Jewish Mother’s Chicken Soup Is Ladled With Love

The power of a Jewish mother’s chicken soup is legend, says Jewish mother Ruth E. Feinberg, 48, of Anaheim. She decided to can and sell her soup--not only for the good taste but also for its healing powers.

“Everyone who has ever tried my soup said it cures everything, including colds, the flu--and maybe depression,” she said. “It also gives love. I call it a liquid hug.” Using a recipe handed down from her own grandmother, who raised her as well as gave her experience when she was a child as a restaurant worker, the diminutive mother of two oversees the cooking and canning of her soup.

It is sold in Safeway, Pantry and other select county supermarkets.

The soup is packaged in a 29-ounce can with a yellow label (“I wear yellow to promote the soup”) that lists ingredients of water, celery, unpeeled carrots, dark chicken meat, wide egg noodles, onions, white pepper and minimal salt. (“And don’t forget love.”) Cooked in each can by thermal pressure, it sells for $2.69. (“Don’t forget to say it feeds three people,” she said.)

“I used to make the soup in a restaurant and people would come in with thermoses and take it home,” Feinberg said. “And I knew one day I was going to use my grandmother’s recipe and make it so everyone could enjoy.”

It wouldn’t hurt, she said, if it caught on and made her lots of money.

“I think it’s going to make a big hit,” the Brooklyn-born, one-time county ice cream store owner said, “especially when we market it throughout the country, even in New York.”

Feinberg said she has learned tenacity and survival after a divorce and changing jobs 10 times in 12 years. She works nights as a manager of a Denny’s restaurant in Anaheim, and on weekends she holds demonstrations in supermarkets, giving customers a taste of her chicken soup.

The soup may be made by a Jewish mother. But it isn’t kosher, which its distributor, Cerritos-based Young’s Market Co., said would have made the soup price prohibitive due to the high cost of kosher chicken.

“It’s still Jewish soup,” Feinberg said.

She maintains that it represents a lifetime of testing, including watching her grandmother cook when she was young. “I knew one day she would be gone so we wrote down the recipe she kept in her head,” she said.

What’s after Jewish chicken soup? “We’re working on an Oriental friendship soup,” Feinberg said.

Evelyn Bott, 61, of La Habra is a professional shopper who goes under the name SWAT--for Shop, Wrap and Tag.

“I don’t have money to shop for myself so I thought it would be great to shop for others,” said Bott, who most likes to shop when it’s rains.

“I’m a good shopper and bargain hunter. I just love to shop, and I have a lot of time,” she added. Her husband, Elmer, recently died, she said.

Her three grown daughters convinced Bott to open the shopping business. “They know I’m a good shopper and they told me to advertise--and here I am,” said Bott, who shops as far away as Redondo Beach. “I go where the best bargains are because when I shop, I really shop.” Although she gets a list with sizes and needs, “I only shop where it can be returned,” she said. Her fee is 20% of the total bill. “This has become sort of a hobby with me and it keeps my mind off a lot of things. And you know what? I get my exercise this way.”

When the plane carrying a lighted message about drinking and driving flew over Anaheim Stadium during a baseball game, at least one group of beer drinkers heeded the message about MADD’s (Mothers Against Drunk Drivers) designated driver program.

“We received a letter that said a group of fans selected one of them to not drink and be the driver,” said Janet K. Cater of Orange, executive director of the county chapter of MADD. “That’s just one instance that we know, but that helps.”

She noted that throughout the year, only about 22,000 people are arrested for drunk driving in the county and cited government figures that show only 1% of drinking drivers are ever nabbed. “So that means there are 1 million other county people out there driving and drinking that are not getting caught,” Cater said.

“The lighted plane message is a novel way of getting our message across,” she said. “We have to get people to plan ahead and party differently if we’re going to have an impact.”

Acknowledgments--Timothy W. Lancey, chairman of the mechanical engineering department at Cal State Fullerton, was granted $25,000 from the Naval Ocean Systems Center to develop a more efficient soundproofing system to test jet engines.