Page Forty-One.
Soon after moving in with the Van Myms, in '82, I was rummaging through Amanda's spice cabinet. I picked up a bottle labeled "Cardamom" and smelled it, never having heard of it before. I thought it smelled like chicken soup. Amanda explained that cardamom is used primarily in central Asian cuisine and Scandinavian desserts of all things. But she did have to admit that I was right, though she'd never noticed it before; cardamom smells like good chicken soup.
I'd learned to make Matzo Ball soup by that point: buy the box and follow the directions. But I decided to doctor it up with cardamom the following Passover. It was really good! I've been adding it to my Matzo Ball soup ever since and also add just a pinch to my real chicken soup. People enjoy it tremendously.
A couple of weeks ago, a friend hosted a pop-up shop in his backyard and invited artists and craftspeople to come and sell their wares. I showed up and sold my soup. I SOLD OUT. Of course it helped that the pop-up shop was outside, here in Cleveland, on February 9th (30 degrees fahrenheit). Frozen people walked into the enclosure and immediately smelled my hot soup. So, of course, they bought. But still, I sold 43 pints of soup in seven hours. That's pretty good no matter what the temperature.
If you want to improve your chicken soup or make even better Matzo Ball soup, add a dash of cardamom to your broth.
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