Glancing through one of my many, many cookbooks, I found this "Ritual Soup for the First of May", in Marlena de Blasi's 'Regional Foods of Southern Italy'. It's a soup with a collection of different beans or legumes, a little meat for flavor, onions, celery, fennel, leeks, peas, fava beans, potatoes, carrots, artichokes, tomatoes, spinach, seasonings and a little soup pasta. Wow! The blurb about the soup says...

"Perhaps until the beginning of this century, there came always, in the severe mountains of the Abruzzo, a haunting desperation with the first days of May. Bankrupt of the thin stores conserved to abide the incompassionate winter - their handkerchief-sized patches of earth sown a few weeks before - the contadini (farmers) waited then for the land to give up its first nourishment. Often it came too late and many died. And even as time brought more mercy, these terrible days were remembered, the pain of them soothed by a simple ritual.
"The story says that on the first of May, sette fanciulle virtuose - seven young virgins - went from house to house in a village in the Marsica, the area that suffered most in the in the past, and begged whatever handful of the winter food that might remain in the larders. And, then, in the town's square over a great fire in a cauldron, the fanciulle prepared a beautiful pottage to share with all the villagers, to bring them together, to warm them, to keep them safe. The potion was known as la virtu - the virtue. The soup is still made, ritualistically, faithfully, each first of May in many parts of the Abruzzo - most especially in the environs of Teramo, as well as in the Marsica - now more extravagantly, brightening the humble dried beans with spring's new harvests.
"Employing even a handful or so of all the ingredients results in a great potful of the soup, assigning it thus as a festival dish. On some sweet day in May, invite twenty-nine or so good people and make the soup for them. The tail of a pig and one of his ears, though they are traditional to the soup, seem optional to me."

So, this recipe serves 30 people! And, by the way, the Abruzzo is the part of Italy my own people are from. I think this would be a wonderful Beltane soup, with each person bringing to the pot a handful of beans and a vegetable. Real community. What do you think?

Delis