Making Soup

I've made this soup since 1968. In Provincetown they call it Kale Soup and it's a bar-food. I first had it at a bar in P'Town, dining and drinking with the editor of the newspaper, a young guy, name long forgotten, who had inherited the paper from his father. We shared an interest in Charles Olson. Later that summer he made the soup at his house, in Wellfleet, for a rag-tag group of writers. I sat on a stool, in a hashish daze, writing down the ingredients. Cape Verde he said, a lot of the last generation of old Portuguese fishermen. P'Town was changing fast. It needs to be Spanish chorizo, because the Mexican is too salty. Slow cook the garbanzos in chicken stock. Rip the kale from the stalks and tear it into pieces. In an act of defiance I'm using baby spinach instead of kale. I love kale, don't get me wrong, I used to raise it as a forage crop for my pigs, I've eaten hundreds of pounds of it, I think it actually does cure Dropsy. But the demand for it has gotten so strong that Kroger was out of it and I bought Baby Spinach instead. Mustard greens would be good, even collards, but my ex-wife always loved spinach and I became quite fond of it. It might not hold up as well against the chorizo, but it'll still be good soup. Since the stove is going, I re-treat two of the four cast-iron corn-stick pans. My corn-sticks are acknowledged, in inner circles, as being food for the gods. I've actually been forced to make more of them, under the threat of physical violence, on more than one occasion. It's raining again. I put on the Cello Suites while I'm cooking. For entertainment sit and stare out a window, stir, and walk about. Spanish chorizo is always in casings, sheep, usually, less than an inch in diameter, you just cut it into rounds; now I make my own, and it's lose, breakfast sausage, and I fry it, before I add it to the pot of beans, along with any rendered fat Then add the kale (or spinach), pull it to the coolest part of the stove and let it simmer for an hour or two. Don't add any salt. When I'm eating corn-sticks I put the butter-dish in front of me and add a thin slice with every bite. I should well be dead, to anyone betting or keeping track, but cornbread has kept me alive. And arrowroot, and cat-tails, and various suspicious vines.