History Case

Food, being an essential part of human life, is the most publically private affair known to human kind. Public because of how every person needs it to survive. Each being, family, or culture makes food in different ways, which is what makes food such a private matter. Traditions and rituals have surrounded food for years. It brings people together. Food does so within my own family. Thus, it is time to discuss the Javorsky Sunday Soup.

The Javorsky family for the longest time and even in present day can be located on one street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Stromberg Street. Big Bern, my grandfather, lives on one end of the street and my great aunt Mary and Uncle Eugene live on the other end. With this close proximity, daily rituals for the entire family were not hard to hold. One of these traditions is the preparation and consumption of Sunday soup. It is no gazpacho or other high end soup, it is simply chicken soup; it is the Javorsky chicken soup. It's ironic that we do not eat Campbell's chicken soup whose design was made by one of our cousins, but he was not a Javorsky by name. This soup we can call our own.

The tradition that surrounds this soup was that after mass on Sunday morning, my Cioci Dolly would begin to make the soup. After the soup was done, she would send one of her children in delivering some to the rest of the families. Then, everyone would sit down with their soup, Heinz ketchup in hand, and eat it while watching the Steelers bring home yet another victory. The ritual of Sunday soup has changed, like many things in life. Instead of Cioci Dolly, because she is too old to cook these days, my cousin Darleen (her daughter) makes the soup and distributes it to the people who still remain on Stromberg Street. Big Bern's family goes to my Cioci Kathy's house (his daughter) to enjoy Sunday Soup and football. My immediate family enjoys Sunday soup at home instead of in the company of my mother's brothers and sisters, but I guess the Mendicino's have always been different in going about family traditions. In essence however, the traditions main points have stayed the same; the soup brings a family together to enjoy the company of others.

This is no soup that is simply bought from a can. The broth is made from scratch, having a whole chicken boiling in water with carrots, celery, and other herbs. As the broth cooks, it makes the whole house smell like chicken broth, which to me is one of the best smells ever. The noodles are the best part. You mix flour, water, eggs, and salt together (in the right proportions of course) to make a runny dough-like substance. With a pot of boiling water, you simply begin to pour the dough through a wide strainer to make small dough drop noodles. This process takes very little time because the noodles cook rather quickly, so as