White Bean Soup 

The ham hock had been placed inside the wood stove with only one piece of wood continuously burning since morning.  Grandfather ladled over it skillet juice from six oranges and white onions.  

When he pulled it out of the stove it had caramelized in a thick husk and all in the house at that point could no longer wait for soup and stood beside the cutting board waiting for stray bits of ham like the farm animals might themselves if they were allowed in the kitchen.

"There is no need to cut meat the way the books tell you.  You cut the meat the way your mouth tells you.  Here" he said, dicing up two pieces of ham from the hock, one large and without shape, and another small like a square disc. "You tell me, which one does your mouth prefer.  Assume that is the one that others might like as well."  There was nothing wrong with the small disc, but the awkward shaped piece felt like the beginning of a meal and was hearty and carried more of the orange and onion.  "Now you know what we must do now. It saddens me, of course, to discuss this part of the preparation, but sadness is just one more spice." He bore down with great concentration and revery now on the cutting of the ham.  "At the time of leaving the Great War, Casablanca was our first and only landing before we were off to the states.  It was disappointing, as I have told you before, to leave something as immense as ones homeland in France only to cross the channel to stop such a short distance away.  All was dangerous then.  It was there, where we waited for our visas to arrive, or hoped that they might, that I moved in among the great spice alleys, as we would call them, and where  

great pots of soup, much like what we are making here today, were stirred by boys who carried small monkeys on chains besides them.  The nose did not know what to do in Casablanca.  The sea and desert mingled with roasting lamb.  Cigar and pipe smoke rose from all corners....you know many

were not as lucky as I to leave Morocco. Great power resides in the herbs and spices from the lands of the Mediterranean."  Then, all in virtually one motion, he had wrapped sprigs of oregano, thyme,

parsley and a bayleaf inside two cut stalks of celery, placed them inside the pot along with stock, scraped the ham shreds and seeded tomatoes in, and covered it, as though a magician stuffing a rabbit back in.  Outside, DeGaulle, our ancient Australian

mutt of a sheepherder let out a rare wild yelp, no doubt catching the odor of a crosswind of ham from  the porch and out onto the entrance of the field.  "You know, you can hear hunger in the wind."