Good morning!
Well, December got off to a less than auspicious start.
It finally happened. After almost three years of careful diligence, I got COVID. I have an underlying health condition that means it’s important that I don’t pick up a virus, so last week was a bit nerve-wracking, seeing how it would shake out. Still recovering, but so far so good in terms of intensity.
I didn’t spend Thanksgiving with the fam, but what I had done recently was to accidentally leave the mask in the car twice, once while grocery shopping and once while picking up takeout from an unexpected crowd of noticeably coughy people at Jersey Mike’s. Curse the lure of the Philly Cheesesteak!
(Although, honestly, it was probably Kroger. I have a feeling Kroger stores are ground-zero for rapid spread.)
And of course there’s Noodle the Pug 😭. I’ve fallen in love with so many animals on TikTok, and Noodle and Jon were always a bright spot in my feed. Having lost three of my own furbabies this year, I deeply feel Jon’s pain.
But, it’s the holidays, and we’re obliged to carry on with a bones-day skip in our step (even if it occasionally ends in a sploot).
As someone who’s lived on practically nothing but chicken soup and tea for the last week or so, I’m more than ever grateful for soup.
My family has deep Eastern European roots, and stroganoffs were frequent and beloved dinners. With such good reason!
This soup version takes full advantage of the savory combo of seared beef and tender egg noodles in a creamy base. It’s the perfect soup for winter, and it also serves here as the headliner to my list of company-worthy soups for the holidays.
The holidays are a complex time of year, to be sure, but I think one thing we can agree on is food: No matter what you are or aren’t celebrating, December is all about food.
Here’s a quick collection of soups you can turn to for your holiday entertaining.
Whether you’re hosting a big family celebration, bingeing shows with friends on a random evening, bringing something to the company potluck, or keeping the peeps energized between holiday activities, soup has a happy role.
It might not be a traditional holiday menu item, but it is a lovely surprise — something warm and nourishing among all the sweets and junk food.
Fancy Dinner
More company-worthy soups:
Fun & Casual
More curl-up-on-the-couch soups:
Potlucks & Buffets
More soups for a crowd:
A reader recently reached out to let me know that a recipe they were trying to save to Pinterest was, in fact, not pinnable 😫.
The software that runs my blog (and most blogs on the interwebs) forced a tech conversion a while back that I'm still cleaning up after.
It was an important upgrade, but there were consequences, and one of them (for my site, at least) is that I have to make sure that things are still shareable on more than half the site.
It’s all a process, lol, but I'll try to be more mindful about checking the posts I link to here in the Digest.
Meanwhile, if you encounter anything wonky on my blog, don’t hesitate to reach out, whether in a comment on a post, via the site’s contact form, or by hitting reply on this email. It all comes straight to me.
Apologies for the aggravation!
Until next time, friends, spend time with loved ones 👨👩👧👦👨👨👧👩👩👦 , stay kind 🤗, wear a mask in public if you can 😷, and remember the holidays are hard for so many ❤️🩹 — make extra soup to share 🫶🏻