Do you feel that chill in the air? Do you see those leaves gently gliding down from their branches to pile up and decompose together? Do you hear that bubbling sound of some amalgam of vegetables, meat, and broth simmering together?
That’s right, it’s Soup Season, and I won’t let you forget it until the jingling sleigh bells of Christmas forces me to radically alter my personality again.
You may remember me as the person who got really into grilling this past summer, the person who wouldn’t shut up about plants last spring, or the person who always gets very intense about the Winter Olympics. Now it’s time for me to become completely insufferable and into soup, with a brief pause to go into some filthy detail about proper turkey roasting in November.
Usually, in an election year, I would make my chosen candidate my entire personality, but I’ve already been fully radicalized by the internet, so think of that as a delightful Parmesan cheese garnish on the butternut squash soup that is my new autumnal lifestyle.
Did I hear you sniffle? Don’t deny it, now you’re going to get approximately twenty servings of chicken noodle soup, but I replaced the chicken with mushrooms, the noodles with beans, and the chicken broth with a flavorless vegetable stock that I made with veggies that by all rights should have been composted long ago. It’s a family recipe. If I say that enough, it becomes true.
Oh, you broke your leg? Well, a hearty stew should help with that. Stew is like soup, only I save money because I can just throw in all that bulk steak I bought last summer during my Grill Phase. It’s been in the freezer long enough to earn tenure, but some cultures love to age their beef, so this stew is actually rather exotic if you think about it.
Are you going through a divorce? Now it’s a bit bad of me, but I just made a big pot of Italian wedding soup, so why don’t you swing by my house for a glass of wine and a big bowl of soup? I recently managed to imprison the ghost of Joseph Albert Campbell, founder of Campbell’s soup company, in my kitchen so we can get a bit rowdy and chase him around for a bit.
I would love to talk more, but my bulk order of chicken bones is about to come in. If you want some stock, just let me know; I have two chest freezers in the garage filled with the stuff. You’ll have to move quickly, though. Once the dulcet tones of Mariah Carey fill the supermarket air, I will completely forget everything I know about soup in favor of exceedingly elaborate tree and house decorations, painstakingly crafted gingerbread houses, and presents that you will just love (based entirely on the one piece of information about you that is stored in my brain in a sort of panic room, endlessly attempting to stay alive against the onslaught of seasonal personality shifts).