Six Super Soups

When warm summer evenings gently fade into autumn rain - or when the seasons change in a crashing overnight crescendo, as they did this year - one thing is for sure. I'll be serving up soup for supper. 

Also, we will be watching endless hours of the MLB post season, but that's a story for another day.

And while I certainly fall back on some tried-and-true soup family favorites, I'm always going to be looking for a few new recipes to try. 

So here are six new soups that I've made this year and trust me, they are all delicious.

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Creamy Tomato Soup with Buttery Croutons by Tom Douglas on Food + Wine

When I was a little girl, soup was something served from a red and white can, and most of the flavors were far too exotic for my rarefied palate. Tomato was far and away my favorite, with a beautiful yellow square of butter melting in the middle of the sea of creamy red. As an adult, I've continued to enjoy this delicacy though I never considered making a batch from scratch, which I imagined would involve peeling dozens of tomatoes and slow cooking them in a steamy kitchen and me mopping my sweaty brow with a limp corner of my splattered calico apron.

Turns out that making homemade tomato soup is ridiculously easy, and the croutons featured in this recipe take each bite from good to great. Five stars.

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My Best Clam Chowder by Pioneer Girl on Allrecipes

I have the enormous good fortune to live on the shores of Puget Sound, and down at our quaint hometown beach stands an icon of Seattle seafood restaurants called Ivar's. Though there is a fancy sit-down sibling, my family prefers to visit Ivar's Fish Bar, an open-air walk-up counter that provides takeaway business only. Which is just fine with us, because there's no finer way to enjoy a sizzling three-piece fish and chips than taking it back over on the beach where you can enjoy each delicious bite in the fresh sea breeze, licking the salt off your greasy fingers as the wind tumbles your container of tartar sauce into the sand. Oh, the memories.

But on the most blustery days, nothing beats a steaming bowl of Ivar's clam chowder, and our love of this hearty seaman's stew was the inspiration for trying my hand at making a homemade chowder all on my very own. As I stirred in the ingredients and watched them simmer together, I reminded myself that this batch was not likely to hit the extreme flavor heights of Ivar's delicious brew, and I had best adjust my expectations downward.

False. 

This recipe is every bit as spectacular as the classic Ivar's chowder, and likely as good as your favorite chowder too. My only complaint was that the pieces of clam in the tins are rather small and scruffy; next time I might invest in larger pieces of fresh or frozen clams. Five stars, though definitely for dairy lovers only. 

Vegetable Beef by me

Alright, I'll admit it. My vegetable beef soups of the past have been built from the random assortments of whatever tired old vegetables had taken up residence in my refrigerator bin. No wonder my family often groans when I ladle this hand-me-down measure of leftovers into their dinner bowls; I really don't give this soup a proper opportunity to shine. 

So this time, though I didn't use a particular recipe, I sat down and made a proper shopping list of worthy vegetables and whipped them up with a pound of sirloin in a soothing beef broth long before they had a chance to wither and fade in the veggie bin. 

Snap peas.

Snow peas.

Fresh green beans.

Zucchini

Carrots.

Happy bits of kale.

And frozen peas, because life is full of compromise.

The result were yummy, my lesson was learned, and I promise to treat my vegetable beef soup with proper respect forevermore. Five stars. 

Butternut Squash Soup with Crispy Chickpeas by Karyn Tomlinson at Wall Street Journal

Every once in a blue moon, my husband who typically eats whatever is set before him decides to enter the maelstrom that is our family meal planning process. I'll find the print version of a recipe - usually from the Wall Street Journal cooking column - laid carefully across my desktop keyboard and that is my cue to give this new dish a whirl.

A whirl indeed. This concoction felt like a savory dessert in my mouth - the soup surprisingly light and fluffy, the whipped cream a dreamy touch, the chickpeas a light layer of crunch, much like the crispy oats on an apple crisp. Extremely hearty and for dairy lovers only; my mouth and my tummy were slightly overwhelmed by my single portion. Four stars. 

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Sausage Potato and Spinach Soup by Chungah at Damn Delicious

Oh, what to do, what to do, when the tub of fresh spinach in your fridge is about to go round the bend? Well, I don't know what the ladies of olden times did, but I hit up google for a soup recipe with spinach. This little gem is the first recipe that popped up, and I decided to give it a try.

Hearty and comforting? Yes, for sure.

Easy and simple to make? Agree, absolutely.

Loaded with tons of fiber and flavor? Well, fI'd describe it as a hearty potato soup loaded with tons of sausage and topped off with a dash of spinach. And while this is purely a matter of opinion, it was perhaps a bit heavier than my dream soup. Would I make it again? Yes. But I will keep my Tums close at hand. Four stars.

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Easy Salmon Soup by Suzy at The Mediterranean Dish

Oh my goodness, what can I say. This is my idea of a perfect soup. 

Clear broth, 

fresh herbs and vegetables, 

a bright splash of citrus, 

and a hearty protein to fill me up. 

I already had some leftover salmon on hand, so rather than cook the fish in the soup, I added my pre-cooked salmon at the end. I also swapped out the green bell pepper for red, because for reasons I don't fully understand, I despise green bell pepper yet adore the red. I was slightly dubious of the potatoes; I didn't want to lose the delicate flavor of the fish amongst a sea of hearty potatoes, but these thin slices behaved themselves as a subtle addition to the light and bright composition of the whole. 

I love this soup. Five stars.

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All photos courtesy of the recipe authors. Huzzah!

I'm Back

"Life is very simple. What I give out comes back to me. Today I choose to give love."

-Louisa Hay

Here I am at the Franklin Park Conservatory in Columbus, Ohio on my first plane trip since Covid. I felt ten feet tall, which is still much smaller than this greenhouse's soaring roof. 

Hi.

 Remember me?

I'm that person who used to write here, day in and day out, faithfully recounting my daily adventures in my home and in my world, which mostly involved walking my dog and cooking dinner. 

Oftentimes, I would share stories about my house. 

But something happened. Somewhere around five years ago, I began 

to pause, 

to hesitate, 

to second guess myself about the stories I considered telling. 

Writing became a struggle. I would draft out a perfectly fine story, in my head or on my screen, but then something would just not feel right and I'd delete it and let another day pass before trying again.

Days turned into weeks and sometimes, entire months would pass without a whisper from me.

I missed writing. And I wondered why I was finding it so hard to write again. 

Now, in this last month of silence from me, I've connected a couple dots that are helping me understand what has happened. 

This strange disconnect first began about five years ago, when both my mother and father had recently died. And as fortune would have it, both left me a generous inheritance.

Now I'm no swanky heiress and I'm not about to quit my day job, but this money has been a wonderful gift. I've made no trips around the world nor suited myself up with any sports cars but I have carefully chosen to invest some of that money in our house.

New roof.

New windows.

New floors. 

New patios. 

Some new furniture.

And a fresh exterior paint job. 

While I feel really good about these much-needed acquisitions and regret spending the money on them not at all, I feel very uncomfortable revealing these new purchases on the internet.

Because that feels way too much like bragging to me. 

Our Seattle summer set records for sunshine and lack of rain, which was all fun and games. But when the drought finally broke in mid-October, I celebrated with a hearty bowl of steaming pho. 

In some strange way, I miss the days when the lack of money for big projects forced me to find creative work-arounds, and apparently I place more value on those kinds of stories, rather than writing, "And then I hired a team of professionals to come in and do all the work for me, and wrote them a big fat check." 

I painfully remember how I felt when I couldn't afford these kinds of big ticket items and I would never want to make a single one of my readers feel the sting that comes from recognizing that my spending was beyond their own reach.

So I did the safe thing. I stopped writing. At first, I just cut out all reporting on my big ticket home improvements, but as months and then years went by, I edited myself further and further until every topic seemed to ring with some sense of privilege that made me cringe. 

Something as simple as sharing  my dog's clever antics sounded braggy and full of conceit. 

Reporting on my experimental eating habits rang with diet culture snobbery.

Telling a story about a particular math student made me worry that my other students, about whom I was not telling stories, would feel overlooked and left out.

I had backed myself into a corner of doubt, and didn't quite know how to pull myself out. Until now. 

Gracie continues her adventures as an avid hiker, with the requisite traces of drool and the look in her eye that tells me she'd gladly barrel down this cliff to get to the beach if only I would snap off her leash. 

I sit here tonight with a pocketful of perfectly lovely stories about 

• my September road trip to five lesser-known national parks, 
• an update on how I trick myself into doing the most unpleasant chore in my life, and 
• the six new winning soup recipes that I've tried this fall,

and I've simply decided it's time to start telling them again.

I'm back. 

And I hope you will join me as this adventure continues.