Instructions: Fry the garlic cloves in olive oil in a medium saucepan until crisp. Remove the larger pieces of garlic. Add hot water, thin slices of bread, and a little salt. Ladle into 4 bowls. If you are feeling rich, break a raw egg into each bowl. Serve, as you can, with more bread and cheese.

Comments: This hot Spanish soup seems especially filling for 4 people when you know the story behind it, told by American philosopher George Santayana about his father and his heritage.

"The Spanish dignity in humility was most marked in my father. He lived when necessary and almost by preference like the poor, without the least comfort, variety, or entertainment. He was bred in poverty, not the standard poverty, so to speak, of the hereditary working classes, but in the cramped genteel poverty of those who find themselves poorer than they were, or than they have to seem. He was one of twelve children, imposing the strictest economy in the household of a minor official, with insecure tenure of office, such as his father was. For supper they had each a bowl of garlic soup - something that my father loved in his old age, and that I also liked, especially if I might break a raw egg into it, as those twelve children were certainly never allowed to do." - George Santayana, "Persons & Places: The Background of My Life"

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