A Warm Cup of Soup

From AwfullyBigAdventures by Jessica Harrell

November 11, 2009

I’ve gone a little soup crazy these days. Fall seems to just ooze the craving for soup. The air is nippy, the rain drizzles down at some point every single day, and all I want to do is snuggle up by the fire and eat a bowl of warm delicious soup.

The longevity of my homemade soup is made possible by my favorite and only preservative, the freezer. So far I’ve made a black bean chili and a vegetable minestrone (minus the pasta because I hear it doesn’t freeze well, so it’s really more of a vegetable stew) that I’ve frozen in single serving containers and pulled out for the next couple weeks.

Tonight I made a roasted red pepper soup from “The Daily Soup,” an inspiring little cookbook I recently picked up used from Powell’s. I haven’t dared to freeze a soup with cream before, so we’ll see how this one thaws. Right now I still have it in the refrigerator, and it separated more than I expected, but you can’t find out until you try, right?

I find the task of making each batch both a challenge and a blessing, adding vegetables and spices, and leaving out the celery because I hate celery. No soup is as good as the one I make myself from scratch where the scents waft through the kitchen and through the house, and I know that all the work is completely worth it because I get to eat this all month.

Each creation is part of my winter ritual. Each serving is something prized for another day.Each bite is savory and delicious.