Cold Raspberry Soup

Last Friday, on a cool, rainy evening, I invited my old friends from DC, Marty and John, to dinner at the apartment. We had direction issues. These arose because you can't see the barn from the road, and because there is nothing that the average city person could identify as a driveway. I said, "Go through the hedge, and take the route that looks more like a driveway, and less like a grassy path." That's clear enough, isn't it? Well, they took the grassy path, and judging by their tire tracks, drove all the way up the hill to the orchard, possibly incurring damage to their undercarriage along the way. The grassy path has some major ruts.
But they got there, admired the apartment and sussed out its antecedants. It belonged to Mommio's husband, Poppio's aunt, or greataunt, Sophie. Anyway, we had a lovely time, talking about this and that. (I remember furnaces, and people who install them, formed at least part of the conversation.) Hey, if you are a middle-aged homeowner in New England, as we all were, furnaces are an important preoccupation.
The past week had been stinking hot with temperatures every day in the 90s, the kind of heat that makes you sweat uncontrollably even when you are sitting perfectly still in a chair, in the shade. Therefore, I wanted to serve cool food. I thought of cold soup. Most of the cold soup recipes in Heritage Cookbook involve a ripe avocado. If you have ever had anything to do, cuilinary-wise with avocado, you know that the ones they sell in the supermarket are not ripe.
So I found a recipe for cold raspberry soup. This is a wonderful dish to serve on a hot night, and takes almost no time to prepare. You should make it in the morning, because it is supposed to chill.
Raspberries were great too, because I didn't have to buy them. Mommio, my landlady, has a raspberry patch that is producing the damn things much quicker than she could eat them.

Cold Raspberry Soup

4 cups raspberries
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups chilled dry white wine
1 cup water

1. Reserve one-half cup of the raspberries for garnish. Force the remaining through a food mill or blend in an electric blender until smooth.
2. Combine with the sugar, wine and water and chill well. Serve in chilled bowls, topped with the reserved berries. Makes four servings.