When my son was born, my best friend showed up at my house to snuggle my newborn bundle of joy, and she brought with her not a pot of soup, but three different kinds of soup, each in a one-quart take-out container. There was carrot-ginger, which she assured me would help support nursing, chicken noodle to replenish my body and help nourish me back to vibrant health, and a spicy hot-and-sour because she knew a punch of chilies would be just what I’d need to revitalize. Had she brought one soup, it would have been a most welcome and lovely gesture, but bringing three soups elevated it to the stuff that best-friendships are made of.
Those three plastic tubs of soup got me through that first topsy-turvey week of sleep deprivation, near-paralyzing new-mama anxiety, near-psychedelic joy, and physical recovery. It was such a surreal week—I had a squirming little peanut dependent on me for literally everything and I had no idea what it was that he needed. We muddled through and made it out the other side just fine. Truthfully, that week is a big blur, but I do remember those soups and how nourished and loved they made me feel. That’s the thing about homemade soup. It really is like a stockpot full of love.
Now it’s February, a year and a half later, and my newborn has turned into a wild and crazy toddler. It has been raining off and on (mostly on) here for weeks, my son has had one cold after another, and therefore so have my husband and I. We’re still recovering from the holiday hoopla (which is apparently multiplied 100-fold by virtue of having a toddler in the house). Seriously all I want to do is stay home in my jammies eating hearty, healthy, heart-warming soups.
Casting around the Internet for inspirational soup recipes, I came across a phenomenon entirely new and utterly appealing to me: the Soup Swap. It’s like the old-fashioned cookie exchange—but with soup! Here’s the deal: You spend an afternoon cooking up a big old pot (6 quarts) of your favorite soup and divvy it up among six one-quart containers while a bunch of your friends do the same. Then you all get together for cocktails and, you guessed it, swap soup! Get enough people involved and you’ll get your pick from a large pool of soups (from what I’ve read, most swaps rely on the system of drawing numbers from a hat to determine who gets first pick. Members take turns selecting from the available soups based on the number they drew until all of the soups are gone.) Each participant arrives toting 6 individually packed quarts of their own soup and leaves with a 6-quart variety pack of soup made by others. Now that is a party I can drag myself out of the house for, even amidst the February doldrums.
After posting the idea on Facebook and Twitter, my Soup Swap is beginning to come together. For my contribution, I’ll be whipping up the super simple, yet mind-bogglingly delicious French Canadian Yellow Split Pea Soup from The Best Soups in the World. I love this recipe because you just throw everything (diced onion, diced celery, shredded carrot, dried yellow split peas, salt pork, a few herbs and spices, and water) in the pot, bring to a boil and simmer for three hours. It’s a soup with a flavor payoff way beyond what you’d expect from the effort it takes to make. I can hardly wait to find out what love-in-a-one-quart-takeout-container I’ll be bringing home.
What tried-and-true soup would you contribute to a Soup Swap?
Robin Donovan is a San Francisco-based food writer and the author of Campfire Cuisine: Gourmet Recipes for the Great Outdoors. Her writing has appeared in the pages of Cooking Light, Fitness, San Jose Mercury News, and many others.
