime in the mid to late 1940’s when I was maybe 8 years old, but I still think about it whenever the subject of tomato soup comes up. 

- Max Miller
son of Hollis and Joy Miller