Announcing a new Meetup for [Western Mass] Eat-Up!!

What: Pioneer Valley Soup Swap is on!

When: January 23, 2010 5:30 PM

Where: (A location has not been chosen yet.)

Greetings, gang, we are finally getting on the national soup swap map! Here's the link on the soup swap page:
http://soupswap.com/news/?p=918

Here's the S(c)oup:

Soup Swap Guidelines

So you want to host a soup swap? It’s a fun, easy way to get to know your neighbors and get a wonderful mix of homemade soup for your freezer! After six years of trial and error, out in Seattle, we’ve come up with these guidelines to help simplify yours.

Planning Soup Swap

1. Schedule soup swap so there are at least two full weekends to make soup. We’ve generally found that scheduling on a weeknight works best, an event where folks can chat a bit, drink a little wine, and meet some new folks without an investment in a long party (remember they’ve already invested a lot of time making soup!)

2. Invite everyone you know, and then ask them to invite everyone they know. There will be plenty of picky eaters and skeptics, but you’ll want as many folks to show up as you can find!

3. Ask folks to bring SIX quarts of a frozen soup. Six quarts is generally the biggest stock pot in most kitchens. Often the recipes will need doubled or tweaked to get this amount. Every year someone shows up with two kinds of soup so that they have the required SIX quarts, which is fine, because the real requirement is that everyone has the same amount of soup in same size containers.

4. We’ve never set a rule on what types of soup to bring, though some soups don’t freeze particularly well, potato and cream soups for example. If this is important to you, by all means specify, but in order to get the biggest number of swappers, we always tell the vegetarians that they may only get back a certain number of veggie soup and may be left with a few meat soups they’ll have to give to their friends.

5. The weekend before Soup Swap, remind folks and by all means, start dropping hints on all the wonderful soup you’ve been hearing about. After six years in Seattle, Soup Swap is up there with full-body contact sports in competitiveness! Remind people that it is important they be on time to swap soup. Generally, we swap soup an hour after the party begins: Party at 6:30, Swap at 7:30, people are leaving by 8:00, though some may stay later…

At Soup Swap

1. Chit chat and drink some wine. And by all means try to start swapping soup on time!
2. Gather the soup (and the chefs) in a central location. Admire the quantity and variety.
3. Being the “Telling of the Soup”. This is each chef’s opportunity to talk about what makes their soup special. Is it organic? It is spicy? Does it have anything someone might not be able to eat? Is it a treasured recipe?
4. Place “Soup Selection” numbers in a hat equal in number to the participants and each person will draw a number.
Number 1 picks the first soup, Number 2 the second and so on, until everyone has selected a soup. Repeat six times until all the soup is gone.
5. We always find it best to remind folks to save the bags they came with, as they will need them to take the soup home!
Everyone should now be leaving with the same amount of soup, but now it is a wonderful mix of soup!

Sounds like fun to me! We will be taking the first 20 people who sign up and then a waitlist of 10. no fees, no cost, I'll fill you in on the details closer to event time.

I am not sure of the location, but if your house has a dining room or living room big enough to hold a crowd and is fairly centrally located, let me know!

Can't wait to join the crowd, this event will be going on that same day all around the country.

warmly,

Jessica

Learn more here:
http://www.meetup.com/Western-Mass-Eat-Up/calendar/12042374/




--
Please Note: If you hit "REPLY", your message will be sent to everyone on this mailing list ([address removed])
This message was sent by Jessica Waters ([address removed]) from [Western Mass] Eat-Up!.
To learn more about Jessica Waters, visit his/her member profile
To unsubscribe or to update your mailing list settings, click here

Meetup Inc. PO Box 4668 #37895 New York, New York 10163-4668 | [address removed]