Loaded Potato Soup

I am going to tell you what happened this week and I am going to tell you what I cooked, in that order, because the cooking came after, and the cooking was a response to what happened, and the recipe will not make sense without the week.

Wednesday night at eleven-fifteen there were three knocks on the front door. I had been in bed since ten with my history textbook open on my chest, not really reading, half-listening for sounds in the house. Cody had been gone since Sunday morning. He had not come home Sunday night, or Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday. He had not come to the GED class on Tuesday. He had not picked up his phone. The composition book had stayed on the kitchen counter all week. I had been waiting on a feeling I could not name and the feeling was getting heavier every night and Wednesday at eleven-fifteen the feeling resolved into a sound, which was three knocks on the front door.

I want to walk you through what I heard from my bed because I have decided I am going to keep this in detail. The knocks. Mama getting up. Mama’s slippers in the hallway. The chain coming off. The deadbolt turning. The voices. Two voices. Both men. Both polite in the specific way that men in uniforms are polite when they are about to give you bad news. Mama’s voice going up half an octave the way her voice does when she is trying very hard not to cry in front of strangers.

I got out of bed. I came down the hall in my pajamas. I stood behind Mama in the doorway. There were two Broken Arrow police officers on the porch. The older one was speaking. The younger one was looking at the doorframe instead of at us, which I understood, even at fifteen, was a kindness.

The older officer said: Mrs. Moreland, your son Cody Moreland was arrested earlier this evening on a charge of possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute. He’s being processed at the Tulsa County Jail. He’ll be eligible for arraignment tomorrow morning. The public defender’s office will be in touch.

Mama said thank you for letting us know, in a voice I have not heard her use before. The officers said Mrs. Moreland, take care of yourself, and they walked back to their car. Mama closed the door. She slid down the door onto the floor of the hallway. She put her head against her knees. She did not make a sound.

I sat down on the floor next to her. I put my arm around her shoulders. I did not say anything, because I was fifteen and there was nothing I knew how to say that was going to help. We sat that way for a long time. I do not know how long. The clock in the kitchen kept ticking. The fridge made the sound it makes. After a long time Mama said, into the floor, into her knees, the words I am going to write down here exactly because I do not want to forget them: I knew. I knew, baby. I knew.

And I said, I know, Mama. I knew too.

She said, oh, my baby boy.

I held her tighter.

I do not want to write about Thursday morning in detail because Thursday morning was a series of phone calls and an arraignment hearing we did not attend and a public defender named Mrs. Patel who called Mama at ten and explained, in the patient voice of someone who has explained this same explanation to a thousand other mothers on a thousand other Thursday mornings, that the charge was a felony in Oklahoma but Cody was seventeen and was being charged as a youthful offender, which was the better of the two paths the case could have taken. Bail was set at $5,000. The bondsman wanted ten percent — $500 — in cash for the bond.

We do not have $500 in cash. We have the savings envelope, which had $84 in it as of Sunday. We have the wallet, which had $107 in it after Monday’s grocery run. We have the household envelope, which had $40 in it. That is $231 total. We did not have the $500.

Mama called Aunt Tammy. Aunt Tammy lives in Tulsa, in a small house off Pine, with her boyfriend Wayne who works at the Tinker Air Force Base and a tabby cat named Bertha. Aunt Tammy is forty-seven, four years older than Mama, and has worked in the same office at the same insurance agency for twenty-two years and is, by everyone’s account, the responsible one of the Williams sisters. Mama called her at ten-thirty on Thursday morning. I stood in the kitchen and I listened to Mama’s end of the conversation. Mama said: Tammy. It’s Cody. He got picked up last night. I need five hundred dollars. I will pay you back, I do not know how but I will pay you back, and I am sorry to ask, Tammy.

And Aunt Tammy, on the other end of the line, said something that made Mama close her eyes for a second and then say, thank you, Tammy. Thank you. I love you. And she hung up the phone. And she got dressed and drove to Tulsa and got the $500 from Aunt Tammy at noon and drove to the bondsman’s office on East 31st at one and posted the bond, and Cody walked out of the Tulsa County Jail at six-thirty Thursday night in the same clothes he had been arrested in.

I want to write down what he looked like when he came in the door. He had a yellow paper processing band still on his right wrist. His hair was greasy and pushed flat to one side. His t-shirt had a smear of dried blood on the shoulder I did not ask about. His eyes were on the floor of the kitchen. He sat down at the kitchen table without looking at either of us and he said, very quietly, I’m sorry. Mama did not say anything for a long second. Then she walked over to him and she put both her hands on either side of his face and she made him look at her, and she said, I am still your mother, Cody. We are still your family. We will figure this out. And he closed his eyes and he leaned his forehead into her stomach and he cried, and Mama held him like he was eight years old, and I stood in the doorway of the kitchen and I cried too, and after a few minutes I went into the kitchen and I started making dinner because that was the only thing I knew how to do.

I made loaded potato soup. The recipe was one I had copied a few weeks ago from A Couple Cooks. I want to walk through it because I want to put on the page what comfort food means in a kitchen when the rest of the house is broken.

Six russet potatoes peeled and cubed, $1.89 from a five-pound bag at Walmart. Four cups of chicken broth, made from bouillon cubes dissolved in water, about thirty cents’ worth. A stick of butter from the four-pack on sale at Aldi, fifty cents. A half-cup of all-purpose flour, ten cents. Two cups of whole milk, about sixty cents’ worth from the gallon. One cup of shredded sharp cheddar, $1.20. A half-cup of sour cream, sixty cents. A small package of bacon, $2.99 at Aldi (the most expensive thing I had bought all week, marked down because the package was almost out of date). Two green onions, sliced thin, free because they came out of a small pot on the kitchen windowsill where Mama had stuck a bunch of leftover green onion bottoms back in May to see if they would regrow. They had. Salt and pepper from the rack. Total cost: about $8.20 for a pot that fed three of us for two dinners.

I cooked the bacon first in the soup pot until it was crisp, then took it out and crumbled it into a bowl. I drained off most of the bacon fat but left a tablespoon for flavor. I melted the butter in with that fat over medium-low heat and whisked in the flour, and stirred until the roux turned the color of golden sand and smelled like bread. I whisked in the chicken broth a half-cup at a time, and then the milk, and then the cubed potatoes, and I let the whole thing simmer for twenty-five minutes until the potatoes were fork-tender. I mashed about a third of the potatoes against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon to thicken the soup. I stirred in the cheese until it melted. I stirred in the sour cream off the heat. Salt and pepper to taste.

I served it in three bowls at the kitchen table. I topped each bowl with a spoonful of the crumbled bacon, a sprinkle of green onion, and one more pinch of cheese. The smell coming up off the bowls was the smell of a thousand kitchens that have done this exact same thing on a thousand other Thursday nights when something has gone wrong. The smell of butter and milk and cheese and bacon, which is the smell that says, somebody loves the people at this table.

The three of us sat at the kitchen table and ate. Cody ate two bowls. Mama ate one. I ate one. Nobody talked. The clock in the kitchen kept ticking. The fridge made the sound it makes. After dinner Cody stood up and said, I’m going to take a shower, and he went down the hall, and Mama and I cleared the table together in silence and put the leftovers in the fridge in two containers labeled Friday and Saturday, and we did the dishes, and we sat on the couch in the living room with the TV off and we did not talk for an hour. Then Mama said, I’m going to bed, baby. And I said, okay, Mama. And she went to bed.

I am writing this on Friday morning before school. The arraignment hearing is in three weeks. Mrs. Patel says Cody is going to plead guilty and ask for a youthful-offender sentence, and the prosecutor is going to ask for two years in the county juvenile facility, and we are all going to find out in October what the judge says. The composition book is still on the kitchen counter, half-full. The GED program is going to wait. The Sonic shift is this afternoon. The savings envelope is empty and the wallet is empty and the household envelope is empty because everything went to Aunt Tammy in the morning. We are starting over from zero on the money, but we are starting over with him under our roof, and I have decided that is the better trade.

The pot of soup is in the fridge. We are going to eat it again tonight.

The recipe is below, the way A Couple Cooks wrote it. Make this on a Thursday night when the worst news of your year has just walked through your front door. Make this on any other night too. The recipe holds up either way. The bacon is the part that takes a regular potato soup and makes it the soup that feels like a hug. Do not skip the bacon. The bacon is the love.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 30 minutes | Total Time: 45 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

5 pounds russet potatoes, peeled and diced into 3/4-inch cubes
1 medium yellow onion, diced
4 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 cups whole milk
2 cups water or chicken broth
1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder (optional)
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese, for topping
3 tablespoons bacon pieces (such as the $1 Walmart bag of real bacon pieces)
3 tablespoons sour cream, for topping
2 green onions, sliced thin, for topping (optional)

Instructions

Boil the potatoes. Place the diced potatoes in a large pot and cover with cold water by about an inch. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce to medium and cook 12–15 minutes until the potatoes are completely tender and a fork slides through easily. Drain and set aside.
Cook the onion. In the same large pot over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the diced onion and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5–6 minutes until softened and translucent.
Make the roux. Sprinkle the flour over the cooked onion and stir constantly for 1–2 minutes until the flour smells slightly nutty and no raw flour remains. This thickens the soup.
Add the liquid. Slowly pour in the milk and water (or broth), whisking as you go to prevent lumps. Raise the heat to medium-high and stir frequently until the mixture thickens and just begins to bubble, about 5 minutes.
Add the potatoes. Dump the drained potatoes into the pot. Stir to combine. Season with salt, pepper, and garlic powder if using.
Mash for texture. Use a potato masher or the back of a large spoon to mash roughly half the potatoes directly in the pot. You want a thick, creamy base with plenty of chunks still visible. Taste and adjust salt and pepper.
Simmer and finish. Reduce heat to low and let the soup simmer 5 minutes to bring the flavors together, stirring occasionally so the bottom doesn’t scorch.
Serve loaded. Ladle into bowls and top each serving with shredded cheddar, bacon pieces, a dollop of sour cream, and green onions if you have them.

Nutrition (per serving)

Loaded Potato Soup — The Recipe I Made the Night After