The Joy of Soup

Hello Dears!

My, my, my - the Soup Lady has certainly been busy with other things besides soup. So busy that my little Joy Of Soup has quite fallen apart, hasn't it? Oh, the places I've been and the soup I've had!

- White Chili Queso in Jillian's sports Bar in Minneapolis -popcorn afloat on top of it - abomination!
- Tom Ka Guy in north Berkeley - whole button mushrooms bobbing about in coconut milk broth,
served just the way I like it from a large tureen at the table.
- Cheesy Cream of Spinach Soup in a dark basement cafe in Bucks County. Divinity itself.
- Vicchyssoise - served chilled over a sterling silver icer in a former brothel in Florida. The.Very. Best. Ever.
- Italian wedding Soup at an actual Italian wedding in Philadelphia - trucked in by the bride's relatives. It
doesn't get any better than that.
- Pasta e Fagioli made with pancetta right here in my own kitchen! An all around success except with those who rebuke pig in any shape or form (50% of the Panel of Judges. I should have known better!)

So many opportunities to promote soup gone by. Well, not to worry, dears. The weather has turned chilly and everyone will be looking for soup. The Soup Lady will be here for you once again.

Mercy Me! What a naughty name!

The Soup Lady spent her first 10 visits to the Lotus Inn ordering the miso soup, and then fell under the spell of the wonder that is Hot and Sour. A more devoted miso fan writes at the site with the naughty name and provides us with a clever method to get the
lunchtime miso fix.

And Then We All Had Soup

Hang onto your hats, dears! - the Soup Lady is a modern woman and works outside the home! It is quite true and it is a good thing. This increases the opportunity for exposure to soup at varied restaurants during business-related lunches. An emerging trend seems to be that if one party orders soup, the rest of the table does as well. Last week, our party of four did just this thing, and the soup ordered was:

Seven Onion Soup - This appeared to be the garden-variety cheese-topped French Onion, but once the topping was pushed aside, there was evidence that shallots and scallions were part of the recipe. It was over-whelmingly scented by bay leaves. Chosen by two members of the party.

Cream of Portabello Mushroom with Lemon Thyme - What a color this was! Kind of greenish/taupe. But the mushrom bits were of a good size and the cream base was rich in flavor, not pasty.

Spicy New England Clam Chowder with Chorizo Sausage and Chiopotle Peppers - this was the selection of the Soup Lady. Although it was promising in description and appearance, it was most bland and a major disapointment.

Not to worry, dears. The Soup Lady plans to cover the entire length and breadth of Buck's County in search of blog-worthy soups. Report to follow.

The Art of Laze Cookbook

The Soup Lady does not endorse this cook book, she only presents it
here for your consideration : The Art of Laze Cookbook. It does have two soup recipes:

Ma's Hand Me Down Bratwurst Soup
Chicken Pot Pie with Death Stars Soup

You know, this guy does a lot of thinking about his recipes, you have to hand him that. Altered thinking, but thinking none the less. Do be sure to check the cookbook for a special segment called Recipes For Things That Spread Out of Control. link via booboolina.

Soup in the News

Soup sales increase by 5%! In a happy convergence of events, Americans are discovering the joy of soup just as Campbell's has decided to add more chicken to its chicken soup. The Soup Lady finds it just a bit worrisome that this newspaper article makes reference to the fact that major corporate dollars are being spent to " develop new ingredients for soup." Lordy, lordy.

On The Next Jerry Springer: YOUNG WOMEN IN LOVE WITH OLD COOKBOOKS

It turns out that The Soup Lady is not the only one enamored of vintage cookbooks.

The newest additon to the recipe link list, Simply Lee, has a
long list of older cookbooks, including one with the intriguing name of The Betty Furness Westinghouse Cookbook, 1954. And Tina inherited her Aunt Betty's
entire collection, where the outstanding 1955 Crisco Cookbook was found. The thing that makes these old books so facinating is that they are a window into a life-style that doesn't exist anymore. Start reading a recipe that
begins: render 2 cups of lard and you know that you are in another world. Maybe in the very near future, these cooks will share excerpts from their collections with us.

And now, because all of the Stangl pictures have scrolled off the page, and I don't want you to lose the mood, here is a special treat:

Stangl Bittersweet Mug

Mon Dieu!

Poutine!! de frites avec du fromage! Le cuisine lunatique!

The Soup Lady was wounded by the mocking comments regarding beef jello, so, in an effort to spare the feelings of others, never a critical word will be uttered here about the Canadian habit of adding brown gravy, mayonaisse, and hot cheese curds to french fries. With thanks to Geek 'em Glory for the background information and Lilly White for the links.

Please refer all questions and commentary to them. I'm sure they will enjoy hearing from you.

Guilty Pleasures

The Soup Lady regrets to inform you inform you that she has a secret vice. Kellog's Sugar Pops.

Only now they are calling them Corn Pops to try and disguise their sugary
origins. Thank goodness only the name is changed, not the content. 'Nuff said.

Those of you who share this passion need no further elucidation. Those of you
who don't, well ... you will never get it. The Soup Lady thought a nice image of
wall-to-wall Sugar Pops might be nice inserted right about here, but The Mister
came into the computer room quite unexpectedly and went apeshit when he saw the scanner and it's sticky cargo of Sugar Pops. Sheesh.

In closing, I would like to state the anthem that all Sugar Pops lovers live by:

Sugar Pops Are Tops.

The Soup Lady Is Happy

... someone got here via a google search for beef+jello. There IS an audience for my work. I knew it.

My First Stangl Purchase

In the 1940s, Stangl Pottery of Trenton, NJ started producing a distinctive line of
hand-carved, hand-painted dinnerware. The base was a local red clay, and the
designs were based on the pottery designs of the Pennsylvania Dutch. The top
surface was covered with a thin white clay and the patterns were etched by hand. The rest is sealed in a clear glaze - you can see the distictive red clay on the back and rim edges.

After the first firing, paints and glazes were also applied by hand. The artists who decorated the plates were part of the women's workforce of the war effort, a la Rosie the Riveter. Legions of housewives with kercheives knotted on their heads like Lucy Ricardo. Each painter sat at her station with her own paints, applying colors to the pieces and initialing the backs when they were completed. Dishes of the same pattern vary widely because of the differences in the depth of the carving, the color blending of the paint and the hand of the artist.

In the close-up below, you can see the carved lines that let the red body of the pottery show through. The brushstrokes are visible - note the free form of each individual flower. In person, you can put yourself into a trance by staring at the beauty of these dishes.

There are more than 100 different patterns, and they were all meant to be for every day use. Dinnerware, giftware, lines for sportsmen and children, figurines and jewelry were also produced. They can still be found for a dollar or two at flea markets and junk shops, in antique stores and pottery shows they can be in the $8.00 to $20.00 range for the most part. Rare examples or limited production runs can be quite a bit higher. Learn more about Stangl here.

But don't go buying up the shops or driving the prices up on eBay. Leave it all for me.