more on Soup Swap 2011

It's now been a couple weeks since it happened, but it wasn't really fair that I didn't post some key imagery, photos and explanation to go with the Soup Swap story.

Ryan really takes his job as our designated Soup Story Teller pretty seriously and this year he commissioned me to some artwork as props for his story about our "Na'a'hohai Epazote" Soup (sounds like "Na-ho-hay Ep-a-so-tay").  He began by explaining the main ingredients via photos:

I say, Chicken (Navajo word for Chicken is Na'a'hohai - spelling debatable)

 and

Epazote - a Mexican herb (often cooked with beans to dissipate, well, their...effects)

For your reference, there's also chicken broth, green chiles, and mexican cream (for which I used creme fraiche - half of which was homemade!), among other ingredients. [Side note: I've been dabbling in some dairy making and am loving it so far.  Have tried yogurt, although without much success in getting it to firm up like regular yogurt.  Now creme fraiche, which was very easy and much cheaper and easier to find ingredients than the store bought variety.  And I helped Julie make some mozzarella with a kit she bought.  And it worked - what a fun thing to have the curds turn into stretchy shiny lovely little balls of yummy cheese!]

Then Ryan went on to explain how we accquired the two key ingredients.  There is an old Navajo rodeo tradition, that we learned about from Julie, called the Chicken Pull, wherein they used to bury a live rooster with the head sticking out, and would attempt to pull it from the ground while riding horseback.  I believe it became a pretty bloody affair; you can read more about it here.  Needless to say, we had to get the chicken for our soup somehow, so I did the honors:

original image from here

Then on to the epazote.  Ryan and the guys went out in search of the herb and pulled it in a similar manner: 

Thanks (and apologies!) to the artist of the original watercolor, Martin Gambee. 

So the story goes anyway...

More photos from the event here.