No need to sneak kitchen utensils to mix ingredients for our Simple Saturday Nature Soup. Everything we need - other than a 2 to 4 foot long string, a pencil, and notebook - can be found in nature. Be it the beach, a hiking trail, or a neighborhood park, the ingredients required to make Nature Soup can only be found in the great out-of-doors!
Here's what you do. Take your happy self and your Simple Saturday supplies outside someplace. Tripod and I went to a lovely shaded park. We strolled together along the creek. I admired the ducks' acrobatic buoyancy. Tri trash-talked with the squirrels. (I don't think they were too wary of him. He's all bark and no bite.)
Search the ground to find a nice bed for your Nature Soup. Tie the ends of your string together to form a loop. Lay the loop on the ground, spreading it wide enough to capture as many interesting items as possible. Then simply sit and observe. What's inside the loop? Look close, close, close. What do you see? Make a detailed list of the items. Detailed now - colors, shapes, sizes - you know. And then write a recipe for your little looped spot of the Earth. Use your imagination. Get crazy. Have some fun!
Here's what I came up with:
Peaceful Park Pizza
4 ivory colored sea shells (various degrees of tiny)
2 rocks of chipped limestone
1 long, thin grey stick
1 chunk of weathered driftwood
1 piece of wood (perhaps chipped off of a picnic table)
1 mega-McNasty cigarette butt
1 brave little green elm leaf (curled)
Sprigs of desperately dry grass ranging in shades of green to tan
Arrange ingredients on a dry bed of small leaves of multiple shades of brown and various decomposed states. Bake in the 104 degree Texas sun for weeks on end.
Pray for rain.