This past Sunday I worshiped with Friends at New Paltz Meeting on the other side of the Hudson River in New Paltz NY. New Paltz Meeting, along with Poughkeepsie Meeting, Cornwall Meeting and my meeting Bulls Head, are part of a regional group that we Quakers call the Quarterly Meeting, because we get together once a calendar quarter.
New Paltz Meeting also has a ministry of soup, but their custom is a little different. They have a kitchen right next to their meeting room and as soon as Meeting for Worship is over, they pull a big table into the center of the room and bring out some nice bread and a pot of soup that has been warming. Everyone shares soup and fellowship together as we come back to the temporal plane after the experience of worship.
New Paltz Friends take turns making the soup. This Sunday David Goodwin made a hearty black bean soup that smelled deliciously of cumin. I found David enjoying sunshine and soup on the porch and took his picture and got him to tell me about his soup.
David started, as I often do, by sauteing some onions, garlic and carrots in a bit of oil. Then he added 4 cans of black beans, 2 cans of tomatoes, and a can of corn (whole not creamed!) and 12 cups of vegetable stock. He seasoned the soup with ground cumin, chili powder, salt and pepper. This was a simple but flavorful soup that fed a room full of Friends and everyone seemed happy to go back for seconds.
If you are visiting New Paltz, the Quaker Meeting is right on off the main drag downtown. It's a lovely meeting that is very welcoming to families with small children and they won't send you away hungry.
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