Photo by Kyu Han
Last week there was a full moon—and on the same night, a lunar eclipse, which produced a reddish “blood moon.” It was also the night of the season’s first full-moon soup parties at the house of Kassandra Bradberry, a Seattle mom of three who began the festivities about 10 years ago in Tacoma, shortly after the birth of her first child. A decade later, the parties, which begin at 5 p.m. and go until 9, carry on with an evolving cast of friends, neighbors, and lots of kids.
Kids, really, are the reason it all started. Bradberry, a vegetarian who used to make big pots of soup in college for her hungry, poor friends, stumbled on a book in the library about creating family traditions. With a new baby, she started thinking about how her emerging family might start their own “story.” Laughing, she says that “kids will drag their parents to come. It’s kind of an evil way to get people to come out.”
And come out they do. During last week’s full-moon party, the head count was at least 20, and included two new members: a 2-week-old baby and a kitten.
The whole Bradberry clan. Photo by Kyu Han
The parties themselves are simple: Bradberry always makes a big pot of some kind of vegetarian soup. “Add salt!” her husband admonishes. “Cass doesn’t believe in salt.” The rest is up to the guests, though Bradberry aims to make it easy on everyone. Her one invitation goes out before the first party (and provides the dates for the whole season) and requires no RSVP, no comment about what you’re bringing. “I don’t want people to feel obligated to come, because I understand it falls on weird nights, and you don’t know what life is going to do to you at any given moment. So you can come in whatever shape you’re in.”
Another impetus behind the parties are the dreary winter months in Seattle that can drag us all down. “Me and Jon are pretty introverted, and come winter we wouldn’t get out much.” So the get-togethers also aim to provide a cozy place to meet up with people in your community and get through the gloom. A pot of hot soup is naturally fitting. People tend to bring bread, wine, cheese, and often a homemade dessert or salad. Besides wine, Bradberry and her husband sometimes try their hand at other drinks, like a homemade nectarine vinegar shrub mixed with vodka last week.
The reason the parties are so appealing is the casualness of the Bradberrys’ approach. The house isn’t always ship shape, and the dress code is relaxed, sometimes very much so. “One night it was getting late and seemed like no one was coming. So I put on my PJs. Then suddenly people showed up, and I just stayed in them.”
Photo by Kyu Han
“I don’t want to stress out either,” she says. “We’ve had parties where I didn’t get home from running errands and picking up kids until 5, and a guest was there before I was. I just tell them to come on in and give them a knife to help me start chopping vegetables.”
Asked about favorite soups over the years, Bradberry mentions “Minestrone for a Crowd,” from which cookbook she can’t remember. She does, however, often use the Love Soup vegetarian cookbooks. “One of her favorites is a “Root Vegetable Pot au Feu,” which lets her use lots of root veggies from her CSA box. “The kids have no idea that there’s all this weird stuff in it.” It’s true: My daughter scarfs down bowls of soup she’d never eat at home.
The parties have now seen four different homes and the birth of three children. Birthdays and other special occasions have landed on them. Perhaps one of the more flamboyant ones occurred last winter, just after Bradberry and her family had moved into a mid-century-modern house; to celebrate, she asked people to come in “Mad Men-esque” attire and bring ’50s-era food. Women wore poodle skirts, mai tais were mixed, and plates of deviled eggs, iceberg-lettuce wedges with blue-cheese dressing, and a pineapple upside-down cake were on hand. Yet, still, that humble pot of soup.
As for the kids, I ask Bradberry what’s been most special for them about the parties. Her answer is aptly uncomplicated: “They look up now and really see the moon.”
nsprinkle@seattleweekly.com
