Winter = Soup

I'm doing a winter fast: soup and tea for two days, then add brown rice and veggies for two more days. It's reminding me how much I love soup! --to cook it, to eat it, to share it with friends. Soup is a particularly communal food, I believe. The book I eventually write on potluck parties is definitely going to have a page dedicated to a "stone soup" type of supper. I also find soups especially easy to make, perhaps because they're quite copacetic with my own cooking style: no recipe necessary, just throw schtuff in a pot, simmer for a while, blend if you wish, and perhaps add a tasty topping to serve. I've been eating a lot of Amy's (100% vegan!) soups, but today I took the plunge and made lentil chili with chipotle tomatoes. Delicious, and I found that I slow down a bit when I eat soup: I think I taste it more, and savor the whole experience--spoon from bowl to mouth and back again--just a little more mindfully. Soup is obviously widely hailed as a nourishing food, in the colder months as well as to fight the common cold, and I find that many of the liquids we consume are associated with rituals, and thus, to a certain extent, with comfort .

Cooking soup is, in fact, as fun as eating it, thus I present my list of soups I'd like to make this winter:


*Zucchini soup with sourdough (my grandma's classic--I didn't use a spoon, it was so thick I could just scoop it up with the bread)

*Pumpkin, or butternut squash soup, with some sort of yogurt sauce on top

*Lina's Carrot-Ginger Soup (courtesy of Moosewood Cookbook, I believe, and served with yogurt again--gotta uphold my almost-vegan reputation after all)

*Pho-type soups (rice noodles, broth, veggies)

*Coconut-milk-based soup, maybe with thai basil, lemongrass, tofu, and veggies

*Miso soup, because I've always wanted to cook with miso

*Chili, but only because I really want to make jalapeno-cheddar cornbread to go with it

*Minestrone, for my Godfather marathon

*Egg-drop soup, because it looks fun to make