Guest blog by Jean Petersen

As autumn has nestled into our fall months, I find myself looking to create comfort foods like soups.  Nothing warms me through and through as a good hardy hot soup. One of my particularly favorite parts of making soups is creating it with my family and doubling the recipe so we can share it with friends or family members.  

This was one of the inspirations for my upcoming children’s picture book, Kind Soup.  It features a little girl who loves to cook with her mom. Together they create a special soup with the help and creativity of the mom who is also sharing an alternative way of teaching the virtues of the Fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22.  Instead of actual fruit, each individual virtue is represented as a vegetable in the soup recipe.  

The lesson doesn’t end when the soup is cooked. Together they take it another step further and go into their community to spread the goodness of what they’ve made. In doing this it also creates an additional chance fortalk-able and teachable moments about the scripture on many levels because now they have its creation, symbolism of the ingredients, final product, serving and sharing. 

Toward the end, the mom also shares who the friend is that shared the recipe with the her. Again, another talk-able and teachable moment.  As a parent, sharing moments, like the little girl and her mom in Kind Soup, with our children, I cherish the opportunities I can spread a little more Christian relevance and depth while we’re together.  These talk-able and teachable moments, even while preparing a hardy autumn soup can have a trickle affect, unbeknownst to how far or wide the opportunities may present themselves-close to us, into communities or even farther. 

Kind Soup definitely has a few more layers of creativity, education and fun throughout its story, but I wanted to share a bit of the inspiration behind one of the themes of this children’s picture book, togetherness that teaches in more ways than one.

Jean Petersen

Bio:

Jean Petersen is excited about her January release of her children's picture book, Kind Soup with Little Lamb Books.  She recently released The Big Sky Bounty Cookbook-Local Ingredients and Rustic Recipes with Arcadia Publishing and The History Press as a part of their American Palate series with Chef Barrie Boulds this summer, and her first non-fiction children's picture book, Moose Shoes, was released in 2007.

Jean is Colorado State University-Journalism alumni, and has been a freelance writer and weekly columnist for 12 years with Western Ag Reporter covering a host of topics. Her weekly children’s column is called Life on the Ranch with Banjo celebrated 10 years this past spring, and some of her feature articles can be found published in Distinctly Montana magazine and Raised in the West Magazine.

Jean lives near the Beartooth Mountains in scenic southern Montana on her small farm with her husband, four children, and a host of animals knocking at her door, all of whom give her lots of fuel for all her writing.