Our 2nd Annual Soup Day

Somers PTA serves up homemade garden soups
By Barbara Livingston Nackman

SOMERS - The aroma of roasted vegetables and blended herbs wafted from soup kettles through school hallways Friday, a particularly cold and rainy fall day.

It was the second annual, but greatly expanded, Soup Day sponsored by the Parent Teacher Association at Somers Intermediate School.

Third- and fifth-graders lined up rather excitedly to get their bowls filled. One would think it was ice cream sundaes on tap rather than warm soups made from produce organically grown in the school's gardens.

Lily Williams and Isabella Rukaj, both 8 years old and in third grade, jostled in line for their turn to try different kinds and then compare.

This year the offerings expanded from school's harvest vegetable and tomato and basil soups to a selection of others including roasted squash, zucchini and clove garlic soups.

"It's really good," Lily said of the tomato soup in which a basil leaf floated in the bright orange-colored broth.

"A little sweet and it sticks to the roof of your mouth," she added, savoring the flavors.

Isabella liked the vegetable variety, which did not have chunks of carrots, celery, zucchini and tomato but rather was a puree of these vitamin-filled selections.

"You don't know what it is going to be," she said setting her bowl aside. "But when you eat it, you taste the flavors. It is something you don't think or expect."

For two hours, the almost 900 students gathered in the third grade Great Room for soup before their regular lunch of cheese pizza, tossed salad and vegetable sticks.

The sweetness would have come from the garden's tomatoes, said PTA organizer Helen Brady, explaining that the school's gardens produced a vibrant crop without a fungus found in many local gardens this year.

The mother of two children in first and fifth grade, Brady worked with school staff and parents to plant nearly two dozen kinds of vegetables and herbs in two gardens. With student help, they planted seeds and small plants, weeded and harvested the produce.

Then Brady made the soups. She froze batches at home. In all, she assembled 37 containers each holding about 13 cups for roughly 480 ounces of soup.

Friday at least 30 parent volunteers showed up with pots and ladles to help serve the soup.

The garden idea was sprouted two years ago by Maddy Manzella. A longtime third-grade aide and cancer survivor, she said she relies on organically grown fresh vegetables and wanted to share her interest.

"This is called our Everlasting Garden and it should be a legacy for our children and their parents," she said. Many of the students have parents who also attended Somers schools, and she hopes that one day the current children will tell their children that they ate from the school's garden.