Every culture makes soup. It’s easy, filling and nutritious, and can be inexpensive. In much of the world it’s eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

January is National Soup Month. Rather than fall back on your favorites today, discover something new. Start with our delicious Soup Glossary, featuring many different types of soups.

Then, check out our soup garnishes: ways to add flavor and excitement to your soup.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SOUP

Mankind is up to 200,000 years old. For the majority of our existence, we have had no soup.

The earliest humans had no cookware—nothing to boil water (or anything else) in. Boiling was not easy to do until the invention of waterproof containers, probably pouches made of clay or animal skin, about 9,000 years ago. We can date the first types of soups to about 6,000 B.C.E., some 8,000 years ago.

Our word soup comes from French soupe, which derived from Vulgar Latin suppa, from the post-classical Latin verb suppare, to soak. This indicated bread soaked in broth, or a liquid poured onto a piece of bread. The bread added heft to the meal.

Since its beginnings, soup was a poor man’s
dinner. The name of the meal evolved to
souper, than supper. Red lentil soup from
Chobani | Soho.

Soup gets its name from “sop,” the piece of bread regularly added to sop up the soup. Photo courtesy ParmigianoReggiano.com.

Today’s soup croutons evolved from sops.

While the rich enjoyed elaborate soups, basic soup was a poor man’s dinner. Until recent times, the evening meal was the lighter of the two meals of the day; a soup or sop would be a typical evening dish. The name of the meal evolved to souper, than supper.

It began to be fashionable to serve the liquid broth without the sop (bread), and in the early eighteenth century, soup became a first course.
 

EATING VS. DRINKING SOUP

Since it’s a liquid, why do we “eat” soup rather than “drink” soup?

Because it’s served in a dish. If you consume it from a mug or cup, then you can be deemed to be drinking your soup.

It’s a new year and you’ve resolved to eat better. Get started by eating a good breakfast.

We flipped for CedarLane’s Egg White Omelettes, which go from freezer to plate in 4-1/2 microwave minutes. Eat them directly from the paper baking dish—no dish washing required.

You’ll benefit from 18-23 g of protein (depending on the variety) and all-natural ingredients. The calories range from 230 to 300 (the latter includes turkey bacon).

While these are egg white omelettes, made without the cholesterol-laden egg yolks, you wouldn’t know it. They both look and taste like the whole egg, conventionally yellow and very flavorful. They do, however, contain cholesterol from the cheese (and the turkey bacon), but it’s a net savings over a whole egg omelette.

A delicious omelet in 4-1/2 minutes. Photo courtesy CedarLane.

Each variety is delicious. Here, the popular spinach omelette. Photo courtesy CedarLane.

Tender and tasty, the options include:
The omelettes are available in four delicious flavors, so well seasoned, they don’t even need a shake of salt.

Beyond breakfast, the omelettes are delicious for lunch or a light dinner with a big salad.

Each individual-portion box has an SRP of $5.00. Learn more at CedarLaneFoods.com.
 
OMELETTE VS. OMELET?

It’s French versus British spelling. Both are correct: Omelet is easier to spell while omelette is more elegant.

If you like green tea, have you ever tried cooking with it? An easy way to start is with this Green Tea Rice recipe from Bee Yinn Low of Rasa Malaysia, a website that features easy Asian recipes.

The recipe illustrates how green tea is not just for drinking but for adding flavor and nutritional benefits (antioxidants!) to everyday dishes.

Bee Yinn Low uses Oi Ocha brand’s shincha tea in her cookng. Shincha is the year’s first harvest of green tea, which begins in early April. The young leaves used to brew shincha tea has even more benefits than other green teas, the result of wintertime dormancy. They deliver smooth umami flavor plus four times the amount of the amino acid L-theanine, higher concentrations of catechin antioxidants and vitamin C. It’s also lower in caffeine than regular green tea, with a subtle sweetness attributed to the higher content of L-theanine and the lower content of caffeine.

In Japanese, “shin” means new and “cha” means tea. The tea is available for only a few months a year, but is still available on Amazon.com and from the manufacturer, Itoen.com. Think it as the summer ale or Beaujolais Nouveau of green tea.

Green tea rice. Photo courtesy Rasa Malaysia.

Shincha green tea. Photo courtesy Oi-Ocha |
Itoen.

Prep time is 5 Minutes, cook time is 10 minutes.

Ingredients For 2 Servings

Preparation

1. BRING the green tea to simmer in a small sauce pan. Add the salt and turn off the heat.

2. PLACE the steamed rice in a large shallow bowl. Top with the scallions and sesame seeds. Pour the green tea over the rice and serve immediately.