After the hit this family took the other day, I have found myself on an emotional roller coaster. One minute I am scared, and the next I am hopeful; one minute I am awestruck at Byrne's ability to remain tactical and maintain a level head despite his disappointment, and the next I am angry and bitter at the decision-makers at his former company who not only failed to fully see his promise but also chose to axe him while continuing to bankroll some self-involved, fancy-free single folks with no families to support. I'm just saying.

So into the kitchen I went to burn off some steam, fill my house with comforting smells, and make something nourishing for dinner. Soup. Isn't that what we're supposed to do in times of economic hardship--don our threadbare coats, set our jaws, and fill our bowls with soup?

I selected a recipe--Indian-Style Pumpkin Soup---from my standby cookbook, Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. As I set to gathering ingredients, washing, prepping, chopping, and mixing, I began to realize that I was moving along a familiar axis, and getting closer to feeling better with each simmering bubble that broke the surface.

That is to say: Making pumpkin soup is a lot like moving through the five stages of grief.

1. Denial: I feel fine! I am not worried in the slightest about my familiy's impending loss of primary income, or about our global economy. I will make a hearty, delicious organic soup, and its spicy aroma will act as a salve for all that ails our fearful hearts! All you need is soup!

2. Anger: This red kuri squash is damn hard to peel, and to cut. Why couldn't I have just made a nice, easy soup like miso--so stupid, stupid, stupid! This is taking forever! My hand hurts! If those people at that stupid f'ing company had hired at a more reasonable rate instead of being all, "Hey! Look at us! We blog! That's hot! Everyone, come on over!" then we wouldn't have to worry so much about budgeting and we could have just gone out for soup, and for fancy ice cream afterward, the bastards!

3. Bargaining: OK, I am sorry, I lost it there, you know how I can be. I let stress get the better of me. I'll try harder. I will sing as I cook, I will dance effortlessly through the kitchen--leaping over the table, ladle held gracefully in hand--like one of those snappy, tough leading ladies of Depression-era mega-musicals. I will present this delicious soup to my family with a broad smile on my face and the curls of my bob smoothed into place so as not to betray my labors. If I have the right attitude, everything will work out, right? It's only fair, come on!

4. Depression: This soup smells good now, all redolent with garlic and ginger and curry and all creamy and silky with coconut milk. But this is probably the first bowl of soup of many, many more to come as our economy continues to spiral ever downward and the possibility of employment begins to look like a distant fantasy. It's organic, local red kuri squash now, sure, but soon it will be some bland bean-soup mix, and then the next thing you know I'll be boiling bargain-bin cabbage in a vat of tap water and calling it dinner.

5. Acceptance: This isn't so bad. We have this delicious soup, and that awesome freezer naan from Trader Joe's with which to sop it up. We are all sitting down to eat together, at a decent hour, in our warm home. We didn't have to stand in line for this soup. No one has to run out to make it to their graveyard shift at the coal mine. We're going to be OK.

We're going to be OK.