soup swap

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Soup Swap 2019

Soup Swap 2019 has come and gone.  I’m currently unable to find online evidence but I think I attended my first swap in 2008.  Holy cow!

I haven’t managed to go every year but I’ve been to a lot of them.  And I think there was a year or two where there was no swapping to be had because the host was working on a master’s degree.  

This is the earliest mention on this blog that I could find:

https://awesomesauceeats.wordpress.com/2009/01/28/chinese-black-sesame-soup-dessert-soup/

 

But I know the first thing I ever made for Soup Swan was French onion soup.  I remember crying through 5 pounds of onions and vowed “never again!”

For those not in the know, Soup Swap is a gathering to boost our spirits in the heart of the winter season. All of the attendees bring six quart-sized containers filled with a frozen homemade soup/stew of their choice. If you’re really ambitions, you can bring twelve quarts and secure yourself two picks per round.  All of the soups are lumped together in a spot in the room. Attendees pick out a random number, and proceed, in their numbered order, to explain what they brought in. The dear host likes to call this the “Telling of the Soup.” You can also win bragging rights for best telling.  Once the telling completed, the guests then take turns, in same numbered order, picking out a new soup container to bring home. To be fair, the dear host likes to run backwards during the last two rounds. So, you bring over six quarts of your soup, and you bring home six quarts of someone else’s soup.  It gets a bit competitive and a lot of strategic after the first round because there’s usually 12-14 flavors available, only 6 quarts per flavor, and some flavors are extremely popular.

And true story, I’ve been enough times to soup swap that I printed out my own inventory sheet this year.

I am proud to announce that this was the very first year where I got ALL THE FLAVORS I WANTED!  This was probably definitely only made possible by my severe dislike for cilantro. (A couple of the very popular flavors had cilantro in the ingredient list.)

This year, I made a pumpkin curry soup with black beans.

And here were my “winnings.”

 

I’ve had the Green Monster and the Porq-ue soups so far.  Tonight, I’ll be having the Eatin’ Big Time. I can’t wait.  🙂

If you want to make the pumpkin curry soup that I did, it’s a Libby’s Pumpkin recipe.  The only difference was that I added canned black beans, rinsed and drained, at the end of cooking.  If you want to make six quarts of it, just multiple the recipe by 3.  I will say that I think your results will heavily depend on the quality of your spices.  I am personally fond of Penzey’s house curry blend.

https://www.verybestbaking.com/recipes/28476/pumpkin-curry-soup/?recipeSortBy=Relevancy&keywords=pumpkin+soup

https://www.penzeys.com/online-catalog/penzeys-curry/c-24/p-3037/pd-s

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Soup Swap 2017

I haven’t been to a soup swap in a couple of years because I got distracted by other things that required a lot of my time.

This year my schedule opened up unexpectedly and the swap was a couple of weeks later than usual, which meant that I had the time to prepare.

My contribution this year was a butternut squash/white bean/ras el hanout soup.  Even though I tried to bribe people with little bags of rye sourdough starter and kombucha SCOBYs, I don’t think anyone took my soup until round 3 or 4.  (There are 6 rounds total.)  Was it my “sales pitch”?  Was it because the soup was vegan?  Or was it because no one knew what ras el hanout was?  It’s always hard to determine what will be popular.   I did have extra starter and SCOBY on hand, and the recipients of the extras were quite happy to have them.  So, that’s still something.

This year’s first-to-sell-out was a cassoulet, and then a beef bourguignon with spätzle.  I took neither because there were other things that I didn’t want to risk losing out on.

Soups that I took home that are not pictured: Vegetarian onion-pho, tomato and avocado, tortellini and chickpea, and parsnip and pear.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with what I took home.  (^_^)b

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Soup as far as the eye can see!

Ok, that’s a bit of an exaggeration.  I got a new cookbook in the mail.  This was one that I was really hoping to get my hands on.

First of all, I feel like I need a backstory.  I have a friend who holds an annual soup swap.  Well, he almost always has one.  A couple of times, he didn’t.  And a couple of times, I couldn’t make it.  But the point is that I have attended an event which required me to prepare 6 quarts of soup.  I don’t remember when I started going, but I was able to find a post on it from 2012.

https://awesomesauceeats.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/soup-swap-2012-cambridge/

Finding recipes that yield 6 quarts is a challenge.  Often times, it means multiplying ingredients, or sometimes making 4 quarts of one flavor and then 2 quarts of another flavor.  So, I was looking forward to getting my hands on The Soup Club Cookbook by Courtney Allison, Tina Carr, Caroline Laskow, Julie Peacock.  (Ok, I might admit that the cover with Weck jars drew me in because I think Weck jars are ridiculously cute.)

All the recipes in the book yield 8 quarts of soup.  Yup, 8 QUARTS.  First impression?  There’s a good mix of flavors and textures.  The chapters are done by “types”: broth, beans, purees, hearty, chilled, fish, and meat.  There’s also a small chapter for salad (in case you’re a soup and salad kind of person) and a chapter for bread (if you preferred combination is soup and bread).  The last chapters are an odd assortment of snack recipes and non-soup recipes (non-soup recipes generally serves 8).

The soups that I really want to make are 1) chickpea, roasted squash, and farro soup, 2) winter minestrone, and 3) mushroom and cashew cream soup.  Amusingly enough, I don’t think the soup swap is happening this year.  So far, I’ve only made the carrot coconut soup because it was really easy to scale it down to about 2.5 quarts.  (I divided everything by 3.)  It’s good.  It was simple to put together too.  However, I’m already tempted to mess around with the recipe to suit my flavor preferences.  (The main flavors were coconut milk, carrots, and ginger.  I’m just tired of coconut milk/ginger and ginger/carrot.)

crappy photographic evidence that soup was worked on

crappy photographic evidence that soup was worked on

To make the other recipes, I’m going to have to scale down again.  Or maybe convince a couple of my friends that we need to cook together and split the soup.  Or, maybe give in and hold a soup club/soup swap event of my own (Ha!  A bit unlikely as I am a lazy hostess) .

Other random comment about the cookbook, I think that people who prefer visuals to text will be happy with it.  It’s not overloaded with pictures, but there are plenty of photos and doodles throughout the book.

 

Disclaimer – I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.  I have not been paid for this post.  I just really wanted this book.

The next post I plan to write is a recipe and not a review, if that’s more your thing.  (^_^)

 

Reference links:

http://www.bloggingforbooks.org/

http://www.randomhouse.com/book/231534/the-soup-club-cookbook-by-courtney-allison-tina-carr-caroline-laskow-and-julie-peacock

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Soup Swap 2012, Cambridge

I missed the soup swap last year, but I was able to attend this year. For those unfamiliar, the rules are this:
-bring six 1qt containers of soup, frozen and labeled
-guests pick out a number/letter out of a bowl, this determines the order in which people get to pick up soups
-the first half of the night is dedicated to the telling of the soup (basically explain what is in your soup, why you made it… you’re trying to sell your product here)
-the second half of the night is dedicated to picking up your soup, there are six rounds.

It is important to list out what the soups are on a piece of paper during the telling of the soup. And when it’s time for pick up, it’s important to keep track of quantities. There’s some strategy to getting all the soup flavors you want, but I think it’s mostly luck.

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