a snowy soup tromp

Sunday December 21st was one of the snowiest days of this winter, and actually, one of the snowiest days I've ever seen in my whole life. There was already several inches on the ground and it kept coming down in huge beautiful flakes.

The fact that Seattle all but shuts down with so much snow is pretty great. I put my soup ingredients in the truck, put it in 4 wheel drive low, and had a ton of fun plowing down the middle of the street with not a soul on the road at 8 am on Sunday morning.

CWB was pure magic entirely covered in fresh snow and I was happy to be there early enough to just have tea and enjoy a peaceful (but very cold) spot in the Boathouse. I made the lentil just according to the recipe, only quadrupled it. It was very delicious. Soon Brian M. came along too with a giant iron kettle of potato soup - only he had ridden his bike with bike trailer through the snow - and gotten reprimanded by a police megaphone for being on the streets.

We heated up his soup, drank more tea, and devised a plan for hauling the 26 containers of soup to downtown. Brian had also brought a cooler and a huge old sleeping bag to wrap the soup in. I used a cooler with a blanket in the same fashion, we both tied rope to the handles, loaded up soup, bread and spoons, and off we went. My cooler tipped twice on the way out.

Trudging through the snow was fun, but slow. With the trolley car out of commission and unreliable bus service, we loaded the coolers into the truck and drove downtown, so at least the soup would still be hot when we gave it out. From Pike Place Market we set out on foot, coolers sliding along nicely behind and quickly found plenty of people who were happy to be offered the soup. It was especially nice to offer them the choice of potato or lentil.

We ended the afternoon in front of a shelter where reportedly there is normally someone who comes by with food and didn't show up due to snow. They were happy to see us and our soup.

It was a good day. Thank you everyone who helped out, and especially Brian. You are awesome.

shelly

solstice soup cycle

Hello my friends! Time to share some warmth and love with fellow humans of this city.
For those of you still in town, solstice soup cycle will happen in one week! That is, on Sunday, December 21st.
We'll start cooking the soup in the CWB galley (event permitting) around 10 am. There could be some pancake flipping happening too.
Once the soup is done, probably around 12 or 12:30, we'll bike it around going where our wheels take us. Last month we were done around 2 o'clock.
It sounds like this month we'll have a collaboration of soup efforts - Brian will cook some soup and bring it over to bike around with his cart too!

I'm thinking about the soup shown below.
It looks really easy and I have a huge bag of lentils donated by friends Molly & Scott.
May I please borrow one of those nifty hand-held blenders from someone? (Juila, don't you have one?) Jake & Jean, may I use your bike/bike trailer again?
Meg, can you bring in your olive oil? I think I have collected plenty of containers, thanks for thinking of soup cycle when you eat yogurt.
OK, hope to see you there, and/or let me know if you have ingredients to donate.
THANK YOU!
shelly

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/French-Lentil-Soup-236772

• 3 tablespoons extra–virgin olive oil
• 2 cups chopped onions
• 1 cup chopped celery stalks plus chopped celery leaves for garnish
• 1 cup chopped carrots
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 4 cups (or more) vegetable broth
• 1 1/4 cups lentils, rinsed, drained
• 1 14 1/2–ounce can diced tomatoes in juice
• Balsamic vinegar (optional)

Heat oil in heavy large saucepan over medium–high heat. Add onions, celery, carrots, and garlic; sauté until vegetables begin to brown, about 15 minutes. Add 4 cups broth, lentils, and tomatoes with juice and bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium–low, cover, and simmer until lentils are tender, about 35 minutes.

Transfer 2 cups soup (mostly solids) to blender and puree until smooth. Return puree to soup in pan; thin soup with more broth by 1/4 cupfuls, if too thick. Season with salt, pepper, and a splash of vinegar, if desired. Ladle soup into bowls. Garnish with celery leaves.

success!

A HUGE thank you to all! Our first soup cycle went really well on Sunday. We (a shout out to Jeremy & Renata who are culinary pros) cooked up enough potatoes, onions and roasted garlic for 8 big containers of soup, then used a bin & blanket to insulate, which sat in Jake & Jean's bob trailer. The whole system worked great. We rode around in the international district and pioneer square. Each person receiving soup expressed gratitude, but also asked for a spoon...
Next time we will have spoons.

I know we will definitely do this again, just not sure if it will happen in December. I think if it does, we should try for a solstice soup cycle on the 21st. Let me know if you are in, and I'll let you know if its happening closer to the date.

Thanks, thanks, thanks a million times over.
Shelly

soon to cycle soup!

HI! Thanks so much for your positive responses to Soup Cycle.
Here's an update of what has happened, what still needs to happen, and what's to come this weekend.

SOUP
I bought a bushel (?) of sweet onions in Walla Walla last weekend. We have donations of olive oil from Megan, potatoes from Sarah and some money to buy more ingredients from Maya, THANK YOU! I also bought some nifty vegan chicken stock and I have lots of garlic, so I think we are set on the ingredients. We will cook the soup from Jeremy's house in the Central District. He has offered up his big, lovely kitchen (thank you!) and lives just behind the Grocery Outlet, so it will be easy to get more supplies there if needed. I think we have enough people to be cooks/bikers, and we'll switch it up in December if all goes well.

CONTAINERS
Emma has designed an amazing logo that we will stick to the outside of the containers, just for the heck of it. Thank you Emma!
This is the week for collecting your yogurt / misc. food containers. Please round up as many as you can! I'm eating A LOT of yogurt this week. Jean's brother has been stockpiling them in Colorado, so if we do this again, we might get more from him. Please stash them in the designated box at CWB, or let me know when I can come get them from you.

BIKE TRAILER
We have two trailers (Jeremy has one, Jean has one) that we will test this week to see which is the most sturdy and slosh-proof. Josh has graciously offered to design and weld a bike trailer with a gimbaled pot holder, so that we can ladle the soup as we go. Maybe next month.
We still need to figure out a way to insulate the cart. Does anyone have any polyurethane foam lying around?

Again, thank you so much for your enthusiasm and interest, idealism is a good thing when we see so little sun. However, on a more realistic note, someone brought up a good point this past week. While this may be fun for us, we have to be aware of how our recipients are reacting to the soup hand outs, and that it could be perceived as condescending. We'll try to be sensitive to that and just see how it goes. Depending, it may be better for us to wrap our efforts in with those of another established organization like Food Not Bombs. OK, that's all for now.

eat yogurt!
Shelly

soup cycle starts up

This is the inaugural month for a new great thing - soup cycle!

I need your help. But let me tell you a little about it.

Its pretty simple really - once a month we are going to make a bunch of soup, put it in recycled containers of whatever sort, place it in a bicycle cart, and bike it all over seattle to hand out to people who could use some hot soup.

Help I need:
Recipe suggestions (think large qty, delicious & cheap)
Donated ingredients (see recipe for the month)
$ to buy ingredients (there will be a jar in the CWB office)
Recycled containers (big yogurt containers, or whatever else)
A place to make the soup (big-ish kitchen)
Help making the soup
Help riding around town

This is the day it will happen: Sunday Nov. 23rd
We'll make the soup in the morning, then ride around in the afternoon until its gone.
I figured we could start in the neighborhood close to where we make the soup, but choose a new neighborhood next month.
We'll buy the (fresh, local, seasonal, not necessarily organic) ingredients the day before.

Even if you can't help out, I'd be interested in hearing your comments/suggestions about the recipe & the idea in general.
Oh, and please forward this to anyone else you think would be interested. Thanks!
Shelly

This is the recipe:
Roasted Potato & Onion Soup

2 pounds potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
2 yellow onions, peeled and quartered
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and freshly-ground black pepper to taste
1 head garlic
2 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 teaspoons water
6 cups vegetable stock
1 1/2 tablespoons unbleached flour
1/2 cup milk, half-and-half, or light cream

1. Preheat oven to 400F. Place potatoes and onions in a large bowl, breaking up onions so the layers separate. Drizzle with olive oil, then spread vegetables in a single layer on a large baking sheet or baking pan. Add salt and pepper to taste.

2. Slice off the top third of the head of garlic and place the garlic on a sheet of aluminum foil. Put 1/2 tablespoon butter on cut top of garlic and dribble water on foil, then fold up the sides of the foil to make a packet around the garlic. Place this packet on the baking sheet or in the pan along with the vegetables.

3. Roast everything for 45 minutes, then remove garlic. Continue roasting potatoes and onions another 10 or 15 minutes, until done. Onions will be charred and crisp in places.

4. Put a third of the vegetables in a food processor and add a ladleful of stock. Process until almost smooth, then transfer to a large bowl. Repeat until all the vegetables are professed, squeezing the garlic cloves (they will have softened into a nice paste) into the last batch.

5. Place the remaining stock in a large soup pot and add pureed vegetables. In a small saucepan over moderately low heat, melt the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter and add flour, stirring until the flour turns a light golden color. Stir in the milk or cream and cook, stirring, until thickened. Add a ladle or two full of the soup from the pot to this cream mixture and continue to cook for another minute, stirring to combine.

5. Add the cream mixture to the soup. Heat 10 minutes, stirring, until heated through. Serve hot.

Serves 6 to 8.