Heidi and Ardy's Potato Soup
“I’ve come in through the laundry room which was connected to the garage. I remember knowing that my mom had made potato soup just by how the house smelled...”
I was feeling nervous a few Saturdays ago, on April 3, as I prepared to host a four-hour zoom workshop called Inheritance Stories as part of the Oregon Humanities So Much Together series. It was a balmy spring day, the kind when it feels like color has just returned to the world, and I felt bizarre and cruel stealing four hours of people’s time. Although I’d planned very carefully (with extraordinary guidance from Rozzell Medina, the series creator) and tested my idea on close friends and a class of students, this was the first time I was going to try out my oral history framework on strangers. My plan was to send groups of three people who didn’t know each other at all into zoom breakout rooms to share personal stories. It seemed both beautiful and risky.
The fourteen people who joined that Saturday were attentive and engaged beyond my wildest dreams. If you’ve been reading the newsletter since its inception, you know that my first test of Inheritance Stories led my friends Nancy, Stef and me to make a zine that we’ve been selling (with proceeds donated to LA Chinatown Mutual Aid).
The basic idea is that three people get together and each person takes a turn as the interviewer, the storyteller, and the recorder. When you are the interviewer, you follow a set of questions asking the storyteller to share a recipe they learned from someone in their life, memories of that person, and sensory descriptions of the places where they first encountered the dish. The interviewer doesn’t interject but simply encourages and listens. When you are the storyteller, you take your time answering the questions the interviewer asks. When you are the recorder, you take notes as carefully as you can, trying to capture details and voice. And then everyone switches roles until everyone has played every role.
I’ve had the chance to read the stories created during the workshop over the last two weeks, and they’ve delighted me with their vividness. I’ve asked permission to share a few in this newsletter. I’m starting with Alix Jo Ryan’s memories of her grandmother’s and mother’s potato soup, which I’ve edited for length. You’ll notice that these really stem from the questions asked—in that way, they are not always linear, but they do sometimes surface details that I think would go missing if someone told a story the way they always tell it. Sometimes one vivid detail acts like a homing device to reach a distant memory and sensation. I love the way that other people’s particular memories jog my own, even when they take different shapes, and also how my imagination begins using the details they share to erect a structure for their memories to occupy. I hope this will happen for you!
I am collecting all of our stories for publication by Oregon Humanities, so stay tuned! I encourage anyone who has the desire to capture memories, especially from the older people in their life, to try this framework. It’s been a surprisingly powerful way to open people up.
Heidi and Ardy's Potato Soup
My name is Alix Jo Ryan. I was born in Clackamas, Oregon, and now I live in Portland, Oregon. I am an artist, gardener, and granddaughter. I am very energetic, observant and curious. I sometimes serve in a restaurant. I am a person who loves people, and a person who hangs out with kids a lot. I really like to be outside.
I learned how to make potato soup from my mom, Heidi, and my Grandma Ardy. My grandma is from North Dakota. She is Mennonite. She is a very social person whose life is oriented around serving other people. She has really soft skin and knobby, wrinkly hands and eats potatoes raw. My mom was born in Michigan, but the family moved to Canada when she was one. She grew up in Canada, moving west over the course of her childhood. She went to middle and high school in Vernon, BC. She is motivated, busy, sporty and very social. Both of them are always in the garden, at a sewing machine or in the kitchen. They are women who didn’t have the options of not being women. My mom was in a really bad accident when she was a kid so she has little scars on her face. Her skin is browned and spotted from having spent most of her life outside. She has un-died fully silver hair. It’s amazing. She has really blue eyes that always get commented on; they are eerie and piercing. She also is very, very soft. My grandma is small and spunky, has her mom’s faded eyebrows and rides an e-bike with her super old Boston-Terrier on the back.
I think my grandma probably learned how to make potato soup from her mom. I don’t know where this dish comes from. Recently, when talking with my grandma about what she ate growing up, she shared that they ate what was available on the farm. She grew up on a farm, so things like milk from the cow, bacon from the pig, potatoes, carrots and butter were always available.
My first memories of this soup include coming home from soccer practice to the smell of butter. I must be around 5 in my first memory because that is when I started playing soccer, though I’m sure I was eating this from when I started eating solid foods. In this memory, I am in Gresham, Oregon in the second house my family owned. I’ve come in through the laundry room which was connected to the garage. I remember knowing that my mom had made potato soup just by how the house smelled, and that this smell alone would make me so happy and excited for dinner.
The room smells like burnt caramelized onions and butter. The windows are steamy. There is an electric stove with coil burners. There is a thin misshapen pot that the soup is in on the stove. My mom is flushed and in the kitchen doing a lot of things. I’ve been asked to grate a big block of orange Tillamook cheddar cheese. I’m probably using a box grater to grate the cheese directly onto the countertop, although I also remember sometimes grating it into a clear pyrex bowl. The countertop is made of square marble tiles that my mom acquired very cheaply from leftover building projects in the area. Some of these tiles are arranged into a nine-patch quilt shape. She tiled the countertop and the floor herself, and also put in the ceiling fan. She was very proud of doing the electrical work for this fan. The room is very warm.
In the kitchen are my dad and my sister and whoever we’re having over for dinner. At my grandma’s house especially there were always extra people at the dinner table. If we are at my mom’s house then we’re talking about school. Both of my parents are teachers. My dad rode his bike to work so I would ask him about his commute home. This was made on regular dinner nights or for a large crowd. The ingredients were all affordable and it was fairly quick to throw together.
We always ate out of these blue hand thrown ceramic bowls from Portland Saturday Market. I remember making sure that my bowl was filled to the brim with soup. The soup was thin and creamy colored with speckles of buttery oil blobs. You could see cubes of russet potatoes floating in it. The over-caramelized mixture of onions and celery floated to the top, too. There are paprika colored speckles of Lawry’s salt1 on the surface of the soup. And then, of course, a generous handful of shredded cheddar cheese was plopped on top. It quickly began to melt into a stretchy and salty coating for the potatoes. I remember having to blow on my spoonful of soup to cool it down enough so that I could eat it. This always felt laborious because without the temperature slowing me down I would devour the bowl and go back for seconds in no time.
I first made this for myself in high school. I do still make it, but it is more for nostalgia than for actual nourishment. When I eat it, it doesn’t taste as good as the memory.
It was a frugal food when I was a kid, pretty watery and salty. Salt was a primary flavor. As a kid that was pretty great. But as I’ve widened my palette… Well, I don’t have Lawry’s salt for any reason other than for this soup. Or a box grater for that matter. I love it because it smells like home and tastes like butter. The texture makes it really easy to consume. It is hot and mushy; it is my comfort food. It is soothing. My grandma still makes it when I visit her in Canada. I make it because it makes me think of the people I love.
To make this, take carrots, white onions and celery and get one of those hit-it-hard chopper things that turns. Ours was from a Pampered Chef catalogue I think. In waves put the celery, onions and carrots in there and hit it as hard as you can. It’s pretty emotional. This is a solitary activity. Meanwhile, heat up a pot with a lot of butter, like most of a stick. All the vegetables go into the pot. Stir this all with a wooden spoon whenever you smell it starting to burn. Meanwhile, chop the potatoes into ½ inch cubes. This always feels like a race against the caramelizing onions. Add the potatoes to the pot and add enough water to cover the potatoes. Cook for the right amount of time. When they seem cooked, add whole milk and salt. Then take it off the heat and add Lawry’s salt and maybe celery salt. If you’re feeling fancy, add bacon bits (freshly made, not from a jar).
This is really good kid food. It also makes the house warm and smell really good, like butter. Butter is the smell of love. Also, there is no formal education for this. The way the recipe is passed down is your mom makes it for you until she asks you to make dinner one night and you do it and she has a lot of critiques. I still think of it as my favorite food, even though it is definitely not flavor wise.
Lawry's salt is a seasoned salt that is reddish and full of preservatives (I'm assuming) and could be purchased at Safeway or Target or maybe even a gas station? I just scanned the wiki page, and apparently Richard Nixon's favorite snack was cheese sprinkled with Lawry's salt, which I feel like should give you a pretty good idea of its quality—ha! Anyways, the bottle has looked the same for forever—we would buy it in the economy pack size, aka BIG SHAKER. Also, apparently it was the first seasoned salt on the market (1938)?!