There are multiple depressing elements in heating canned soup for breakfast. The first meal of the day is lentil soup. It was preceded by a sourdough pretzel appetizer and now accompanied by a a broadcast of "Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride: Hunter S. Thompson on Film." The soup has cooled off considerably since I poured it into my bowl. I feel guilty for not enjoying it while it was piping hot, and now I've realized that vegetarian soups can and perhaps should be enjoyed at room temperature, but who am I to throw the "should" word around when it comes to culinary delight. Perhaps every man should be granted the freedom to taste food subjectively without me and the stars of the Food Network criticizing them for their eating habits. Should pushes us away from our own nature and into the arms of the lady I call Sameness. She smells good and will give you children, a job, a home and hot soup. Ms. Sameness, who hates to be called Ms., went to the University of Tennessee and drives a Nissan Altima.
The tin can came from unknown origins. Evidently it is distributed by a Minnesota company. However, the analyst and cynic within is almost certain, without any evidence to back his suspicions, that the industrial-sized vat that birthed this lentil soup is located somewhere in Mexico. The can is a Mexican can and the truck that brought it to Texas... Mexican. The truck, a vagabond of the Interstate 35 corridor bearing produce and cans and a variety of generic products: aspirin, salt, white socks and everything imaginable. I am amazed at how the can has evolved since I was born. It now has a pull tab. Gone are the days when my mother used a special device call a "can opener" which had one purpose. It opened cans. There were openers driven by electric motors, most driven by hand, and some, the most recent incarnation of the utensil, designed with a child's safety in mind. I have played with these openers created to cut through the tin without leaving a sharp edge, they do the job. The advertisements for these machines shows a child reaching for the lid of a can held out to him by his mother. His own mother, giving the promise of a tasty lid betrays the boy when he discovers it is an instrument of death, slicing his finger. My good friend Alan will never know the tragedy of losing a loved one to a soup can, he has the safety opener. I feel very bad for the can opener. He's nearly obsolete. Like the brave thinker, the madman, the philosopher, the know-it-all. Better to hide away in anonymity on the internet than bring your political views into the open. That's what I would say to the disenfranchised can opener of only he had ears with which to listen.
When I was a child my mother made a delicious lentil soup from dried beans, chicken stock, onions, tomatoes, carrot and love. When I was very young I couldn't stand the bitter lentil, the dark brown broth, the gritty meat of the bean. As I got older, my mother's soup grew on me, or I grew into it. My favorite dinner growing up, at least in memory, was a bowl of Mom's lentil soup with a side of potato frittata. The soup I ate this morning was not cooked and canned by my mother. If you want, we can go to her house in Vegas and I'll let you taste her soup. But not today. Today, heating canned soup in a worn out pot, the one that lost its non-stick bottom months ago, is the emotion I am afforded which is unfortuante on a such an overcast morning. Today it would be better that I be sitting on the floor of my bedrrom, playing Nintendo, my mother's voice calling after me for 10 minutes or so until she appears in the doorway and says finally that it's time to eat. To which I reply, "But I don't like lentil soup." Which deserves a, "Well that's too bad." Reluctantly I pause my game and walk to the kitchen where my father sits spreading margerine on his whole wheat toast. The brown chunky liquid is steaming. I am allowed to pour grated cheese into the bowl, stir it around, take a spoonful from the edge, blow, and taste. I would not know until much later on in life that those days of eating soup for dinner would one day be a nostalgic anchor for an older Frankie. A Frankie who has to make his own soup now that he has no mother to take care of him.
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