"The Soup Club Cookbook: Feed Your Friends, Feed Your Family, Feed Yourself"--Foods are healthy, happy, and homemade--"soul-satisfyingly good"

The Soup Club Cookbook: Feed Your Friends, Feed Your Family, Feed Yourself
 
by Courtney Allison, Tina Carr, Caroline Laskow, Julie Peacock

Food-sharing is the hot new thing in the "getting dinner on the table" conversation, and in The Soup Club Cookbook, four busy moms share not only their formula for starting a soup club--which gives you at least three meals every month when you don't have to worry about dinner--but also 150 fantastic recipes for soups and sides and storing tips for stretching those meals across the week.

The Soup Club began when four friends (who, between them, have four husbands and ten hungry kids and several jobs) realized that they didn’t actually have to cook at home every night to take pleasure in a home-cooked meal. They simply had to join forces and share meals, even if they weren’t actually eating them together. Caroline, Courtney, Julie, and Tina happen to be neighbors, but a soup club is for anyone: colleagues, a group of workout buddies, a book club. All you need are a few people who simply want to have more home-cooked food in their lives.

In a soup club each person takes a turn making soup—and sometimes other dishes for sides or for when everyone needs a break from soup, so if a club has four people, in a month each person will have dinner delivered three times—a dish that can start as a full meal and stretch into more dinners or lunches or even morph into a sauce. Soup is forgiving, versatile, and perfect for sharing; it can be spiced to taste, topped elaborately or not at all, and dressed up or down. It travels well and reheats beautifully.  The Soup Club Cookbook also has dozens of tips for cooking in quantity and for tailoring soup to individual tastes and needs. Here, too, are simple guidelines for starting your own soup club, anecdotes, and a few cautionary tales  that will inspire anyone to share food and eat well.

Recipes include quick and easies, classics, twist on favorites, and dozens of flavor-rich new crowd pleasers:

   • Carrot Coconut and Chicken Chili,
   • Senegalese Peanut Soup
   • Faux Ramen
   • Red Lentil Curry Soup
   • Potato Cheddar Soup
   • Sun Dried Tomato Soup
   • Jeweled Rice Salad
   • Cheddar Cornbread,
   • Summer Corn Hash
   • Soy Simmered Chicken Wings

MY REVIEW:  What a lovely idea--"The Soup Club"--made even more appreciable by the theme "Feed Your Friends. Feed Your Family. Feed Yourself.". Authors Courtney Allison, Tana Carr, Caroline Laskow, and Julie Peacock have taken a philosophy dear to my own heart--I believe in "The Kitchen Table"--and given it a modern, mobile twist. One day a week, each of the club members will prepare and distribute an edible blessing, and then they will be repaid in turn. The ideal of nurturing your family in body and soul, providing healthy, home-cooked food, and giving them the blessing of personal time spent together is often in great conflict with the pressures found in our contemporary society. Why not share your heartfelt goals with like-minded family and friends? "The Soup Club Cookbook" is filled with fabulous food, beautifully photographed in vivid color, and it offers ideas on how you can start your own "Soup Club". The recipes include sensational soups and sides, delectable desserts, super salads, bodacious breads, and a marvelous mix of old favorites with a new attitude. Foods are healthy, happy, and homemade--"soul-satisfyingly good". Hard-to-resist recipes include: "Potato Cheddar Soup"; "Borscht"; "Sun-Dried Tomato Soup"; "Winter Minestrone"; "Chicken Tortilla Soup"; "Cheese Crisps"; "Red Cabbage Salad"; "Quick Pickles"; "Maple Butter Carrots"; "Cheddar Cornbread"; "Jeweled Rice"; "Spinach and Onion Quiche"; "Garlic Herbed Cheese"; and "Cinnamon-Sugar Walnuts". This is one club where "lifetime membership" takes on a whole new meaning, and you will enjoy paying your dues.

Book Copy Gratis Clarkson Potter Publishers via Blogging for Books


THE SOUP CLUB

"We grew up in other places and settled in New York City. We are an educator, an ecologist, a filmmaker, a nutritionist, a yogi, a traveler, a feminist, a mother, a runner, a Dane, a Jew, a Yankee, a Christian, a vegetarian, a gardener, and a coffee drinker. We make sure each other’s glasses are filled with seltzer or wine, as the case may be. We pick up, hang on to, feed, and hug each other’s kids with abandon. We try to be honest and kind and sometimes succeed at doing both. We are four friends who cook and we are Soup Club."

http://thesoupclubcookbook.com/