BEYOND REASON

January is, on average, the coldest month of the year. And that means one thing. Big heating bills. And soup. Okay, two things.

Of course, there are different types of soup. Alphabet soup is a metaphor made famous during FDR’s new deal that gave us all kinds of acronyms like IRS, CIA, FBI, BRB, LOL. Duck Soup is the absolutely timeless 1933 Marx Brothers film about Freedonia, a bankrupt nation looking to borrow a little something from a neighboring country. If you’re looking for a laugh, watch Groucho ask for money. Then pick up his book, “Memoirs of a Mangy Lover”. You don’t even need to open it. (Though you should) Just looking at Groucho will put you in a better mood. But I digress. Then again so did Groucho. And look where all those digressions got him.

At some point in your life, you will find someone explaining something to you soup to nuts. Soup to nuts is a metaphor for the whole enchilada. At another point in your life, you may find yourself in the soup, which is not good. You want to be out of the soup, clear of the soup. Shoot for a life beyond soup.

Unless it’s winter. Then you may want a bowl of soup.

Based on my completely perfunctory search on the internets, the very first soup on record is from 20,000 BC. I assume they found it in the very back of someone’s freezer, noticed the Tupperware was made of clay, the handwriting in Sumerian (or cursive), and when they finally fired it up, it tasted “old”. Someone placed a bet. History was made.

What exactly is soup? Again, the internets come to the rescue. Soup is “not stew”. Totally different. Not the same. At all. Personally, I think of soup as the opposite of a smoothie. A smoothie is for breakfast and cold. A soup is not.

Yes, soup is hot. There is some debate on this in the margins. Every once in a while, a fancy chef offers a summer soup. He calls it “a cold soup “and puts it on the menu beneath his “hot salad.” Many eyebrows raise. Has this genius chef invented a new thing? No, he has not. There is no such thing as cold soup. If you have come from Spain and enjoyed a nice Gazpacho, how nice for you. But that is not soup. That is a smoothie.

While plenty of other foods can be “off” (sushi, raw meat, etc.), I can think of no other food that is “on”. “Soup’s on!” is something someone might shout in a wholesome, old-timey show like, say, Little House on the Prairie. You’ll never hear someone shout, “Quiche’s on!” or “Sandwich’s on!” or “Taco’s on!” Only soup is on. So, there’s that.

Soup is, in my own culinary experience, just liquid and stuff. The liquid is known as a broth and the stuff is known as stuff. Though, you will be hard-pressed to find a soup without liquid, some soups have no stuff whatsoever. Those soups are “brothy”. This would be the soup you might enjoy if you actually followed through on that dream to runaway to that Buddhist monastery. Now, if you have too much stuff in your soup you don’t have soup. You have stew. Which is not soup. At all. We already covered this. Try to keep up.

Soups are well known and loved in many cultures. In fact, one soup, like Menudo, is so beloved that boy bands (yes, plural!) named themselves after the soup just to ride its coattails and become a passing fad. Fans show up for some soup but end up staying, since they’re already there, for the band, I guess.

Many cultures bring a staple soup to the table. A Japanese Miso. A Hungarian goulash. A Vietnamese Pho. An Israeli Matza Ball. (Man, writing this makes me hungry.) But cultures also like feeling unique. Thus, they offer oddities to distinguish themselves. A Ukrainian borscht. China has competing entries with a Bird’s Nest and Shark’s Fin Soup. But the United States is the only place you can get a good, honest Beer Cheese soup.

The most famous soup in the West is Chicken Soup. It is the go-to soup if someone is in bed with a cold. While every study has shown there is absolutely no link to Chicken soup and recovery, Chicken Soup is plenty salty, and that saltiness makes you drink lots of fluids. And you know what is linked to recovery from the common cold? Drinking lots of fluids.

In fact, some think Chicken Soup so nourishing that they feed it to their souls! Which is fine unless your soul is vegetarian. Then your soul will live longer but must look for something like a minestrone.

Finally, soup is a potential for comedy perfection. If you are one of the chosen ones, once in your life, you will be at a restaurant, hopefully a very fancy restaurant, and you will find… a fly in your soup. Please bring the matter to the attention of your waiter right away. Whatever happens next, please remember that you’re the straight guy. Yes, it’s winter alright. A time for soup. And higher heating bills.