When lambing season started this year, we told our lamb farmer friends that we would take a rejected lamb should the need arise. This would be our older daughter’s project as she’s our resident animal lover and beggar of all creatures farm related: cow, goats, sheep, llamas…

The call came yesterday. It wasn’t from the farmers we knew, but through the aunt (or mother? neighbor?) of a friend of a friend. There was a mad dash for bottle and milk replacer, old sheets, box, books on raising sheep, and hot water bottles. In no time at all we had a lamb in a box by the fire.

The children were ecstatic. They couldn’t keep her hands off her thick black-and-white pelt. My daughter immediately named her Oreo and called all her friends to tell them the good news.

The lamb was bigger than we expected, and she came with no history. She had been walking the day before, but hadn’t been able to stand since. She refused to suck. No one knew what was wrong, and with the original owner heading out of the country, we had no choice but to wing it.

One of our lamb farmer friends stopped by to check her out that evening. She was a hair lamb, he said—raised for meat, not wool—and she was probably two or three weeks old. There was no sign that anything was wrong, just weak. And with no background story to fill in the gaps, well…

So we gave her formula and a vitamin mix, recording each feeding as we went along. But then she started this weird thing where we’d feed her and she would act completely dead for five minutes. Should we feed her more? Were the feedings shocking her system? We had no idea, but things weren’t looking good.

That evening another lamb farmer friend came over with his plastic box of medicines. He showed us how to insert a feeding tube into Oreo’s stomach—it was like having James Herriot in my very own living room—and he gave her mineral oil.

He said that lambs are tricky business. It could be a vitamin deficiency, toxicity from too much grain (if she had indeed been given grain), or simple dehydration. He left us with an assortment of lamb supplies, not much hope, and the suggestion that we try enemas.

So now I know how to do enemas on lambs. It’s amazing what a person is capable of learning when she has to.

The original plan was for my daughter to be responsible for any lamb we got, but because Oreo was fading fast, we sent our daughter to bed and my husband slept downstairs with the lamb. When I came down at four-something in the morning, he was sitting in her box, her head on his lap.

She hadn’t drunk more than a couple ounces of milk. She hadn’t pooped. Her eyes were glazed. Should we be trying harder? Should we let her go? There was no way to tell. I gave her another enema, and we inserted the stomach tube for another feeding. We watched her closely. If she rallied, even a little, it would be reason to press on.

But she didn’t.

The poor children. The tears and sobs. The petting and waiting and watching.

I made pancakes while willing the lamb to just please die already. I couldn’t bear the slow decline. Waiting for the inevitable. No longer hoping but still sort of hoping. And detesting the idea of having a dying animal in my house. It was all so … messy.

I put the supplies away. I scrubbed the syringes and stomach tube and bagged them up to return.

We had an appointment in town that morning. I called my husband. “Oreo’s hardly breathing. She’s going to die any minute. Can you come home and check on her while we’re out? I don’t want the children to come back to a dead lamb in the house.” And then I packed the kids into the car. We listened to books on tape on the drive, and after the appointment we got ice cream. It was a nice break.

On the way home, we passed my husband. He didn’t smile and he didn’t stop.

When we walked in the house, Oreo and the box were gone and there was a patch of freshly dug dirt in the garden.

The sadness came crashing back, unyielding in its finality. What a shattering disappointment.

The last couple hours have been rough. But there is relief, too. Finality can be a gift.

And in between crying jags, our daughter is already dreaming about and hoping for the next phone call….

It’s time to make soup.

Seriously. I’m not even playing. You have got to listen to me.

Are you listening?


Are you?

Because, PEOPLE OH MY WORD I HAVEN’T MADE SOMETHING THIS GOOD IN AGES.

It’s not flashy and it’s not complicated but it will win you over with one bite promise. It’s a keeper, this one is.

My process for getting around to making the soup—and it’s a roasted cauliflower soup we’re talking about here—was rather awkward, I admit. I first spied the recipe on a blog, a recipe which I recollected at the grocery store. So I picked out a cauliflower, but without any great conviction because, cauliflower meh.

The head sat in my fridge for most of a week until Saturday when I decided it was time for some serious cooking. So, in the midst of making a pot of broccoli soup, roasting and/or simmering four butternut squashes, mixing up a double batch of biscuits, and completing an array of sundry tasks, I turned the cauliflower into soup.

I chopped the lumpy head into florets, drizzled them with olive oil, and slipped the pan into the oven before going to the computer to look up the soup specifics. I thought the recipe was Luisa’s), but—Oh no! She didn’t have a recent post about cauliflower soup! To make a desperate situation even more desperate, I couldn’t seem to access any posts beyond the ones found on her opening page. How long ago had I read that recipe anyway? Perhaps she had posted it several months ago? My memory is a shoddy affair. So I shot Luisa a quick email explaining the problem and then, of course, promptly found the little arrow sitting pretty at the bottom of her page. After another email in which I told her to disregard the first—“and it wasn’t you who posted that recipe apparently… (sticks head in toilet and flushes)”—I started flipping through the blogs I most often find inspiring. After a bit of fruitless tooling around, I remembered: Joy the Baker!

I did a recipe skim-through and then yanked the tray of sizzling cauliflower half out of the oven to sprinkle it with the missing ingredients: cumin seeds, curry, and chile cobán. I sauteed an onion and some garlic in a pat of butter and bit of olive oil, doused it all with a quart of chicken broth, and then added the roasted cauliflower straight from the oven. I added a cup of mashed potatoes (my only serious deviance) I found buried in the back of the fridge, left over from my crazy-day sweet rolls. A gentle simmer, a quick blend with the immersion blender, a taste test, and—ba-bam—I collapsed in a heap on the floor, eyes rolled back in their sockets. So good.

(Clarification: I did not literally collapse on the floor. That was an exaggeration to illustrate how I felt about the riotous flavors. Actually, laying on the floor would have been a foolish thing to do because it’s hard to eat soup from a prone position, particularly when the bowl of soup is on the table and I am three feet below it. My arms simply aren’t long enough to reach. Plus, the kitchen tiles are hard and cold.)

I ate two bowls for lunch and sent a pint jar of soup over to my sister-in-law’s house with precise serving instructions: heat it up in a mug and drizzle a little olive oil on top. She had just had a baby a few hours before and the soup struck me as being the ideal snack for a postpartum mama.

There is one pint left in the fridge. I tried to coax my son to drink it (the one who has been on a liquid diet), but my heart wasn’t in it. I really didn’t want to share. He shunned my offer, as I suspected he would, and now I’m happily anticipating my next eating opportunity.

Roasted Cauliflower Soup
Adapted from Joy the Baker

I used chile cobán in place of the red pepper flakes. Dried chipotle pepper would be another good option.

I blended a cup of leftover, plain mashed potatoes into the hot soup. It wasn’t a key player, but it made me realize that any number of vegetables could be added to the soup, such as roasted squash, turnips, and potatoes. If you’re okay with the soup going green, toss in some kale. Or carrots for bright yellow. And why not roast the onions and garlic right along with the cauliflower? On the other hand, why complicate things? The soup is perfect—better than perfect—as is.

1 head cauliflower
3-6 tablespoons olive oil, divided
salt
1 rounded teaspoon curry powder
1 rounded teaspoon cumin seed
hearty pinch red pepper flakes
1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon butter
4 cups chicken broth

Cut the cauliflower into florets. Put them on a sided baking tray and drizzle with several tablespoons of olive oil, salt, curry powder, cumin seed, and red pepper flakes. Roast at 400 degrees for about 25 minutes or until the florets’ bottoms are caramelized and they’ve gone tender-crunchy.

While the cauliflower is roasting, saute the onion in the butter along with another tablespoon or two of olive oil (or just use olive oil only). When the onions are tender, add the garlic and cook another couple minutes. Add the broth and the roasted cauliflower (scrape in every last drop of the spice-infused oil). Simmer for 20 minutes or until the cauliflower is completely tender.

Blend the soup until it is creamy smooth. Ladle the soup into bowls and drizzle with olive oil.

P.S. I ended up sharing the last pint of soup with my mother. She fully understood what a tremendous sacrifice I was making, which made the loss bearable. We didn’t save any for my father who was dozing on the couch, though. My generosity only extends so far.