When Is Sorrel Soup More Than Sorrel Soup?

Sometimes a garden can be a little aggressive and it will kind of bark at you: “This is what’s for dinner!”

You may have other plans. You may have no plans at all. But you look over at a plant and notice that it needs attention immediately. Yesterday, it was sorrel. We have three sorrel plants in the garden and they were all looking tall and leggy with seed heads threatening. There was no getting around the fact that they all needed a serious haircut to stop them from bolting.

I trimmed them up and they look great now, but that left me with a very large harvest of beautiful, fresh sorrel leaves. I knew I had potatoes at home, and fresh spring garlic, so I grabbed a little duck stock from the garden freezer and headed home to make sorrel soup.

I absolutely love sorrel soup, so I’m not complaining. But it strikes me as interesting about gardening and seasonal eating that sometimes there are forces bigger than you, more in tune with nature than you, that are making dinner plans for you! That old saw, ‘when life hands you lemons, make lemonade’ doesn’t quite get it right.

‘When life hands you lemons, make lemonade, today, tomorrow at the latest’ is more like it.

Sorrel soup is more than just sorrel soup when it teaches you to use your resources wisely.