Ah Soon Come

“Ah Soon Come.”

I’ve heard those words a million times. It’s a Jamaican saying, meaning, “I will be right there or I will be there promptly.” But, if you’ve ever traveled to Jamaica, you will learn that the “soon” in “soon come” is subjective. It could be a few minutes, or hours, or even days; the window of time seems hard to pin down. When I think about the saying “soon come,” however, I can pin down exactly the moment Soup Up’s story began.

On the south coast of Jamaica, in the Parish of St. Elizabeth, a weekend highlight for me as a child was playing with my cousins in our huge backyard. Under the bluest sky that stretched over a vast green land, men drinking Red Stripe beer and slapping dominoes on an already wobbly table, women cooking on an open fire, old school reggae music serene the outdoors as we kids played Dandy Shandy (a dodge-ball like game played with a paper-stuffed juice box). Soon, one of the women, Cookie, beckoned to Pete, my cousin, to hurry and go pick some thyme and scotch bonnet pepper for the soup she was cooking. Pete reluctantly headed toward the “yard” (Jamaican name for an oversized garden), and said out loud to no one in particular, “al’right, ah soon come.”  No one heeded. Us girls, in particular, continued to play our games.

Soon, we graduated to our hula hoops to see which of us could “whine” the longest. Naturally, I would’ve won if Cookie didn’t break my concentration, “Donna, where’s Pete?” as if I should know. She insisted that we all go and find him and, most importantly, bring the herbs she had asked for hours earlier. Pete’s “ah soon come” had turned into two and a half hours and counting. My cousins and I dashed out to the yard on a mission. Thirty minutes later… no Pete, but we came back with some of the best looking and sweetest smelling herbs and fruit imaginable to give to Cookie, who couldn’t be happier as she sniffed at the plants and began to pair them together. Cookie never spoke when she cooked; she hummed instead with her mouth shut of course. She thought it was unhygienic to talk while preparing food. I stood in awe watching her prepare the soup, tolerating her own off-keyed soundtrack. 

I believe that’s when my Soup 101 lesson really started.

There was no black pepper, no salt, no ready-made broth purchased from the store. The pan-roasted chicken [prepared on an outdoor fire made with coal and wood] was already creating a mouth-watering broth in the pot on the open fire. The seasoning came directly from the yard’s fresh herbs chopped up in small pieces and made into spices. Cookie beat the pimento seeds into a sand-like texture, grated the zest of lime to the bare white pith, and mixed it together with fresh thyme leaves, finely chopped lemongrass sticks, fresh raw peanuts, and scotch bonnet pepper to create her natural seasoning. She was like an alchemist of flavors.  Within an hour or so, she added the white yams, yellow yams, potatoes, and starch, including freshly-made dumplings, and covered the pot so the ingredients could “simmer down.” This soup was truly 100% natural and the aroma was like no other. But we weren’t able to enjoy it until we found Pete, now almost 5 hours later, and we all had our bath and our hair neatly combed. By now we were hungry and the need to find Pete was just a matter of life and death (by way of starvation).

The girls and I split up in twos. We grabbed our whistles. The plan?  Whoever found him first would blow the whistle once and we would meet back at the house. Twice meant he was hurt and we’d all get to him as fast as we could.  Three times meant he was playing marbles with his friends and did not want to come home. We would all get there and made sure he came home with us– even if we had to carry him home ourselves. As my cousin and I darted through the thicket yelling out his name, the smell of fresh herbs and vegetables intensified our hunger. Then the sweetest sound of the whistle stopped us in mid-stride. Once… we smiled,  Oh yea… Twice… oh no! Three times… Oh, that’s it…we were going to kill him… Four times… Four times?! That wasn’t in the plan. My cousin and I looked at each other and bolted. We found Judi and Ang at an old well, standing over Pete, who cuddled up on two huge banana leaves with a bunch of thyme, a few yellowish greenish scotch bonnet peppers, and eight big mangoes, of which four were eaten to the core, next to him. He was in deep sleep. Judi gave him a few kicks on his butt — no success. Ang tickled him — no response. I gave him a few slashes with a palm tree frond — nothing.

Suddenly we heard cows mooing.

Inexplicably, Pete jumped up and bolted, leaving us girls screaming scared, and totally confused.  Then we saw the cows appear out of nowhere stampeding toward us. Without hesitation, we dropped everything and bolted all the way home. Later as we sat around the table slurping the best soup I ever had in my entire eight years of existence, Ang, Pete’s twin, shared with us that Pete had been having nightmares about cows with long horns coming after him. So, when the man who worked in the yard opened the gates to let the cows in for the night and he heard the cows mooing, he just intuitively got up and ran. We all had a good laugh and until this day we still make a mooing sound whenever we recount this story in Pete’s present.

I’ll never forget that day, however, especially the soup that made up for all the frustration we felt toward Pete. For me, watching Cookie work magic with natural herbs and turn a pot of boiling water into a delicious, delightful meal was truly the start of something spectacular. Today, I am replicating her cooking method to the best of my ability in an endeavor now known as Soup Up.