A Soup-a-Day Keeps the Winter at Bay

If there's anything I love more than Oberlin, it's Oberlin covered in snow. Especially if it's covered in snow with more snow coming down and I'm watching this as I make delicious soup inside my toasty house. If you're not here, you should wish you were.

What am I doing for Winter Term? I'm officially done with my required three projects, of which I spanned many a fun and educational project. I spent my first year being trained as a docent at the Allen Art Museum, my sophomore year I made a short documentary about the production of Steel Magnolias, and last year, if you recall, I spent a fabulous month as a photodocumentary intern with the Striking Viking Story Pirates.

I am taking this month of no assigned obligation to get lots and lots of work done on my senior cinema project, which is making a stop-motion animation of a variety of soup recipes. I love photos and movies and food (especially soup), but I also love detail, organization, process and problem solving, and this project covers all of them.

Over the last two days, I have:

- inventoried my entire kitchen (to know what I have and what I need to cook this month)

- reorganized and categorized all my cabinets (because taking on a big project like this needs a start on the most organized of right and left feet)

- wrote multiple itemized lists for shopping and future cooking (because a kitchen can only be so stocked after a two-week break, and we only go shopping once a week)

- set up a studio in my kitchen (my vegetables never looked so pretty)

- made French onion soup (because it's classic, and I have limited ingredients for now, but I do have staples)

- made chili (because it's cold)

- played with the big huge animation tripod (so I can take photographs above a table, with complete stability, perfect for stop-motion work)

- learned how to tether my camera to my computer (so I can take pictures and see them on my computer immediately, like a giant version of my camera's LCD screen, which is AWESOME)

- started writing in my food blog again (oh glory be!)

Remember my food blog? I barely do, but since this whole month revolves around cooking (I'm making food to accompany my soups and sharing meals with friends), a blog is a very good way to document it. It also reminds me to show my parents what's going on in my life... which is the whole reason I started blogging in the first place. Thank you, family. :)

If you're around this month and are craving some soup and company, get in touch. I want to share this project with friendly folks... and you're my testing group. Help me improve!