Reality Check

Recently, I mentioned the economic downturn in the state of the lobster industry.
Lobster prices are on the rise up and down the coast of Maine; they are nearly double what the low price was. For now.
This is a very good thing.

'Cause I'm just not up for a Depression.

Not right now. Maybe later.

The funniest thing to come out of all this recent financial drama (are you getting all this biting sarcasm, here?) is that sister2 learned to make soup. (She cooks, but less than sister 1 or myself. So I get to make fun. Plus I'm the oldest; I have seniority.)

Not just any soup.

Depression soup.

I'm intrigued. Please share.

Sister 2: Well, I had a roasted chicken for dinner one night, and I saved all the bones and stuff after we'd eaten all the meat off it, you know?

Yeah. I know. It's called a carcass. (and I have an idea I probably could have fed my family of 4 with what was left on those bones...)

Pretty word. Well, I saved it, and used it to make a soup!

No shit. Really? Can I just ask...how did you used to make soup? You know, before your profound revelation regarding the not wasting of the carcass?

With a whole chicken, or a few legs.

Yeah, way to waste a chicken. I'll bet that slow boiled meat tasted just great.

 

                       How bizarre. I've never even thought to use a whole chicken to make soup. And                           how did we grow up in the same house, and learn 'soup' so differently? I must get to                     the bottom of  this. 

                    I have no life.

                    I called sister 1.

And how do YOU make soup?

 Sister 1: What, are you taking stupid pills?

Humor me, how do you make chicken soup?

I throw a chicken rack in the crockpot with onions, celery, carrots, and some water....

Ok, just checking. And who taught you that? 

I don't know, why? Probably Ma. Or Mom. ** What's it to ya, anyway?

Never mind. By the way, your sister's an idiot. She may have been adopted. Or dropped on her head as a baby.

**lest some of you think we should audition for The Jerry Springer show, I don't have two mothers. MA was our Grandmother, now (sadly) deceased. MOM is our Mother (alive and hiding tupperware lids in all our kitchens).

Below is an excerpt from a post on Trent's Blog

"I’m a student of the Great Depression. I’ve talked to many people who lived through those years about their experiences and read countless books on the subject.

We are not living through anything that even compares to the Great Depression, and to even imply that we are is simultaneously deeply insulting to those who did live through it as well as woefully ignorant as to what it was like.

There are no block-long lines for soup kitchens. More than 90% of the nation is fully employed - not the 60% or so employment of the 1930s. There is no “dust bowl” - soil and water conservation practices have made such a huge loss of our nation’s bread basket impossible. People aren’t going to lose their money to bank failures - the FDIC has them insured."

And all I can think is, I'll bet they don't use whole chickens in the soup kitchens.