How To Throw A Soup Swap Party

This past Sunday four of my friends came over to my condo for lunch. The theme was Soup Swap Party.

What is a Soup Swap Party and why/how/where could you have one? Well, I'm about to tell you.

Here's what happened: one of the assignments for Apartment Therapy's January Cure was to throw a little get together and invite a few friends over in order to motivate yourself to keep your house/apartment/condo/whatever clean. This is something I do on regular basis (plus, it is fun to see my friends), so I was fine with this assignment. But what kind of a get together should I have?

While I was trying to decide on a theme for my invitation, I saw a link to a Soup Swap on TheKitchn that my friend K tweeted. I had my plan.

Soup Swap Party {my version}: you make lunch for friends. Friends come over to hang out, eat lunch, and instead of bringing wine or appetizer or dessert, they bring individually portioned and packed soup to give to other attendees. This way, everyone eats together and then gets to take home a bunch of different soups to eat throughout the week {or freeze!}.

Here's what happened and how you can throw your own Soup Swap Party.

1) Look at your calendar and choose a date you'd like to host a soup party. Sunday afternoon was the best option for me because it gave me Saturday to clean, prepare the food, and get flowers. Also, Sunday lunchtime is a good time because no one has to wake up early or stay up late.

2) Send out invitations. I sent out emails: expect that not everyone will be able to come. Expect that some people will cancel. Sent an email to the people who responded with yes, I'd love to come with directions to bring x number of containers filled with soup and also to ask for food allergies/dislikes.

3) Plan the menu. I decided to make two soups, a simple salad, some sort of a bread product and a simple dessert.

4) A day (or two) before the party, clean your house, do grocery shopping, buy flowers, make a plan of action and start cooking

5) The day of the party, make the salad, set the table, and get ready for fun!

I set the table with linen napkins, water glasses I brought back from Italy, wine glasses and a vase with tulips. Keep it simple!

The first soup I made was borsch. This was mainly for my friend Cindy ;) I wasn't sure others would be interested in a beet based soup, so I made an alternative.

The second soup was a chicken meatballs soup with potatoes, carrots, white beans and kale.

The day of the soup swap I made Cheddar Chive Biscuits.

For dessert, I made a simple layered parfait of yogurt, marinated sour cherries in light syrup, pistachios and broken up chocolate pecan cookies. I'll write about those cookies and why they were broken up on Friday ;)

We chatted, drank wine, ate the food and in the end everyone went home with a variety of soups. It was a fabulous way to spend a Sunday!

Thank you Cecilia, Jenn, Cindy and Kaoru for coming over and all the delicious concoctions {salmon chowder, chicken chili, barley stew, and Japanese curry}. This was also a great way for my friends from different circles to meet one another.

Have you ever hosted a Soup Swap?