Boup, a History

Welcome to my first blog post ever!  Boup is dedicated to my love of eating and cooking soup.  To me, soup is the perfect food.  It can satisfy nearly any craving and save old things in your refrigerator and pantry from being thrown away (especially important to the recent college grad out on their own).  When reflecting upon my soupy passion, I believe it began back in middle school, or more correctly, when I would get home from school as a starving preteen in the afternoon and our kitchen pantry was filled with this:

Image strangely found on SodaHead.com, with really a terribly too long link to paste here...

At first, I was content to simply add another can's worth of water, mix it together, and bring it to a low boil over medium high heat.  Then I read Brian Jacques' Redwall series, and who doesn't get hungry when reading about fictional woodland feasts?  I was inspired by the otters' favorite, hotroot soup.  I loved those otters and wished I could emulate them somehow.  Alas, my culinary skills were somewhat minimal and I lacked in shrimp and hotroot, whatever that may be.  Instead, I dumped a lot of chili powder into the mix to attain a smoky, spicy effect- and I found my afternoon ritual with Campbell's veggie alphabet soup much improved.  So much so, in fact, that I began experimenting with other spices and sitting down to taste the results with "my" (really, my older brother's) Redwall novels.  Since the canned soup is a tad bland on its own, most additions and combinations were successful.  I learned the hard way that too much turmeric will result in a bitter taste and heartburn.  Too much Dave's Insanity Sauce also had some painful consequences.  Overall, black pepper, chili powder, garlic, cayenne, and oregano tended to suit my fancy in the context of canned soup, no matter what the soup.

Some of the soups that have delighted my palate recently: Vietnamese Pho, "real" Japanese ramen, and my own favorite Asian-inspired spicy noodle and spinach soup, which got its roots from a Korean beef and green onion based soup that I had at our local H-Mart.

My goal here is to write about both soups that I have made and soups that I have eaten.  When making soups, I tend to glance at a recipe, take some bits and pieces, and use intuition more than rigorous recipe-following.  That may change for the sake of this blog and its potential followers, and also to expand my cooking skill set.  I will critique soups in restaurants and soups available commercially (canned or jarred).  All soup shall henceforth be under my critical eye.