Step Right Up with What You've Got

Stone soup is what you need, when you have some friends to feed.

Step right up with what you've got, add your stone to the big soup pot.

Pete Seeger swooped right (back) down into my heart when he retold the famous tale of Stone Soup in an illustrated picture book complete with a read-along tune. I read about three versions of this folktale to my preschool class each year prior to our Group Soup/Stone Soup cooking day, including one called Hammer Soup in which a little girl overcomes her frustration with her fun neighbor's lazy work ethic. Perhaps it's the way I swoon over making something out of nothing, the idea of so many parts coming together to make a whole, or even more simply that kids really believe a stone or a hammer is the foundation for a good pot of soup - that makes this activity never grow old for me. I've had many a pot of stone soup over the years between school and my own kitchen. It's one of those recipes you can't mess up. You can always make it better, but by definition you can't mess it up. Even when half the potatoes spill on the floor, the carrot chunks are added as timber-sized chunks hewn by a butter knife, or the dash of salt was a child's dash.

Making stone soup with the kids is a gateway to overcoming Intention Deficit. Intention deficit: those really good ideas that your gut tells you are good but you haven't figured out why, or worse yet that you know how and why they are great but you have a tough time getting the message communicated. The original Stone Soup folktale is about a hungry, tired soldier who comes into a village after a time of war when the villagers are so broken they don't trust or help their neighbors let alone a stranger. The inventive and wise soldier builds a fire in the middle of the village, attracts the attention of a child (it's always the children that know when something important is happening), and proceeds to acquire a pot, some stones, and all manner of small and squandered contributions from the villagers which culminate in a community meal and a rejuvenated town spirit. In my mind the soldier was an intention deficit master. He artfully communicated his idea without asking for help, and he created an experience through which everyone learned by doing and no doubt ever forgot. The point, of course, is that working together creates something in both the short term and the long. 

This year we ran a little short on planning time for our group soup recipe because I was out of the classroom conferencing the class day before we made our soup. I was determined to get everyone's choice ingredients on the list vs. the usual parent sign-up for a planned assortment of ingredients. If we truly succeeded in that, we'd usually have strawberries, cookies and apples in the soup.  This year I was a little smarter and aimed to 'write' a recipe out of vegetables with the kids. I got a little closer to overcoming intention deficit. I know that for three-year olds there is a fair chance we'll be recreating the idea as if it's a first conversation on the day everyone adds their gots to the pot. But when one little girl exuberantly told me we'd need a hammer for our soup list, I knew at least one person was with me all the way.