Soup

April 26, 2025

I’ve been on a soup kick lately.

This is recent. When I was growing up I was a very picky eater. Looking back I feel grateful that I somehow managed not to give myself some kind of nutritional deficiency.

Oh soup. It is thick; it is thin; it is warm; it is slurpable. It is comfort food.

At the beginning of the month I made a batch of broccoli cheddar soup. In the rainy days at the beginning of April, when the night can still bring a few last shocks of frost, it is nice to have something hot and thick and rich with cheese. And a nice dose of vegetables too to help you feel good about it. Healthy food (broccoli) + Unhealthy food (all that cheese) = Neutral food. That is surely how nutrition works. But I’m being unkind. Broccoli does not exist only to balance dubious equations. Broccoli is a friend of mine. I recently saw a new variation on this by Kenji Lopez-Alt that I am interested in trying. That charred broccoli has me all 👀.

And the other week, there were back to back batches of soup. There was potato-leek soup—an old favorite of mine. It’s beautifully flavorful and fits in to a lot of different meals. The next was a new recipe to me: cabbage roll soup. I am a big fan of cabbage in many forms. (This article is ostensibly about soup, but the way its heading I could just as well call it an ode to Brassica. And Alliums too. O garlic! O onions! O leeks!) This one is very hearty, almost a meal unto itself. I did not find myself needing more than some bread to go with it to have a filling dinner.

And there are so many more soups to try. Thousands of recipes. It’s great. I don’t even know what the next one will be.

In Conclusion

I love soup.

On this day:

• (2025) Saturday Afternoon in the Spring