Tour diary: Philly, New York, and Thanksgiving

Nine days, 1,600 miles, and more than two dozen gallons of soup later, we have wrapped the first leg of a fun, exhausting, exhilarating soup tour that took us from Chicago to Youngstown, Philadelphia, Bucks County, New York City, Oberlin and back home again. I’ll have more notes and photos soon, but wanted to mark the occasion by giving thanks to those who made it so worth the endless hours of bad classic rock radio.

Thank you, first and foremost, to the generous soup cooks in both Philly and NYC, who gave so freely of their time and culinary talent; who waited on street corners in the rain to hand off Tupperware packed with vegan gumbo and who rounded up bread baskets at the last minute. Who hit up their friends and neighbors to participate (Brian Welsh!) and who dragged their friends along to eat it all up (Helen Rosner!) and who want to take the idea and run with it on their own (Caroline Hahm!). We’ll share their recipes with you just as soon as we clean out the car.

Thank you to the volunteers from the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger and the New York City Coalition Against Hunger who came out to represent and helped ladle soup and hang banners with aplomb. And thanks to Jeff at Kung Fu Necktie, Mads at Littlefield, and all their staff, for putting up with our weird soup project with grace and complimentary drinks.

Thank you to Mary June, for waiting up for us until we pulled into Youngstown hopelessly late; to Wes and Abbey and Abbey’s mom for hospitality above and beyond in Philadelphia; to Sari and Josh for giving us a quiet place to call home for a weekend in New York; and to Angie and Steven for taking us each in for an extra night.

Thank you to the King Charles Trio and the Society for the Late-Night Appreciation of Bourbon and El Salvadoran Food, for just being swell. See you in Portland!

Thank you to Sarah at Brooklyn Kitchen, for looking at the book for seriously three seconds and saying, “This looks great – can I get 10 copies?” Thank you to Zack at BookCourt, for punching up an order on the Baker and Taylor site as Sari and I watched and laughed. And thank you to Dick Riley, aka “Tree,” at MindFair Books for putting out cookies and cider for us on a raw rainy day in Oberlin, Ohio. Support these fine independent booksellers!

Thank you to Cathy Erway, for inviting me to come talk soup on her radio show, “Let’s Eat In,” and thank you to Eiren Caffall for looking for and beautifully articulating the deeper meanings of soup for Tikkun. I read her piece on my phone at an Ohio rest stop and, frankly, I got a little sniffly.

And so many thanks, as ever, to everyone who took the time to come out in the rain or after the OWS march and see what we are up to. It is such an odd pleasure to share soup in strange places with old friends and new. I want to do it all the time. Today, though, I am more than happy to swap out the soup for stuffing and sweet potatoes. Happy Thanksgiving!