books, Family, Food, Uncategorized

Beautiful Soup

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Daughter likes to give herself cooking challenges. Last year she made a different kind of Mac and Cheese from scratch every month. A few weeks ago she began a weekly soup challenge. The first was a roasted tomato, which she said was quite a production. Her efforts paid off though, when she shared it with a friend who said it was the best soup he’d ever had, and that it was better even than the soup at the Metropolitan Market, a fancy Tacoma food store.

Next was a Creamy Chicken Gnocchi, similar to a soup at the Olive Garden.

Roasted Red Pepper Gouda was on the menu the following week. She only took a photo of the peppers being roasted. She said it was so good she had to have it for breakfast.

Last weekend was Tomato Mac soup, a local soup from The Cowboy Café in Medora, ND. We got the recipe from her best friend’s aunt, who owns the Café. The soup ends up much creamier than it appears in the photo. This early in the process.

We have a large tureen with platter given to us as a wedding present.

It seems like so much work to heat up the soup and put it in the tureen and then have to wash the tureen, so we don’t use it much. It all seems very Victorian, and makes the soup the main focus of the meal, which put me in mind of this:

What is your favorite soup?  What character from  Alice In Wonderland? would you like to be?

63 thoughts on “Beautiful Soup”

    1. I love gazpacho, but this summer I discovered that salmorejo is even better. Have you tried it, tim? Husband has declared it his favorite chilled soup. A bowl of chilled cucumber soup on a hot day is another favorite.

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        2. Yes, good bread is a very important ingredient in the soup. Depending on the tomatoes and how acidic they are, you can omit the sherry vinegar.

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  2. Our family adored mulligatawny soup. A personal favorite of mine was a peppy Italian soup featuring fennel, butternut squash, onion, garlic and a dash of red pepper flakes. Recipes for both are in Kitchen Congress.

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  5. Husband made a lovely bohnensuppe, or German bean soup with our garden green beans, Hidatsa beans (think cannellini), potatoes, celeriac, and carrots in a ham broth with garden thyme and marjoram.

    Most days I feel like the White Rabbit.

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  7. I have always found the Alice books heavy sledding to read, and appreciate the movie versions, although I imagine much is lost in the adaptation.

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  8. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find a recording of this song as performed by Peter Ostroushko, who wrote it, but this guy does a pretty decent job of it. I love that Peter’s lyrics pretty much gives us the recipe, complete with instructions of how to proceed.

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  10. I love soups of all kinds, can’t choose just one. As with everything else, it depends on the season, what’s fresh in the market, and what I’m in the mood for. Caldo Verde, a Portuguese kale and potato soup has to be on my short list, as does yellow split pea soup. Pozole – either verde or rojo – with either chicken or pork, is a fine choice, too. And you can’t go wrong with French onion soup, or good old chicken soup of any home made variety. Now I’m craving soup!

    Since the Cheshire Cat is already taken, I’ll go for the Caterpillar.

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      1. Good because like Wes I want to be the Cheshire cat as well. I love the idea of being up in the tree being able to watch everyone but to fade out of sight if prying eyes looked my way.

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        1. Sterling Holloway (sp?) voiced the character but I remember him from a film, A Walk In The Sun. He played a medic who just had to see an invasion of Italy by American forces. His curiosity (cat?) lost him his life.

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  11. Creamy wild rice with or without chicken for me.

    I played the white rabbit in a production when I was in 2nd grade or so. Mom made my costume.
    I was not aware of the version with Gene Wilder or the soup song. I’m putting it on our netflix list.

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  12. And here is just January from Chicken Soup with Rice by Maurice Sendak. The drawings are just the best:
    https://www.google.com/search?q=chicken+soup+with+rice+poem+pritnables&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiS1eq7mbbzAhVyds0KHUdoB8EQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=chicken+soup+with+rice+poem+pritnables&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzoFCAAQgAQ6BAgAEB46BggAEAUQHjoECAAQGFDL8gVYr4cGYO-LBmgAcAB4AIABf4gB5wmSAQQwLjExmAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=7c1dYdKqNPLstQbH0J2IDA&client=firefox-b-1-d#imgrc=G3Frou4Z_e1iJM

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    2. Certainly some Asian soups are minimalist, but there are plenty that are not. Pho is just one example of a pretty complex soup with lots of ingredients. It’s one of my favorites, which takes hours to make, and lends itself to lots of variations.

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  14. My favorite to make is a Thai carrot soup that I found in an Edible Seattle magazine – has coconut milk and sweet chili sauce, et al., just enough chili pepper…

    I was in a skit at ISU for a fall “Varieties” performance – our house did a hippie version of Alice, and I got to be one of the deck of cards. Not a memorable part – I’d rather be the Queen.

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  15. Used to make turkey noodle soup from thighs and drumsticks. Home made paprika noodles, celery, onions, rutabagas, carrots . Nothing else for sake of Sandy’s colon. Very slow simmer of meat. Made it a lot. But then for whatever reason she gets sick on any soup.
    I like rusk as well as very fresh bread with soup.
    I enjoy the play element of the two books, most film versions enhance that. Been too long for me to remember very many characters. Maybe Tweedledum and Tweedledee. I am fat enough and dim enough to be both.

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  17. James Thurber was once asked to do drawings to replace John Tenniel’s art. Thurber proposed they keep Tenniel’s art and he would rewrite the text. He was making a joke to compliment Tenniel, and I agree about his drawings. But he was no doubt in some part serious about a new text. Not many things can be farther from the sensibilities of Thurber than Lewis Carroll. Except they both liked language play.

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    1. I believe Carroll did a parody of The Song of Hiawatha, using the same cadences Longfellow used, to describe the taking of a formal family photograph.

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      1. The rhythm pattern of Hiawatha is taken from a Finnish poem. If you listen to two Finns talking to each other, you can faintly hear that cadence. Maybe only older Finns of my childhood. Maybe Finns’ strong embrace of English has affected that.

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  19. Just saw this post on FB by The English Teacher’s Daughter, whoever that is:
    “October 6th is Mad Hatter Day! The Mad Hatter was a fictional character depicted in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” who was always acting a bit silly, so on Mad Hatter Day it is only fitting to act a little silly yourself. The selection of the date was actually quite logical. The Mad Hatter wears a top hat, and attached to the front of the hat is a slip of paper with “10/6” written on it. The paper is believed to be an order to make the hat in the style shown, and that it costs ten shillings sixpence. Mad Hatter Day was the brainstorm of a group of computer technicians in Boulder, Colorado in 1986.
    In the 8th Century, mercury was used in hat making in a process called “carroting”. Prolonged exposure to the mercury vapors resulted in mercury poisoning, which drove some hatters crazy (mad). Victims developed severe and uncontrollable muscular tremors and twitching limbs, called “hatter’s shakes.” Other symptoms included distorted vision, hallucinations, and confused speech.
    So today, grab yourself a top hat, host a tea party, tell silly riddles, read from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” and have a a ridiculous Mad Hatter’s Day!”

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  20. We have two favorite soups around here. Of the two my favorite is cashew carrot soup served with a little yogurt. The other favorite one and YA probably had this one as her top is a baked potato soup that is so thick it’s almost glop. Potatoes cheese and more cheese. Oh and more cheese.

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  21. About three years ago I was watching some cooking show and it it was all about noodles and most of it was filmed in Japan. Watching it I suddenly had this intense craving for noodles. And it went on for about two weeks. I probably ate noodles easily 10 times in that two weeks. Including more than one helping of ramen.

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  22. For many many years I was part of a soup swap twice a year. My friend Julie had them at her house and they were pretty straightforward. You brought 6 quarts of soup that you had made, frozen And by the time you went home you had six different quarts of soup. It’s a lot of it was a lot of fun and I’m hoping that eventually will be able to get back to it when pandemic is in the rearview mirror. The very first time I went I was the only one who brought a vegetarian soup. So when I came home with six kinds of meat soup, YA was a little surprised. I gave them away to friends and neighbors. These days there’s usually two or three other folks are predatory and soups and sometimes even more. But mostly it’s a lot of fun.

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    1. “These days there’s usually two or three other folks are predatory and soups”? Please tell me I’m not the only one who is confused by this.

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  23. One of my favorite soups is one I call Pumpkin Soup with Brown Spices. I make it with canned pumpkin, evaporated milk. chicken or vegetable broth, and a bunch of spices – cumin, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, garlic, onion salt, and whatever else comes to mind when it’s simmering on the stove. I generally use all the ground spices rather than the green dried herbs, hence the name.

    When I’m simmering soup, this is the song that often comes to mind:

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