Spoons

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup."  H.L. Mencken 

I happen to like cabbage in my soup, and the best place to get soup on the quick is Spoons.

I've often said that I could live on a liquid (or semi-liquid) diet. I owe this largely to my love of Vitamin Water, smoothies, and soup.  Soup is the ultimate comfort food, and I associate it with friends and good memories.

Case in point: Recently I met a dear friend of mine at Spoons for lunch.  We went against the grain and ordered salads instead of soup; still delicious. In fact, it was a nice little break. And besides, where else can you get a salad and a drink for just over four bucks? But the point is we sat and took two hours to eat our salads while we caught up, laughed, cried, remembered why we are friends, and kicked ourselves for not getting together sooner--and more often.

Spoons is THE place to go for soup in FoCo. They mix up pretty good salads too, and even try their hands at sandwiches. But I don't go out of my way for their sandwiches. It's the soup.  Mac 'n' cheese soup. Vegetarian split pea. Harvest winter vegetable. Green chile cheddar with 90 Shilling.  Rosemary potato. And for you meat lovers, you can order up good old fashioned stews or mom's chicken noodle. It's wonderful to live in a college town and a green-friendly town.  You can always count on Spoons to have vegetarian, dairy free, and gluten free options. For about six bucks you can get a generous cup of soup, homemade foccacia bread, and a soda.

I don't know why it is, but soup is the ultimate comfort food. A long day, a case of the sniffles, dreadfully cold outside, nothing seems to soothe like a hot cup of soup. Maybe this is because we are taken back to our childhoods when mothers served us piping hot bowls of chicken noodle soup to comfort our aching heads and sore throats, or to warm us up after a day of snowman building. Soup represents caretaking at its best, and reminds us of our first, most wonderful experience of unconditional love.

Beethoven claimed that "Whoever tells a lie cannot be pure in heart--and only the pure in heart can make good soup." This is certainly true of mothers. Whether that noodle soup was Lipton, Campbells, or homemade, nothing was as good as a warm cup of soup.

I'm sure on some level these sort of memories are embedded in my brain,  in my soul, in my whole being, and that's why I love connecting with friends over warm soup and bread.  It  never fails that our conversations run the entire gauntlet of emotions, and eating takes almost three hours. And naturally when you part, you feel better than you did when you arrived.  That is comfort food.