What I learned about soup-making from Don Ross

I once saw Don Ross perform at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. During a workshop he took his microphone and said to the older, black bluesman up the stage from him, "I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank you. That is what guitar playing is all about." At the time I was this guy — I thought Don Ross could play circles around the bluesman, but clearly Ross thought he had something to learn from this fellow. Ross eventually won an award for his acoustic guitar playing. 

Yeah, what he said!

Some years later I worked in the kitchen for Diana McConnell at the Cafe Rhythm & Books. Diana parked a bowl of my soup in front of Don Ross. I grabbed it back. "It looks fine the way it is," said Don.

 

"This way to the soup, ladies & gentlemen!"

"Oh no," I said in my best Basil Fawlty impersonation. "It needs miso paste."

I don't know what I was thinking. I had already been in the kitchen of Glen Dias, a soup god if ever there was one. I should have already learned that what gets left out is more important than what gets thrown in. But this was a lesson I would learn again and again — and Don Ross made it easier because he learned it first.  

Links: the Ptatarmigan site is here. Ptarmigan was some years before I met Glen Dias. Glen has done a lot since then. This is the Don Ross site. And because I link to them, the Christian Humanists hang wif Steve Taylor here.