SOUP - the Universal Food for Rich or Poor

Everyweek there is a new Mission created for the National Post's Gastropost section in the Newspaper. I like to look at these missions as little food challenges to inspire me or make me think about food or even think about new ways of making food.

I submitted a few photos of some of the soups I have made like these:

ROASTED PEPPER AND TOMATO SOUP

MATZO BALL SOUP

MEXICAN SOUP

ANDOUILLE SAUSAGE AND GREENS SOUP

They are all very different soups but the one thing they all have in common is any kind of ingredient and some liquid cooked until the flavours develop.    

Soup is that simple.

Soup is the one food that everyone in the world eats and either makes it themselves from whatever they have or they get a can of good old Campbell's soup from their grocery store.

Soup can be quick and cheap like a can of Campbell's soup to a more labour intensive soup like Goulash or something like that.

You can be rich or poor and still have soup.  It can go from the simple chicken feet soup to the extreme and expensive Shark Fin Soup which is now getting banned throughout the world for the environmental damage it does and the cruelty to the shark's who are just caught for their fins and then just tossed back into the ocean or wasted.

When I was a kid soup was something my mother made for me when I was sick.  She would make homemade chicken soup with thin soup noodles and she would call it "Jewish Penicillin".  I think it actually works too.

When you don't have a lot of food and don't know what to make for dinner and you look in your fridge and see a few remnants of food and some leftovers what do you do with them?  You toss them in a pot with water and cook it until you have a flavourful soup.

Many people take oxtails which are very inexpensive and make soup with it.   

You can take the bones of almost any meat and make some sort of broth from it and add whatever else you like to it,  vegetables, noodles, rice, whatever.  

There aren't really many rules to soup.   The big rule is that you need to be able to eat it with a spoon.   That's it.   

It also made me wonder how many actual different kinds of soup there are in the world.

How many can you name?

Let's see how many I can think of...

Mulligatawny Soup

Tomato Soup

Chicken Soup

Potato and Leek Soup

Shark Fin Soup

Cream of Broccoli Soup

Mexican Soup

Kale and Sausage Soup

You get the picture... the list is endless.

So take out your stockpot and raid your fridge and pantry and see what you can come up with.

Feel free to post the soup you made or if you can even a photo of it.

I would love to see what everyone is putting in their soups..

"SOUP FOR YOU"....  make a big pot of soup and share it...

if you want recipes for the soups I posted there are some in previous posts...