Every Season is SOUP SEASON: 85+ Souper-Adaptable Recipes to Batch, Share, Reinvent, and Enjoy by Shelly Westerhausen Worcel

Over the years, I have found that certain (non-food) publications have great “food-cred” – as in, their published recipes are consistently credible - achievable for home cooks, contain readily-available ingredients, and are delicious. My recipe box has many of our family faves torn (or now downloaded) from Midwest Living magazine. Their restaurant features in the travel section are also reliable. Who wants to spend time and money during a one-meal stop in an underachieving tourist-trap café? And now, because Midwest Living featured SOUP SEASON last month, I’ve found that their cookbook recommendations dig even deeper than what’s trending with well-known chefs. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to buy Erin French’s new one!) 

I thought the title of this book was just SOUP SEASON – how appropriate in the throes of Autumn 2023, when the snowflakes started flying? Now that I’ve devoured this book (pun intended), I know why it’s called Every Season is Soup Season. The Table of Contents is laid out by the four seasons with cold, hot, and room-temp recipes than specifically lean on the ingredients that are seasonally available. Then there’s a chapter entitled Enhancers with things like frizzled shallots, and smoked gouda grilled cheese croutons – yum!; and another for Accompaniments like quick yogurt flatbread, brown butter pumpkin cornbread, and peach poblano slaw. Each recipe is vegetarian, but many do have meat suggestions. And THEN, there are instructions to convert the leftovers into a different meal the next day (or next week/month if you freeze the leftovers). So cool, right?  

Many of my cookbooks read like novels, and I love them almost equally. But SOUP SEASON will be an actively working part of my collection. Where do you get your new-recipe-inspiration? I’d love to know. (Reply back and we'll compile your answers in a future email!) (Click for inside images.)

Beyond That, the Sea by Laura Spence-Ash

An April 2023 Indie Next List selection, Beyond That, the Sea is a rich historical novel told from several characters’ points of view by chapter, spanning a period between 1940 and 1977. Eleven-year-old Beatrix Thompson (Bea) joins the evacuation of London and sails to Boston to live out the worst of the WWII Blitz with her host family, the Gregorys. Her angst during war time is expected, but to leave her parents, who live with the peril of daily bombings, and travel to an unknown family, country, and culture is overwhelming. As she starts to integrate with the new family, she experiences guilt at her increasing joy of becoming a surrogate sibling to Gerald, just a bit younger than Bea, and William, two years older, and at becoming the only “daughter” of her American host parents, who are of a much different economic/social class than her biological family. 

Then Bea finds that her true self is developing and starting to "grow up" at the Gregory’s summer residence, on an island just off the southern coast of Maine. She continues to acclimate through new-found activities (she’d never learned to swim or row before); develops confidence through the thrill of competing with the boys; and discovers the pleasures of solitude through hikes in the woods. Tragedy, love and unrealized dreams follow this coming-of-age period as Bea returns after five long years to a changed England and family circumstances, while her relationship with the Gregory family gradually fades. Until…

The multitude of historical WWII fiction that I’ve read has dealt with the impacted lives of the residents, soldiers, occupiers, resistance units, and even young evacuees from London, but mainly to other parts of Great Britain. This was a different take on evacuations – almost emigration? – but cut short during the most impressionable time in a young person’s emotional development. A compelling read.