Get Ready for Winter With The Joy of Soup

By: Charles Bowen Holidays come and go, but soup season lasts all winter. Well, actually, for some inspired enthusiasts -- like my new best friend, The Soup Lady -- the season never ends at all. And she can be your best friend too, especially if you're looking for a post-holidays feature to brighten up the cold, dark January ahead.

Probably your feature staff has all the holiday-oriented material it needs. But smart editors already are focused on the drought that we all know begins right after New Year's Day. So, relax ... and have a nice cup of soup.

The Joy of Soup is a refreshing site created by Super Souper Sue Pleydee, who has assembled an impressive collection of recipes for the bowl, most organized under a section called "Plogs" -- a word Sue cooked up herself by stirring together "soup" and "Web log." To dip into this site, visit http://www.joyofsoup.com, where you can find buttermilk soup to ham and tomato, and asparagus and escarole.

A favorite of mine is the "Let's Eat Out" section, which offers recipes from various restaurants, but your feature writers might be more drawn to the "Joy of Cookbooks," where Sue muses on the classics, like In the Kitchen with Miss Piggy and The Crisco Family Cookbook.

The site is not for the faint of heart. Just when you think you've got The Soup Lady's number, she surprises you by jazzing up the menu with items like "Velveeta Fudge" or "Cashew and Pineapple Soup." Scroll her home page for an extensive collection of links to other features. For instance, in the "Non-Plog" portion of the site are favorite foods that mostly don't come in a bowl, such as "X-Cookies," "Jello as Performance Art," "Beer and Brats," "Rose Petal Recipes" and the "Boston Beanie Ring."

And for those of us who never tire of playing with our food, there's the "Food Imposters" section, with recipes for food look-alikes. Krispie DrumSticks, for example, uses Rice Krispies, peanut butter and marshmallows, while Irish Potato Candy features coconut, cinnamon and eight ounces of cream cheese. Looking for The Soup Lady's comrades in cuisine? Keep scrolling that opening page to the "Foodies" section, where you'll find links to dozens of other food-related sites, from "Cooking with Gas" and "Eat Drink and be Married" to "Top Secret Recipes" and "Want Pie Now."

Other food-related goodies you might want to check out on the Web:

1. The Searchable Online Archive of Recipes or SOAR (recipesource.com) has literally tens of thousands of recipes from around the world, organized both by region and by type of dish. You also can search by keyboard. Enter "pumpkin" and find everything from pumpkin-filled ravioli to pumpkin pancakes to pumpkin ice cream pie.

2. For a more educational spin on food, see The Accidental Scientist's "Science of Cooking" (http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking), where lively material can add some real spice to those bland food stories. The site, operated by San Francisco's Exploratorium museum and science center, is devoted to recipes and activities that enhance our understanding of the science behind food and cooking.

3. Food Timeline, created and maintained by the Morris County Library in Whippany, N.J., (http://www.gti.net/mocolib1/kid/food.html), invites us to look at food from an entirely different point of view: from a historical perspective. It starts with ancient history when salt and rice appear in the human diet. Zipping forward to the Roman Era, we find a discussion on creamy rice pudding, said to be the first recorded recipe. Then there's the story of Chinese noodles, invented about 300 B.C. But wait. It's the more recent listings on the timeline that should whet your appetite for more. Need to know the history of Jell-o? Campbell's soup? Clark bars? Tootsie Rolls? Moon Pies? Kool-Aid? Milk Duds? For these and dozens of other well-known brand names, the site provides quick links to the official stories.