The Fearless Cooking Club gathered yesterday today to celebrate January as National Soup Month and January 21, 2012 as National Soup Swap Day. If you want details on how to organize your own soup swap, check out my fellow blogger Soup Chick‘s website.
The Fearless Cooking Club members are more about socializing than having rules to follow, so it was a long afternoon soiree of enjoying each other’s company and partaking in different types of stews and soups. The spouses and a few additional couples were invited making a houseful of 14 people celebrating all things soup. Char and her husband Dwayne were spectacular hosts and their home was the perfect setting for this occasion.
Our rules were that each club member made two batches of soup: one was pre-made and packed in 1-pint containers ready for freezing and sharing; the other batch was brought in a crock and ready to serve. Each member went home with four pints of soup.
I absolutely love soup, but in preparing for this cooking club adventure I realized I never had a favorite one to share. I surveyed Soup Chick’s blog and tested three recipes before deciding on which one to bring. I am known in the group for alway trying something new, hence the name as Fearless Cook. It took some research and cooking trials for me to find a recipe to share with a group of people. I tried a Spicy Ground Beef and Bean Soup with Cabbage and Spinach from Kalyn’s Kitchen that was awesome and a Apple Pie Soup from Soup Chick. I eventually chose to make African Chicken Peanut Stew. It was fabulous so I think I have found a signature soup recipe for me. It was kind of a cross between a traditional stew and a Thai type dish. I served it with rice and cilantro. It was a pretty hearty stew at that, one serving was pretty filling.
The soup choices were:
Italian Wedding Soup with sausage and kale
Walkabout Split Pea and Ham
Bruce’s Beef Stew
African Chicken Peanut Stew
Black Forest Potato Soup
As you can see it was quite a variety of soups and stews.
A soiree it was. Wine, bread, crackers, and lots of water to cleanse our palates. After all the tasting, we had coffee and light desserts to cap off the afternoon. My freezer has four kinds of soups to get my husband I and through the busy week of work. Bon appetite!
So glad you were inspired to host your own Soup Swap! Ours was a blast, despite the raging snow storm, and we are already thinking about soups to make next year.
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Thanks for dropping by my blog. I truly enjoy your website. You inspire me! We had beautiful weather out here in Colorado 60 degrees yesterday. Truly unseasonal weather!
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That sounds like a fun party. These soups seem so ‘exotic’ compared to my favorite: baked potato soup!
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You’ll have to share your baked potato soup recipe. Does it have bacon in it? because that would make it all better. We jazzed up the names of our soups all for our audience of guests.
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goodness! so many soups and stews to choose from! bet you all were in soup heaven! =D
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Yes heaven it was
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I’m always missing out on all of the fun! Dang it! I should just make soup to celebrate late 😉
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You are always welcome in the neighborhood 🙂
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Patty-Thanks for all of your great organization for the Fearless Cookers. The soup swap was so much fun and the soups were great. Thanks for getting us all together for fun and food.
Char
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Thanks to you Char for hosting. It was fabulous fun!
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