Souper Noodle Soup

When I was little my Dad made this special soup for rainy days, snow days, pretty much any weekend day when we wanted to help him cook. We called it Souper Noodle Soup. The recipe is simple, basic chicken noodle soup, but instead of using just one plain noodle style, you create a mixture of all the noodles you have in the pantry. Curly noodles, bowties, macaroni noodles, alphabet noodles, linguine noodles, even egg noodles made it into the mix (I hate egg noodles now, but at the time I loved them)... pretty much whatever was in the pantry. My Dad, who my sisters and I named Daddy Boy (everyone has a crazy name like this at my house, it must have been some sort of classifcation system we did when we were growing up. Its completely normal to call my Mom Mommy Girl, Emma- Emma Girl, etc), probably did this to clear out the pantry. Daddy Boy would start the soup an hour or two before eating. The aroma of fresh chicken broth, herbs, celery, and carrots would float through the air.

I recall that my sisters and I would usually abandon Daddy Boy after the noodles were thrown into the pot; back upstairs we would go. Legos would call our name, or dolls, or other neighborhood friends. For some reason or another we would wander back downstairs and the scrumptious smell of Souper Noodle Soup would catch our noses. My Dad is notorious for having a soup spoon and a small dish by the stove, perfect for him to take a taste every once in a while. We would ask to try the noodle-y goodness. It was always delicious and suddenly we would want to eat a meal right then (even if it was only 10:30 in the morning, or 3:00 in the afternoon). Usually we had it for lunch, then again for dinner.

So I'm bringing this up because my Dad has scheduled surgery tomorrow morning. I'm nervous, but hopeful that all will go well. I knew I wanted to make him something, but was struggling to come up with the perfect card. After wracking my mind of creative ideas, a watercolor illustration of Souper Noodle Soup seemed most appropriate. I'm hoping to be able to go and visit him this weekend and make him some Souper Noodle Soup. I will share his recipe with you when I get back from my visit.


Update: My Dad's surgery went well. We will know the final test results next week.