Sunday Dinner at Grandma’s Inspires Sunday Soup and Stories Group

When we old-timers were kids, we often went to our grandparents’ house for Sunday dinner. In fact, I remember a kids’ table, usually a card table or two, squeezed in somewhere. We would pass bowls of mashed potatoes, platters of chicken, gravy boats, corn or beans, pie or cake with ice cream. These were big, jovial meals with our parents paying no attention to what we ate or said.

Now that we are a mobile society, Sunday family dinners are often just memories. We spend so much time online and so little time in face-to-face conversation. Therefore, some cooking friends and I invented Sunday Soup and Stories in 2011. It is a Bloomington original, made up of ten to fourteen people who gather at one another’s homes one Sunday each month for some of our grandma’s soup recipes, or anybody else’s grandma’s soup recipes. Afterwards, we settle in the living room with dessert and sherry and have a story reading, with “story” very broadly defined. Our Soup and Stories group has the resonance of those Sunday family dinners. Yet there are a few new features: the soup menu, the stories, the multiple contributing cooks who replace grandma, and the wide variety of topics we explore. It is a formula that has served us well for fourteen years.

Friends often gather around pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers, tacos, fried chicken, or maybe guacamole and chips for events such as Superbowl Sunday. More formal dining clubs abound in Bloomington and elsewhere, allowing their members to learn new cooking techniques, taste a meal from another culture, and share their culinary experiences. Clearly, eating together brings people closer as they share a common bond, whether it be pizza or coq au vin. Yet, we “Soupers” have elevated soup to the front and center. It is the highlight of each of our events. And not just one soup, but two.

There should be a parade for soup. Think how many entries there could be with all the cuisines of the world entering a float. In praise of soup, songs could be written calling it the king or queen of blends, a masterpiece of color and design, nutrition for every stage of life, the seasonal gift of the gods (and it’s even good left over). So that is why we bring two to each dinner.

It’s a simple menu. Two people opt to bring soup. Say someone has made a lemon and rice soup, and someone else a chicken tortilla soup. Both are simmering on the stove. After a brief presentation by the soup chefs, we each get a bowl and choose a soup to start with. Sometimes there are chives or croutons to add, sometimes sour cream, parsley, or grated parmesan.

The conversation is lively as we begin. The variety of ingredients in the soup somehow fosters variety in our conversations. We catch up with each other’s family news and talk about the season and the seasonings. As people drift back into the kitchen for their second soup, the conversations flow freely, and sometimes people even move from one table to another to check out the conversation there. It is a dynamic meal and just the opposite of a formal dinner. People tend to warm up to one another under the influence of a tasty potage.

Other enticements accompany the two featured soups. We each bring a bottle of wine or other beverage to share. Last Christmas we all had prosecco. There are bakers in the group, so homemade bread with butter often comes with the soup. Once, my husband and I brought the bread and butter. Though the bread was not homemade, we did supply two kinds of butter, Irish and French. It was a butter comparison evening. Seasonal salads appear too. The magic seems to come in the door with the aromas of soups, bread and butter, cookies and wine.

And then comes the story portion of the evening. Not many cooking clubs feature a story. This means moving to the living room, getting comfortable with dessert in one hand and a sherry in the other, and waiting for the evening’s presentation. At the very first Soup and Stories meeting in 2011, we listened to a short story titled “Soup du Jour” by Carol Shields. It is about a young boy who had just immigrated to Canada, leaving his dad in England. He was sent to the grocery store and forgot what he was supposed to get as he counted the squares on the sidewalk. Depressed and lonely, he thought of his life without friends and family. Suddenly, he remembered — celery for the soup his mom was making. Somehow the word “celery” lifted him from the dreary counting of the sidewalk squares and transcended the losses and emptiness of his childhood. Soup can do that.

A more recent story we read about soup is Genevieve Jenner’s “Low-Pressure Soup for a High-Pressure Situation” (in Chocolate Cake for Imaginary Lives). Here the soup comes not as a revelation but as the logical answer for someone who has just received a large CSA box. “Look, there is a biodegradable box on your doorstep and there are unwashed wholesome vegetables. … Green things. Vain things. Kale, butternut squash, carrots that are covered in dirt in a way to make them admirable … and cauliflower. Always the cauliflower.” In each case, the soup is more than a course for a meal. It becomes a small epiphany and an answer to one of life’s dilemmas, big or small. If your dilemma is kids who hate vegetables, cut them small enough and hide them in soup, perhaps with tiny meatballs and pasta. Even spinach becomes unrecognizable in a soup.

Not all our stories are about soup. Many celebrate the season: a scary one for Halloween — “The Telltale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe. Poems for April, which is poetry month. One evening an enterprising member devised a group reading of a radio script from the Twilight Zone with each of us reading one character. Nothing like a little informal theater with dessert, sherry, and friends!

Once, we played the parlor game where you write elements of a story on a piece of paper then fold it and pass it along to the next person. The resulting stories were mind-boggling and laughter-inducing. Besides poems, short stories, radio plays, and games, we have had IU faculty members talk about their research or a recently published book. Almost anything can become fodder for our after-dinner entertainment. For Valentine’s Day, we shared our “how we got engaged” stories.

Lots of our members are grandparents whose kids and grandkids are far away. Occasionally, a family member comes to town and joins us for Sunday Soup and Stories. I remember bringing our grandson to the parlor game evening with the outlandish stories. Once, when a “souper” was moving out of town, we had an outdoor Soup and Stories in his driveway because his house was empty. A lively spirit prevailed as we told goodbye stories and helped him drink up the remains of his liquor cabinet.  It really was like a family gathering with multiple toasts, visiting friends and the warmth of a family sendoff.

My friend Vicki Pappas and I formed our group by inviting people we knew who liked to cook. One of our members told his grad students about the club, and they formed their own Soup and Stories. And you could do the same. Think about it — one Sunday (or any other day) per month to be away from your computer and with friends, sharing a meal, laughing at a story or game, and going home more light-hearted and satisfied with the nourishment of two soups and perhaps a cookie. This is the draw for a Soup and Stories group in a world where few things are certain. The camaraderie is always there and the soups are always satisfying in our fast-food world.

One does not need to be a gourmet chef or have a spice cabinet the size of a refrigerator to join. Soup recipes often start with a broth, which you can purchase at the store. Just check online for your favorite soup recipe. That broth from the grocery store (or perhaps homemade) is the palette you choose for your creation, be it chicken noodle, broccoli cheddar, or lemony white bean soup. Soup recipes are abundant, simple and forgiving. You will be surprised how easy it is to make a delicious soup.

Over the fourteen years of Sunday Soup and Stories’ existence, some of our members have moved away, some have passed away, and some have lost a mate. Yet the group is still going, with new members filling in. Each Sunday Soup and Stories evening is a new round of those who like to bring something magical for a group dinner, those who like to share stories, and those who revel in each other’s company. Why not call up some friends right now to start your own Soup and Stories? And if that seems too ambitious, why not begin by making a soup?

Listen to the Story Corps interview with Vicki Pappas and Harriet Castrataro.