Cream Style Soup Mix — The Night Ryan Cooked Dinner

The book is consuming me. I've started outlining — a chapter for each duty station, a recipe collection for each chapter, a narrative arc that follows the food from Mom's kitchen to mine. Norfolk (childhood). ODU (leaving). Lejeune (marriage, deployment, Caleb). Pendleton (California, growth, the blog). Each place has its food. Each food has its story. Clara wants the manuscript in twelve months. Twelve months to write a book while raising a toddler during a pandemic and maintaining a blog and writing a column. The ambition is absurd. The ambition is very Abernathy. I've been waking up at 5 AM to write before Caleb wakes up. The apartment is dark and quiet and the laptop wheezes and I type in the kitchen with Mom's recipe binder open on the counter and the words come. Not easily — writing is never easy — but they come. Because the stories are already written. They're in the journals. They're in the blog posts. They're in the recipe cards. The book is just... organizing what's already there. Caleb turned nineteen months old this week and is officially a toddler in full force. He runs. He climbs. He says 'no' to everything, including things he wants. He is a paradox wrapped in a onesie. Ryan surprised me this week: he cooked dinner. Not tacos (the barracks tacos, his only recipe). Something NEW. He made... grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. From a CAN. The tomato soup was from a can. The grilled cheese was two pieces of bread and a slice of American cheese. But he MADE it. He stood in the kitchen and he cooked for ME, for the first time since the Mother's Day pancakes, and when he put the plate down he said, 'You've been writing at 5 AM. You deserve a night off.' A night off. From the woman who cooks dinner at 1800 every night. From the woman who writes about cooking dinner at 1800 every night. A night off. I ate the grilled cheese and the canned soup and they were perfect. Not because they were good (they were fine; they were grilled cheese and canned soup). Because they were made by a man who noticed I was tired and did something about it. The meatloaf is love. The grilled cheese is care. The book outline is done. Twelve chapters. Sixty recipes. One hundred and fifty thousand words. Due in twelve months. Here we go.

Ryan’s grilled cheese and canned tomato soup were perfect — and I mean that with every bit of sincerity I have. But a few days later, still riding the warmth of that gesture, I found myself standing at the stove thinking about soup mixes: how simple they are, how endlessly useful, how a good homemade version turns a pantry staple into something you actually made. This Cream Style Soup Mix is the recipe I keep in a jar on the shelf now — a little bit of scratch cooking that honors the spirit of what Ryan put on the table that night, even if it goes a step further than the can opener.

Cream Style Soup Mix

Prep Time: 5 min | Cook Time: 5 min | Total Time: 10 min | Servings: 9 (each serving equals one 10.5 oz can of condensed cream soup)

Ingredients

• 2 cups nonfat dry milk powder
• 3/4 cup cornstarch
• 1/4 cup chicken bouillon granules
• 2 tablespoons dried onion flakes
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Instructions

1. Combine dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the dry milk powder, cornstarch, bouillon granules, onion flakes, onion powder, garlic powder, thyme, parsley, and black pepper until evenly distributed.
2. Store the mix. Transfer to an airtight jar or container. Label with the date and usage instructions. Store in a cool, dry place for up to 6 months.
3. To use as condensed cream soup. Combine 1/3 cup of the dry mix with 1 1/4 cups cold water in a small saucepan. Whisk until smooth, then cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, for 3—5 minutes until thickened to a creamy, condensed consistency. Use in any recipe calling for one can of condensed cream of mushroom, cream of chicken, or cream of celery soup.
4. To use as a ready-to-serve soup. Whisk 1/3 cup of dry mix into 2 cups of cold water or broth. Heat over medium, stirring frequently, until hot and smooth. Season to taste with additional salt, pepper, or herbs. Serve with grilled cheese.

Nutrition (per serving, prepared with water)

Calories: 95 | Protein: 5g | Fat: 1g | Carbs: 17g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 620mg