Yesterday I spent an hour or so having tea with my friend Maggie Stuckey at her Ocean Park cottage and getting a glimpse of her new book, Soup Night.  Well, not the book.  It won’t be available until October 21^st.  She was showing me the proofs – the second of three sets that she is correcting as we speak.

Maggie is a writer who wears two hats.  Under her own name she writes cookbooks and books about gardening.  She also is a ghost writer and her niche is writing about name people in finance.  She says she completes a book about every six months “on average.”

Soup Night is being published by Workman who say this about Maggie and her forthcoming book:  Maggie Stuckey is a writer, who grows vegetables and cooks up a storm in her Portland, Oregon, home. The author of The Bountiful Container and seven other books on gardening and horticulture, she is happiest when tending her vegetable garden and using the outcome to create new soups.

What the blurb does not say is that the book is about much, much more than soup and ingredients and recipes – although it involves all of those things.  It’s also about coming together and sharing and community; it’s about nurturing and safety and celebrating a sense of place.  And, judging by a quick look at the proofs, the full-color photographs throughout underscore the rich variety of people who create and enjoy these soups, as well as depicting the soups, themselves.

The idea came about because Maggie’s brother (who also lives in Portland) belongs to a neighborhood soup group.  As Maggie began to explore that concept, she found that soup groups in one form or another exist all over the United States.  I think that she said she has included 130 of them in this book.  (Could that be?  Maybe I have it wrong…)

In addition, she has included recipes from individuals – especially if they come with a story.  My lentil soup recipe and its story is included, as is David Campiche’s recipe for mussel chowder.  I am SO looking forward to the book’s publication.  I think Katie and Joel are going to have a soup-tasting book-signing for Maggie at Adelaide’s Coffee and Books in Ocean Park.  For sure I’ll be there with my Christmas list in one hand and my spoon in the other!  Hooray for Maggie and for soup!