Soup Swap!

Yesterday, January 23rd, was National Soup Swap Day. My friends and I participated by gathering at my house for the 3rd annual Soup Swap. It's so much fun, and I hope to be able to continue this tradition for many years to come.

Essentially, each guest brings 6 individual containers (1 quart each) of one kind of soup or stew. Freezable recipes are best, so not usually cream soups or potato. We do a "Telling of the Soup" where everyone says a little something about the soup they brought; special ingredients, if it's organic, family story behind it, etc. Then we draw numbers and take turns selecting a soup from the table - until all the containers are gone.

I give prizes for First Picked (the first soup to be completely taken) and Last Picked. This year, I made a No-Knead bread from the book Kneadlessly Simply (by Nancy Baggett - could that be a more perfect name for a bread author?!?). It was the multi-grain recipe and I made 3 batches to use as door prizes, and as a taster at the party. By the way, if you bake, you absolutely must check out this book, it's amazing and will change the way you bake bread!

At the end of the party, we each ended up with 6 quarts of homemade soup to take home. Fantastic!

Here's what everyone brought: (sorry, I always forget to take pictures!)

• buffalo chicken soup (mine)
• chicken noodle
• Texas chili
• chicken & noodles #2
• cabbage soup
• vegetable beef
• minestrone (last picked winner)
• creamy salmon soup (first picked winner)
• vegetable beef #2
• split pea

The cool thing is that even when you have 2 or more of the same named soup, each person's recipe is as unique as they are themselves....so you still get something new every time you reach into the freezer for a quick dinner and hearty lunch. I love soup swap!