Favorite Soups and Staying in Touch

A collection of my favorite soups for winter from the archives!

Hi Everyone!

I hope-ity hope-hope that winter will start winding down with the turn of the month. It’s extra cruel when Mother Nature slaps us down (more snow! bitter cold!) just when we need to see signs of Spring the most.

And I’m hoping that soon those heavy, comforting soups that are such life-savers in December, January, and February begin to feel too heavy and too hot very soon.

In the meantime — winter is definitely sticking around this week, with several nights south of 0°F — I wanted to revive a few of my favorite soups from the archives for a little end-of-the-season cooking. (And then I’ll close with a word about SoupAddict and social media.)

So many yummy soups! I think the West African Peanut Soup is going to have to make a reappearance sooner than later!

Vegetarian Thai Peanut Soup

Broccoli Cauliflower Glow Soup

Sriracha Black Bean Soup

Southwest Broccoli Queso Chowder

West African Peanut Soup

Coconut Curry Chicken Soup

Tikka Masala Soup

Mulligatawny Soup

BLT Soup

Staying in Touch with SoupAddict

When I reviewed the stats for this blog over the last year or so, I was surprised to note how much traffic has transitioned from desktop users to mobile users: in January 2015, 60% of y’all were using mobile devices to view SoupAddict.com, compared to 50% in January 2014. That’s a helluva leap.

In a way, it’s kind of a shame, because certain types of websites — food blogs included — are better enjoyed, IMO, from the desktop. Many of us put a lot of time and love into the design of our sites, and the quality of our photographs, and neither of those things shine on a mobile interface (particularly phones).

But, we’ve all changed the way we consume information and minified the technology with which we consume it, and wishing isn’t going to make desktops come back into prominence (and honestly, as a user, I wouldn’t want them to — I love my phone).

You don’t have to hover over your laptop to keep up with SoupAddict goings-on — there are other ways to stay connected. I’m more active on some forms of social media than others (and am not purely SoupAddict-focused), and I note that here:

Facebook
I’m fairly active on Facebook, but here’s the rub: of the 1,900 followers of my SoupAddict Page, only 1% to 20% of them will ever see my posts. Hopefully this is common knowledge by now, but it’s worth repeating: Facebook severely throttles content from Pages, which Facebook considers “businesses” (i.e., profit-making entities from which they want a cut), whether we are or not (and SoupAddict is not). While I do (most of the time) post to FB about new recipes on SoupAddict, history shows that Facebook will show that post to only 15 to 20 people in their feeds (they know when I’m linking to my own website, and they want me to fork over some cash for that post). Mostly I share other stuff from around the interwebs that I find interesting or amusing (it may or may not be food related).

If you follow me on Facebook, and actually want to see my stuff and new post notifications, you’ll have to interact with the posts for a while – “like” them, or leave a comment or something. (There’s a notification option in settings that I don’t think actually works. Many of my favorite pages have dropped from my feed, even with that notification set.) It’s so cheesy for me to have to say that — interact with me! — but I’m afraid it’s true on FB.

To follow SoupAddict on Facebook, click here.

Instagram
IG is currently my social medium of choice. I dig it. Really dig it. IG almost makes me forgive FB for being so stingy and inflexible (FB owns IG). If you follow me on IG, you’ll see sneak peeks of SoupAddict recipes, images from other visual projects I’m working on (which have nothing to do with SoupAddict and will never appear on the blog), plus anything I find interesting out in the world (which is a lot – it’s a fascinating place out there, our crazy, mixed up world). IG is one of the few remaining “level playing fields” in social media: you post an image and everyone who follows you sees the image in their feeds, as well as anyone who views any of the hashtags you’ve added to your photo. No throttling, no favorites, no excessive regramming – just a straightforward feed of your choice.

To follow me on Instagram, click here from your mobile device (my username is “soupaddict” – easy to remember and to find on IG).

Pinterest
I love Pinterest, although it’s slipped this year to second place behind Instagram. I’m a very selective pinner, especially when it comes to soups, so you won’t see any spam pins coming from me (I click pins before repinning them to see where they go – there’s lots of shady characters on Pinterest these days).

To follow SoupAddict on Pinterest, click here.

Twitter
I’ll be totally honest here: I rarely post to Twitter. I rarely look at Twitter. Its text-based feed makes me tired. And I must be the only person in the Twitterverse who gets aggravated with retweets. Sometimes it’s really useful to follow a hashtag (say, there’s a conference you can’t attend in person, but want to keep up with what’s happening in the moment, or Downton Abbey kills off the family dog and you need some solace, or the James Beard Foundation announces its award winners in a live feed) … but … then people start retweeting the same sound-bites over and over, and you have to scroll-scroll-scroll to get to anything new. Never do I feel more like tossing my phone aside and rejoining the real world outside than when trying to slog through one of those hashtag feeds.

I also usually forget to tweet about new recipes on SoupAddict, so, I’m basically silent on Twitter.

But, to follow SoupAddict on Twitter anyway, click here.

Google+
Ditto the Twitter thing: I rarely post to Google+. I rarely look at Google+. There are all kinds of well-documented advantages to using G+, I realize, but despite my best efforts, I’ve never been able to get a following going there. It feels like I’m shouting into the wind whenever I post something.

To add SoupAddict to your circles, click here.

Email Subscription
As of today, I only publish RSS emails to my email subscribers. This means that when you subscribe to my email list, you will receive an automated email from MailChimp (my email service provider) whenever I publish a new post on my blog. The content of the email is the full blog post, and nothing more. (I don’t currently do marketing or promotional emails.) So, if you like my posts, but you often forget to visit my blog, signing up for an email subscription might be a good way to keep up with things: you can read the full post from your email reader at your leisure. Of course, I’d love for you to visit the blog and leave a comment or click around or some such thing, but, I know we’re all pressed for time, right?

If you’d like to subscribe to my email list, click here and fill out the form (only an email address is required. Don’t forget that you’ll need to confirm the subscription via an email sent to that address.) You can unsubscribe at any time with no strings attached.

I hope you enjoy the soups, and hope to see you around on social media!

Karen xo