Top ten soup stories of 2011

Tis the season … for taking stock and making lists. And making stock, for that matter. Right now there’s a pot bubbling on the stovetop and the apartment is infused with the cozy smells of chicken and celery. It’s a domestic moment rare in these parts.

It’s been a good year, 2011. Can’t complain. Soup & Bread really seemed to take off, with more people walking through the door each week, and thus more money raised, than ever before. And on top of that I published a book – a real book, with an ISBN number and everything – and got to go on tour, see my name in the papers, be interviewed on the radio, and generally spend a lot of time talking to people about how wonderful it all is.

And it was. It really was. And is. But it’s not all chicken soup and simmering stock for the soul. It was a lot of work — and work that saw as much money shuffling out of my wallet as it drew in. So, I’ve been thinking more of late about how to better make that work, in the coin of the day, “sustainable.”* About how to balance the expansiveness that Soup & Bread engenders with the realities of running a shoestring philanthropy without backing, budget, or 501 C-3 status. Which leads me to an anecdote. Before I launch into a year in review recap, indulge a little digression?

The other night a friend told me, in not so many words, that Soup & Bread was overexposed. “I wouldn’t expect a lot of people to turn out in January,” he said. “People are kind of tired of it.”

Ouch.

But, he’s right. I’m not the first person to note that one huge effect of the internet is to simultaneously amplify and flatten every bit of information. Everything is SUPERAMAZING. Until the next SUPERAMAZING item comes down the tubes four seconds later. It’s part of the game — and when you’re publicizing a book (album/play/film) you are most likely under strict orders from your publisher (label/producer/studio) to keep your SUPERAMAZING product in play as long and as loudly as possible. So you turn it up — on your blog, on Twitter, on Facebook. And your friends, reasonably, get sick of hearing about it.

This goes double, triple when your subject is something as warm and fuzzy as Soup & Bread. Maybe I’m just by nature shy of the muddy gray middle, but I’ve found it hard to make room for nuance, for disappointment or confusion, when trafficking in comfort food. Soup & Bread is all about making people feel good — about taking them, like the Campbell’s ad says, “to a happier place.” That’s why we’re here, cheering week after week, right? Rah, rah! Hooray for soup!

In such a cuddly context it feels transgressive to speak of the middle ground, the stuff that falls short of the mark — right now, as I type I am as uneasy as I would be writing about sex. But, hey, aren’t we all supposed to be failing up these days?

In that spirit – and in the spirit of honesty and realism, let’s lift the lid on the year in review. Perhaps it’ll provide enough prickly context to keep you interested, and wondering just what’s in that ratty Rolling Rock box that lives next to the stove.

[ahem]

TOP TEN SOUP MOMENTS OF 2011, IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER SAVE VAGUE CHRONOLOGY

Just after the Great Blizzard of early February I took the train to Detroit for a whirlwind weekend with Detroit SOUP. I had a blast as a note-taking wallflower at the group’s one-year anniversary party, and met artists and activists  — Kate Daughdrill and Amy Kaherl in particular — who had done a lot of serious thinking about soup and its possibilities. Detroit was beautiful, blanketed in three feet of snow, and in the make-do spirit the city’s famous for Amy had built a sledding hill off her front porch. I was so inspired that I wrote this entire thing on the train ride home. I felt such an affinity for Detroit that I was excited to go back this month, books in hand, for an event at the Woodward Avenue Brewers — and was surprised by the depths of my disappointment that only a handful of people showed up.

Over four days in frosty March I holed up at my friend Mickle Maher’s cabin in Wisconsin to plow through final drafts of recipes and try to organize my thoughts so that I could move on from recipe wrangling and finish up the narrative (more fun) component of the book. Sequestered, I felt glamorous, like a Writer — and I got to go have an epic, farm-fresh brunch at Sofya Hundt’s in preposterously quaint Viroqua to boot. I spent so much time seeking peace in borrowed spaces this year that I came a bit unmoored. (There’s a half-written blog post kicking around somewhere titled “Other People’s Houses.”) And when I was at home I was more often than not working at my kitchen table on a chair missing a caster, staring at the toaster and avoiding the reeking cat box.

One question I get a lot is, “What’s your favorite soup?” I can’t answer that, but I can pinpoint my favorite Soup & Bread of 2011. It was this one, on March 23. It wasn’t a special event and it wasn’t an out-of-town one-off, but I still remember the adrenaline rush when I realized that there was magic afoot. This night is the night that sets the scene in the book’s intro, and writing came more easily in its aftermath. High spirits got the better of me later that night and, carried away by the good vibes and several glasses of wine, I was left feeling less SUPERAMAZING and more superembarrassed in certain company for months to come. Awkward! 

We did throw a very special Soup & Bread a few months later, as a benefit for the shattered Garfield Park Conservatory. This was our first-ever summer Soup & Bread, and it was fun to discover a place for soup in July. My favorite memory from this was soaking up some of the collateral relief rolling in waves off the exhausted Conservatory staff, coming off possibly the worst week of their working lives. That was almost worth more than the record $3K raised in donations. Almost, but not quite. For this event we tapped a record number of professional cooks, who all delivered tubfuls of excellent cold soups — but few could stay to dish them out. I’d mark it as a turning point in the evolution of S&B — and I was left with the task of returning the tubs to various restaurants, the logistics of which eventually got the better of me. I still have a Cambro from Nightwood in my basement. Every time I look at it I feel like an asshole. 

And of course I can’t neglect our Nov. 2 book party. That was pretty SUPERAMAZING itself. The best part was the guest appearance by Sr. Joellen Tumas, of the Casa Catalina Basic Human Needs Center in Back of the Yards. I met Sr. Joellen earlier this year and was honored to share the stage with such a kickass nun. When she spoke about the practical utility of $350 dollars in Soup & Bread money — which she’s used to buy for food for diabetics and others with special needs — she put both the microfundraising of Soup & Bread and this bountiful celebration in much-needed perspective. So many people turned out for the party that we had to stop letting people in. Obviously there are worse problems to have (see: Detroit), but Soup & Bread is supposed to be providing hospitality, and there’s not much hospitable about long lines and closed doors. Apologies to all who waited patiently, and if you threw up your hands and went home, I can’t blame you. I probably would’ve done the same myself.

In the last few months members of the media have been very kind to Soup & Bread, and I’m grateful for that. I’m particularly grateful to the writers who took the time to find their own way into our story — including but not limited to Eiren Caffall, Becky Lomax, Cathy Erway, and Barbara Revsine — and to Bitch Magazine, for surprising me with an institutional memory that stretches back to Maxine. For a journalist, being on the other side of the story can be educational at best, infuriating at worst. I tried to practice acceptance in the face of the inevitable fudged facts and repurposed press releases. And when the big-time food magazine editor said “Oh wait — this is cool, and we will def do something,” and then didn’t? I’m working on accepting that too. 

At Milwaukee’s Sugar Maple on December 1 I met a woman who, unbeknownst to me, was staging her own Soup & Bread event two weeks later. That this happened was seriously thrilling. There’s a DIY Soup & Bread primer at the back of the cookbook, but I never actually thought this random idea would find its legs and run away. There was also allegedly a Soup & Bread in Atlanta early this month, and last I checked plans were afoot in NYC as well. Thrilling. To see photos from the Milwaukee S&B, which took place Dec. 15 at Riverwest Public House, go here. These upstart Soup & Breads made me anxious — How do we know they won’t muddy the message? How do we know they won’t go off and get sponsorship from Archer Daniels Midland? Can they keep it real? I’ve been using the term “open source” as a reference for Soup & Bread, and whatever proprietary feelings I have are probably not manifestations of my best impulses. Now, the anxiety has faded, but the question remains: What’s next?

In Madison the day before we staged the most successful event to date of Soup Tour 2011. More than 100 people piled into the High Noon Saloon, “Recall Walker” buttons bristling on their chests. A dozen soup cooks and more than $1000 in donations. At last! We had found our people. Madison just seemed to Get It – and their collective enthusiasm relieved a fear I hadn’t known I’d been feeling, after a fun but sparsely attended gig in Philly and an equally fun night in Brooklyn that still didn’t match the turnout we saw last year at the Bell House. Of course this was the night UPS lost our book shipment and thus we had no books to sell all these nice people. To be thwarted at such a basic task (and the one that’s paying for the gas and tolls) when everything else was going so well was rough. At one point the next day – before the triumphant capture of our Big Brown quarry — I just lost it. Ask Sheila.

I walked into Parnassus Books in Nashville on December 7 and was floored to see a little pile of Soup & Bread Cookbooks waiting by the register, the top one already purchased and flagged with a Post-It requesting an inscription.  It brought home to me, again, just how key connecting with a good bookseller can be. Back in Chicago, I had paid a call on Andersonville’s Haymaker Shop and sold the owners 5 books out of the back of my car. Two hours later I got a call: “We’ve already sold three of your books. Can you come back and bring us more?” Try doing that on Amazon. This in sharp contrast to another Andersonville retailer, one I was hoping to connect with, which ordered two books, stuffed them in a corner, and said flat-out that they didn’t think the book was of much interest to their clientele. At least they were honest.

And … I guess that’s only nine. For number ten, maybe you can fill in your own favorite Soup & Bread memory (and diminished expectation)? It is a community based project after all!

We return to the Hideout January 4 at 5:30 pm invigorated by the promise of the new year. We look forward to seeing what it brings, and to seeing you in the soup line. Until then, happy new year! Hooray for soup!

*Speaking of sustainability, many thanks to the Chicago Tribune, Oxford University Press, and the Hideout, for providing both enough regular work this year to sustain my personal coffers and the flexibility to go flouncing off around the country in pursuit of this crazy soup dream.

 

 

Posted: Saturday Dec 31,2011 02:16 AM In Soup Miscellany