When the frigid days of winter arrived my thoughts turned to soul-warming homemade soup. But soups take a lot of time and effort to make... time I don't have that often. So... I started digging online to find out where I could find the best soups in the Twin Cities and Birdsong Soups kept coming up.
Birdsong Soups doesn't have a website, but they do have a Facebook page... with the mouthwatering photo below taken by the chef's son. It inspired me to check it out further...
I learned that the owner and chef, Pam Knutson, has cooked in kitchens throughout the world including London, India and Thailand... but some of her favorite cooking was at Cafe Brenda here in Minneapolis. Her Birdsong Soups took flight after coming upon the idea of a weekly soup program to share her favorite soups with friends and family twelve years ago. She incorporated her breadth of knowledge to start a CSS, and it has continued to grow ever since.
When I hear CSS 'Cascading Style Sheets' immediately come to mind, but that obviously doesn't have anything to do with soup. It turns out CSS stands for Community Supported Soup, and works similar to the way a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group enables people to buy local, seasonal food directly from a farmer.
Pam works all day every Thursday from 7 am to 6 pm chopping, stirring and potting up her freshly made soups at Kitchen in the Market, a shared commercial kitchen at Midtown Global Market at Lake Street and 10th Avenue in south Minneapolis... getting them ready for delivery directly to the members of her soup group, with a few left over for others to buy at the Market.
Except for the 'grab + go' case at Kitchen in the Market (where I picked up a couple quarts), Birdsong Soups are sold directly to her soup lovers through her CSS: Community Supported Soup program. The soups are all vegetarian, all natural and freshly made containing as many organic goodies as she can find each week.
Members pre-order and pre-pay by the quart, with share discounts for a quarter, half or full year. This enables her to know just how much to prepare so there is minimal waste. Soup season starts in October and runs through the beginning of June... still half a season left.
See this year's soup schedule and details about the program in the Birdsong Soups brochure. I plan to join and look forward to all the flavorful delights to come!
Kitchen in the Market is located by the northwest corner of the Powderhorn Park community of south Minneapolis, which includes six neighborhoods: Bancroft, Bryant, Central, Corcoran, Powderhorn Park and Standish. Average price of Powderhorn homes for sale is $129,835.
This thriving and diverse community developed in the first part of the 20th century is best known for its vibrant May Day Parade the first weekend in May and Powderhorn Art Fair the first weekend in August.