Warm Cherry Soup with Dumplings

Warm Cherry Soup with Dumplings

OK, my friend Dr Bill was being his usual smart ass self and wanted me to make Cherry Soup in honor of George Washington's birthday.  Well, I'm not one to take a smart ass challenge lightly.  I started researching Cherry Soups, and all I could find was sweet "desert soups".  I didn't even know there was such a thing as "desert soup".  So, I have taken great pleasure in preparing this soup because it is pretty much all mine from scratch.  Feel free to modify this recipe as you see fit, but I like it just the way it is.

---Enjoy

Warm Cherry Soup with Dumplings

1. In a large saucepan or soup pot, heat the extra virgin live oil over med high heat,, add the onions and garlic, reduce the heat to low and sweat covered for 20 minutes.
2. Add the cherries, reduced sodium beef broth and cinnamon. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium and cook for 15 minutes or until cherries until tender. 
3. For dumplings, combine the flour, baking powder and salt; stir in milk. Increase the heat, bring the soup to a boil and drop the dumplings by teaspoonfuls into boiling soup. Cover and cook for 10-15 minutes or until dumplings are fluffy.
4. If the soup thickens too much for your liking, add more reduced sodium beef broth to thin the soup.
5. Stir in the spicy brown mustard, season to taste, ladle into soup bowls and serve.

A Twist on the Dumplings When making this soup, I had some extra dumplings.  I could not see that going to waste, so I rolled the dumplings in my hands and put sliced jalapenos in the middle.  I boiled them until fluffy in beef broth and it turned out to be a great appetizer.

Ingredients For the soup 4 cups fresh, frozen or canned pitted chart cherries  (Since cherries were not in season, I used tart cherries canned in water.  they worked great.) 2 cups low sodium beef broth 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon   1 cup yellow onion, finely chopped 1/2 teaspoon spicy brown mustard For the dumplings cherub tomatoes 2 cups whole wheat flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 cup milk A dash of salt

George Washington Never Chopped Down A Cherry Tree

EMILY UPTON 18

Myth: George Washington once chopped down his father’s favorite cherry tree.

 George Washington Never Chopped Down A Cherry Tree

The story goes that a young George was about six years old and had been given a hatchet, which he enthusiastically used to chop at just about anything in sight. One morning, he even chopped at a cherry tree, eventually cutting it down. When confronted about it by his father, George hesitated but told his father, “I cannot tell a lie.” He admitted to the crime. Rather than punishing George for chopping at the tree, his father said that his son’s honesty was worth more than a thousand trees. It’s meant to be a story that’s a lesson in integrity, and shows one of Washington’s many supposed virtues.

First published by the biographer Parson Weems in 1809, ten years after Washington’s death, the story reportedly came from an old neighbor who’d known Washington as a boy. However, it is the only historical source of the story, and as a legitimate source, it isn’t very credible.

Very little was known about George Washington’s childhood, especially his relationship with his father, who died when Washington was just eleven years old.

Given that Weems is known to have copied and adapted several of his “George Washington” stories in that “biography” from English folklore, to illustrate various traits George Washington supposedly exhibited in spades when he was an adult, and that Weems provides no firm evidence to back this particular tale, historians today consider the cherry tree story complete fiction.

There have been other falsehoods about George Washington that have been perpetuated in American History classrooms, too. For instance, George Washington never ate his supper with a set of wooden teeth.It’s true that Washington had notoriously bad teeth. By the time he was elected president, he had only one tooth of his own, which I like to think he named “Old Reliable”.

His dentist provided him with several sets over the years. There were dentures made out of cow teeth, hippopotamus ivory, and even human teeth that he likely bought from slaves. The practice of selling teeth for a bit of extra money had been in place since the Middle Ages—and Washington’s dentist was none other than Jean Pierre Le Moyer, who in 1783, placed an ad in New York papers asking for “persons disposed to sell their front teeth, or any of them.” The next year, Washington paid 122 shillings to “Negroes” for nine teeth on Le Moyer’s behalf. Likely, the slaves were his own and the teeth were either implanted in his mouth or made into dentures.

Another myth surrounding the memory of Washington is that he once threw a silver dollar across the Potomac River. Setting aside the fact that silver dollars didn’t actually exist when Washington was young, the Potomac River is over a mile wide—it would be impossible to accomplish such a feat without the aid of some serious wind. It’s likely that this myth sprung into being as another one of those stories meant to show Washington’s touted virtues- in this case, superhero-like strength.

That being said, his step-grandson recorded a story that Washington once threw a piece of slate roughly the size of a silver dollar across the Rappahannock River, which was only about 250 feet wide near the Washington homestead; this is obviously significantly more doable.

One George Washington “virtue” story that is true is that he did free his slaves upon his death. As he aged, he began to abhor the institution of slavery stating, “There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery.”  I’d argue that there were probably many slaves who were men that wished for the abolition of slavery more than Washington… but the sentiment at least was good.

That being said, in this “virtue”, he shows a fault-  that he wished ardently for the abolition of slavery and hated the institution, yet never chose to do anything about it despite his prominent position and that the people of the fledgling nation loved him.  Yet the only small thing he did do about slavery, he didn’t bother with until his death, freeing his slaves and having his estate help provide for them, getting them started with their new lives as free individuals. (He did make an attempt to free his slaves sooner, in 1794, by selling off and leasing much of his estate, in order to raise funds to make it feasible to emancipate his slaves, but the scheme ultimately fell through. Historians generally think he didn’t take a strong public stance against slavery as he felt that it would split the nation he had so recently fought to create.)

Freeing his slaves didn’t mean that his home—Mount Vernon—didn’t have any slaves at all after his death. At the time of his death, there were a full 316 slaves at his estate, 40 of which were leased from others, and 123 of which were owned by George Washington. Martha Washington owned her own slaves (153 of them) called “dower slaves” which belonged to Martha’s first husband and came with her upon her marriage to Washington. She didn’t share her husband’s view on freeing slaves and, as Washington had no rights to her slaves, he was unable to free them. Martha kept them until her death in 1802 when they were inherited by her children.  Those of George’s slaves that were intermarried with his wife’s slaves were allowed to stay on with the estate as free individuals, if they so chose.