Editor’s Note: Winter by the Bowl

I swear you could taste the chicken and tomatoes
And the noodles and the marrow bone.
But it really wasn’t nothing but some water and potatoes
And the wonderful, wonderful soup stone.
— Shel Silverstein

Soup holds a special place at the table in New Hampshire. Even a simple broth, paired with a crusty roll, brings us comfort from the stark chill of winter and the creeping darkness of December.

“Soup is good food,” Campbell’s used to remind us in TV commercials, hoping we would extend that sentiment to a can of minestrone.

While prepared soups have long been a constant in our
cupboards, nothing beats homemade. My mom had two
varieties in her repertoire: a carrot soup that featured a clear broth and a vegetable soup with a tomato one. She started them by boiling soup bones the corner grocer used to give away for free.

For my wife, Jeannie, making chicken noodle soup is a two-day project that begins with her picking meat from a whole chicken and boiling the carcass. My brief role is to hold a piece of cheesecloth over a pot while she pours the broth over it to remove the fat and
“soot” before adding other ingredients. The hardest part is waiting another day to taste it.

In Shel Silverstein’s “The Wonderful Soup Stone,” a song recorded by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show in 1973, a magical stone transforms a pot of water into a hearty soup that keeps a poor family fed when times get tough. 

Soup remains an affordable meal. When you crave homemade and don’t have time to make your own, you can turn to a local soup-maker. On page 18, Kara McGrath spotlights three New Hampshire takeout spots where soup is the star player.

M’m! M’m! Good!

Door to December

This month’s fashion feature, starring model Taylor Heath, epitomizes elegance, from the timeless local designs to the historic Castle in the Clouds setting (page 54).

For this year’s Holiday Gift Guide (page 72), assistant editors Elisa Gonzales Verdi and Emily Reily and Managing Editor Emily Heidi curated a must-have list of perfect presents and partnered with our featured merchants to make every one of those gifts available on New Hampshire Magazine’s online store.

Seacoast author J. Dennis Robinson, whose historical narratives are as entertaining as they are informative, chronicles 250 years of Portsmouth’s North Church (page 64).

Emily Reily celebrates the English tradition of wassail, the spiced holiday beverage associated with door-to-door singing, drinking and merrymaking (page 92).

Emily Heidt and Elisa Gonzales Verdi revisit “The Nutcracker” as performed by the Safe Haven Ballet for an “In Their Own Words” interview with Lissa Curtis, the company’s founder and executive director.

Marshall Hudson spins a historical tale about Redstone, a Conway village once home for
a granite quarry business (page 30).

We also take a couple rides for this issue — onboard a snow cat groomer at Loon Mountain Resort with photographer Joe Klementovich (page 24) and with writer Brion O’Connor and his “grandmere” on a Manchester city bus (page 104).

Now our soup’s gone cold. Lucky for us, the pot is still simmering on the stove.