Soup has been in the news lately, thanks to some angry British 20-somethings (this sounds like a great premise for a sitcom, no?) and it’s got me thinking about our beloved canned liquid. I spent most of life considering soup as nothing but a vehicle for crackers for when I’m sick. I’m always trying to find a way to eat more crackers.
I never had the thought “wow I could go for some soup right now” or “what an incredible soup you’ve made” because generally soup came from a can and it made me feel bloated without actually ever actually feeling full. Then I met my boyfriend and he’s like “I eat soup for breakfast.” I was… confused. How is your day not ruined? Turns out he wasn’t putting an entire sleeve of saltines in his bowl of soup. Also turns out, he makes really fucking good soup. Not just one soup. All kinds of soups. Soups for all days, all feelings and all weathers. Soups filled with vegetables and sausages and pastas and of course, cheese. It turns out, I can’t get enough of his soup.
Now as soon as the weather turns ever so slightly below 60 degrees my instinct is to fully live on my boyfriend’s soup (he’s my live-in chef obviously). Maybe I’ll create a new fad diet called Feelin’ Soupy! And the whole nation will catch on and I’ll write a book and eventually start a cult, etc, before having a major fall from grace and having to admit on 20/20 that “Soup isn’t that good for you, there’s actually a lot of salt in it.”
Salt critics aside, soup season has begun. I’ve already had so much soup in the past week that I have a fear that I’ll turn into a bowl of soup and have to roll myself down 5th ave to get to the Macy’s Day Parade. But what do I care? Feelin’ soupy means feelin’ sexy! (Stay tuned for my soup cult).
-Hilary
Soup is one of the best foods we have and therefore deserves the world—or at least some really awesome bowls that highlight all it has to offer.
Let’s play a game of Two Soups and a Lie. I’ll list three soups, two of which I love and one that I don’t. Ready? Too late, here we go:
-Mushroom Barley
-Minestrone
-Manhattan Clam Chowder
Don’t you hate it when your favorite soup place tweets something abhorrent, so you have to put them on your ‘boycott’ list? Only the most delicious crab bisque could sway the most stoic of protestors. One time I had secret chicken soup delivered from a place I was boycotting because I thought it didn’t count if I didn’t step into the restaurant. I’m a huge moron.
A soup is a wish your heart makes.
Here comes the soup, little darling/ Here comes the soup/ It’s all right.
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene/ I’m begging you, please don’t take my soup.
I want your love, and I want your revenge/ you and me could make a bad soup.
This toon refers to The Great CP Soup Fiasco of 2018. We were backpacking the Pacific Crest Trail and Evan’s pants hadn’t been washed in many, many, many days. Though the soup was basically just salt, food coloring and artificial flavoring - it was the only dinner we had. Soup was definitely eaten off pants. (Eaten by whom? Who knows. Could have been anyone, really. And that is the joy of the passive voice.)
The low hum from my AC was replaced this week by sporadic clanging from inside the old floor-to-ceiling silver pipes connected to my apartment’s radiators. It’s the final harbinger of cold. This half of the year is really the only time I think about soup or seek it out. Unless I have a cold in which case soup is less of a food and more a magical healing potion I have unrealistic expectations about.
Soup generally might be magic though because I do things I’d never usually do in the name of soup. I wouldn’t do this with other food but two weekends ago I bought some mystery tomato soup that I ladled out of a large unaccompanied metal pot to drink from a too thin paper cup at a farm stand parking lot.
This week I FaceTimed my mom so she’d supervise my cooking as I made her dumpling barley soup.
The changing season could be changing me a bit or it’s the power of soup.
As someone who has famously declared that all food is, categorically, “soup, salad or a sandwich,” I now claim that all things are either “soup” or “not soup.” My hot water bottle/best friend is “portable, non-potable, soup in a sack.” This weekend, for my birthday (hold your applause), I am at an Airbnb in the California mountains, where the main attraction is a jacuzzi, ie “non-portable, non-potable, chlorinated bubbling soup.” Tonight I will drink wine (“alcoholic soup,”) hang out with my friends (“spiritual soup”) and eat birthday cake, which is “not soup” (because it’s a sandwich, obviously.)
Answer to 2 Soups and a Lie:
Manhattan Clam Chowder
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Covered the topic from soup to nuts, as midwesterners say. Good stuff.