Soup & Bread 2/8 and beyond, at home and abroad

Killing many birds with one blog …

This past week’s Soup & Bread saw an abundance of both titular items: We had 9 (NINE) soups, from a crazy range of cooks including, in a first (I think), a recipe from the cookbook as prepared by its creator. Chantal Powell and others from the Marjorie Kovler Center held down the west end of the soup table with a big pot of Chantal’s vegetarian Haitian Independence Soup, as found on page 5 — the very first soup in the book. Kovler coordinator Mary Black also brought a pot of corn chowder bursting with zucchini and other veggies. They went home with empty pots and a pocket full of $400. Kovler’s entire food budget is $500 for six months, Mary told me. So this was a big deal.

With seven more soups on top of that, I don’t have the time – or wrist stamina – to list them all. Thankfully, the recipes are rolling in, and I’ll try to give each its due in … due course. But I did want to give quick props to Paula Jeremias, market manager of Tiny Greens farm, for running off with the garnish prize with her flat of cilantro sprouts, to be snipped fresh with little scissors and sprinkled over the surface of her zesty Thai coconut-and-squash soup. Just when you think you’ve seen all that soup has to give …

Also: Annie Coleman. That dress!

Anyway. Our soup crew this week is looking just as jacked as the last. We’ve got soups promised from architect/jewelry designer Helen Tsatsos; Foodgasm‘s Ashley Simone and her mother, Etta Worthington; the editorial team of Gapers Block’s Drive-Thru food coverage, City Provisions‘ visionary Cleetus Friedman, and volunteers from Teen Living Programs, the recipients of this week’s Soup & Bread donations. We’ll also have, as ever, bread from La Farine and a DJ set from the dapper Lawrence Peters, America’s preeminent electric washboard player.

The next day — Thursday, February 9 — Sheila and I will be at Quimby’s at 7 pm talking, and serving, soup. As I said a few weeks back, this is your chance to ask questions in what will (presumably) be a somewhat less chaotic context than your average soup night. Plus, while we are essentially sold out of cookbooks until our new shipment comes in from the printer, Quimby’s laid in a stock of a few dozen before the warehouse ran dry. Get ’em while you can!

The next day I’m headed to Seattle  for two fun back to back events on the 12th: The first, at 2, is at the Elliott Bay Book Company; I’ll give a little talk and then we’ll have a little soup, from the Elliott Bay Cafe, from Knox Gardner, and from Erica Barnett. The second, at 6, is at Radar Hair and Records, and is a benefit for Radar co-owner Betsy Hansen, with soup from Sitka and Spruce, Taylor Shellfish, my old friends Greg and Charlie, and many, many more.

People of Seattle – or greater King and Kitsap counties — represent!

After this doubleheader I’m taking some R&R on the west coast. Sheila and fetching new volunteer Hope will hold down the fort here on the 15th — and I’m already sorry to be missing soups from Smoque, Denise Taylor, Slow Food Chicago co-president Megan Larmer, Chuck Sudo and the team at Chicagoist, and the three Soupsketeers Richard Stacewicz, Simon Tankard, and Dan Miller, with musical accompaniment from Langford and Son, “dub purveyors.” Proceeds this week go to HELP – or Help End Local Poverty.

Barring a late-breaking snowpocalypse, I should be back by February 17 — just in time to take the stage at the Hideout as part of someone else’s crazy project, as a guest on Mark Bazer’s The Interview Show. 

And that’s it! I’m out! More soon … and hope to see you one way or another during this jam-packed week.

Posted: Monday Feb 6,2012 06:25 PM In Event Schedule, S&B Cookbook, Soup Wrapup