A lot of nice peeps came out Sunday for our Souper Bowl event, ate soup, gorged on bread and were generally merry, beery and kind. Thank you, peeps. You seem to get our mission: advance the goals of global revolution and the construction of sustainable and delicious food systems through parties. To see some scenes, click here.
I’m posting the menu down below, but a few words about the soup making and the soupwrights: Jessie (of Green City Growers–if you want them to build you a garden for this season, get on it! Time’s running short!), anyway Jessie found local pork, local chicken, local crab and local shrimp (among other vegetables from local farms). She now reports to feel good about her brand new and affectionate relationships with our city’s butchers and fishmongers. Chef Zornik found everything locally, down to his beans! This is news to us, but it was rockin’. JJ Gonson used mushrooms that she’d frozen in the fall, from Steve Parker in Lunenburg. It had never occured to me to freeze a mushroom, but I will be now.
We made a chili at the last minute, because we had some ill-founded anxiety about there not being enough soup. But it was a great excuse to bust out the scotch bonnets we’d frozen over the summer from Farmer Al.
Last thing I want to say is this: Our sponsors were so *generous*. We were floored. Please support these awesome businesses. In no particular order:
Iggy’s Breads of the World (they gave us a ton of beautiful, beautiful bread.)
Cambridge Brewing Co. (10 gallons of delicious beer!)
Fiore Di Nonno (glistening ropes of hand-pulled mozzarella)
Taza Chocolate (all kinds of good chocolate)
Real Pickles (pickles! and all kinds of kimchi and sauerkraut)
Haley House Bakery Cafe (they let us in and let us take over the place and even invited us back; special thanks to Bing Broderick and Didi Emmons!)
Here’s the soups:
Saigon Soup by Jessie Benhazl
a traditional Vietnamese breakfast soup featuring winter storage veggies from Verrill Farm in Concord, shrimp and crab from Maine, pork from Ferrisburg, Vt. and noodles from Chau Chow noodle factory in Boston.
Jota (“yo ta”) by Erik Zornik
a Slovenian soup featuring tomatoes (preserved this summer) from Kimball Farm in Pepperell, pork from Stillman’s in Hardwick, beans from Maine, local cabbage and herbs from Chef Zornik’s winter garden. The soup’s chicken broth was made with local storage veggies and chicken from Stillman’s.
Potatoes + Greens by Sarah Garlington (Vegan)
a hearty New England soup featuring potatoes and onions from Heaven’s Harvest in New Braintree, Mass. The kale, which was frozen over the summer, is also from Heaven’s Harvest.
Apple Rutabaga by Heather Wernimont
a cream-based soup featuring butternut squash from Verrill Farm in Concord, apples from Clarkdale Orchard in Deerfield, and onions, sweet potatoes and rutabaga from small, organic farms along the East Coast, courtesy of Enterprise Farm in Deerfield and its Winter CSA.
Lentil Mushroom by JJ Gonson (vegan)
a rich vegan soup made with lots of local mushrooms and seasonal roots, including parsnips from Deep Root in Quebec, courtesy of Enterprise Farm’s Winter CSA.
Grass-fed Chili by Kristi and Darry
a regular ole chili featuring Hardwick Beef (Mass. and Vt. farms), Scotch Bonnet peppers from Farmer Al in Lunenburg, Thai chilis from Hmong Farm in Lunenburg, onions from the Belmont Winter CSA, garlic from Wild Shepard Farm in Athens, Vt., peppers + corn from Enterprise Farm’s Winter CSA and maple syrup from Coombs Farm in Whitingham, Vermont.
Sounds like so much fun. You do a great community service by organizing these get-togethers.