 By the time you read this I'll be right in the middle of a weekend soup swap marathon: Two separate soup swaps, 15 friends, 15 quarts of soup. And it's exactly what I need this weekend. As someone who has been exceedingly cautious during this pandemic year (can you believe it's almost been a whole year!) there aren't many ways to safely see friends and family, especially in the dead of winter. But I've discovered that a socially-distanced food swap is an amazingly fun and practical way to meet up with friends, albeit from a distance, and to shake up my meal routine.
Soup of course is a perfect thing to swap: economical to make in vast quantities, easy to transport in deli containers, and infinitely adaptable to what's in your pantry. I'm making one of my all-time favorite comfort soups, a rather astonishing Russian vegetable soup from Bonnie Morales' wonderful cookbook, Kachka. It sounds boring and plain—cauliflower, broccoli, potatoes, and oats to thicken it. But it's an amazingly delicious soup, savory flavor that goes on for days, with a satisfying and silky texture, gilded with a pat of butter and swirl of sour cream.
I'll have packed up deli containers full of this vegetable goodness, and visited a friend's house, masked and distanced. We will have waved at each other, had some muffled conversation after months of seeing one another only over Zoom, and shared our soup containers, walking away with seven varieties of soup to eat or freeze. And I'll do it all over again Monday night.
In a time when cooking can feel like a drag, without what, to me, is the fun and motivation of gatherings and big dinners, it's pure pleasure to feel like I am cooking for other people in a small way—and it's a treat to taste their cooking too. If you're in need of a little boost to your cooking morale, a soup swap may be just what you need.
Yours in soup,  FOLLOW FAITH
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Sunday, January 24, 2021
A soup swap is what we all need right now
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