In the freezer - freshly procured from my father-in-law's favorite butcher shop in a Cleveland suburb - were packages of spicy Hungarian kielbasa.
And in a plastic tub right above them were at least four cups of rich, cloudy turkey stock my wife had coaxed (after hours of simmering) from a bountiful pre-Thanksgiving bird.
It didn't take long to realize that, serendipitously, all the ingredients were at hand for a good pot of caldo verde, the rustic Portuguese soup.
I was a happy camper, setting about the task - rendering the sausage, tossing in a diced onion and some garlic, then the chunked potatoes, and the dark, shredded kale, the stock, and a secret spoonful of balsamic vinegar.
There is a satisfying concreteness and sensuousness about soup-making - the chopping on the block; the stirring with a long wooden spoon; the bubbling going on long and lazy; the aroma, finally, stretching and rousing itself.
This is what soup was meant to be, the product of gleaning from the pantry, an inventory of real flavors, a pot in the transformative act of becoming something far more than the sum of its parts.
On the same page as a lovely carrot-orange soup recipe in the Silver Palate Cookbook you will find a bit of kitchen wisdom: "Soup," it says, "is cuisine's kindest course."
Or so, by rights, it should be.
That my particular pot of caldo verde, then, was coming together in the midst of a so-called soup war seemed perverse, bordering on profane. But that is the state things are in; and a sorry state it is.
This year's soup season arrived with an untypical vengeance, more suited to visions not of soothing cups of soup in the kitchen as, well, of soup kitchens.
It's going to be a harder, colder world for a while. And if that boosted the fortunes of soup in general- tomato, potato, or chicken - it had the look of pure windfall for one sector: the makers of Factory Soup.
