The Fraggle Foodie: Peace Soup

Published: February 10, 2025

The holidays are over, fresh horrors hit our news feeds each day, and winter is still gray, wet, dark, cold, and gross—so let’s make soup about it!

When I first saw Back to the Rock episode 112 “Into the Trash,” it was almost exactly three years ago. We were still in the thick of the COVID, but when I got the news that Fraggle Talk: Classic would be happening, I texted my friends: “THE PODCAST IS A GO AND I CANT SLEEP BC IM BUBBLING OVER WITH IDEAS FOR IT AND FOR MY UPCOMING ARTICLES AND MY CAREER IN GENERAL AND GOOD S#!% CAN STILL HAPPEN IN LIFE FOLX GOODNIGHT NEVERLAND.” The world was burning then as now, but I still found ways to create joy. And I knew someday I wanted to do that by making Peace Soup.

What is Peace Soup? A bonkers experiment by a giant nerd (Boober? Me? Yes.) to combine four different soups—radish noodle soup for the Fraggles, seaweed stew for the Merggles, pumpkin bisque for the Craggles, and baby corn soup for the Doozers.

Months in the making, I arrived the other night to an empty kitchen and began unpacking a mile of ingredients. My friend Josh owns a house that holds weekly low-key hang-outs and has a well-stocked kitchen, so it was the perfect staging ground. The other housemates, Casey and Clover, gladly let me use some of their carrots and garlic. Jacqueline was the first of my sous-chefs to arrive (with homemade butter tarts for dessert) and helped me start chopping veggies as I put on my 90s/Aughts Nostalgia playlist on shuffle (partly because it’s my go-to for feel-good music that I can either ignore or sing along to, mostly because of the line “Well…does he like butter tarts?” in “Steal My Sunshine”). Brandon, who had been checking in with me to see if I needed help leading up to that day, arrived next as sous-chef #2. When Lauren arrived with fixins for anticipated sourdough, we finally had enough people to assign one soup per person and the real cooking began.

Claire (who is probably the single biggest reason this huge constellation of friends and friends-of-friends exists and can be self-sustaining) flitted in and out, shredded cheese, and made me feel so seen and proud with shared happy-wiggles, catlike head-bonks, and a shouted “You’re amazing!” from the other room (to which I reply-shouted “I feel amazing!”). Robyn arrived with their immersion blender (RIP, it broke somewhere in the process of bisque-ing) and Nathan with their “breadentials” of multiple kinds of sourdough. (Note: when you’re eating bread and butter, please invest in the expensive higher-fat-content kind such as Darigold, if you can afford it—your inner Hobbit will thank you.) Delta, Amanda, Gaelen, and Jessica trickled in throughout the night, and I was happy to have them (I’m no Little Red Hen—everyone eats regardless of contribution).

After dinner, Brandon brought out a suitcase full of their housemate’s Marie-Kondo’ed clothes, and we had a mini fashion show as folks discovered wild and sparkly pieces to take home. We packed up the three quarts of leftover soup to contribute to Hannah’s meal train as she’s about to undergo her second round of chemo. Casey helped me dry dishes while I washed, then Lauren took over washing so I could put my feet up to watch and laugh along as Delta and Amanda played a very silly game called “Human: Fall Flat.” I got many hugs, many thanks, delighted Fraggle Rock questions, and a ride home. My favorite quotes of the night: “Thar be radishes!” and “You would’ve gotten them in spooner or ladle.”

“But Beth,” I can hear you asking, “did it work? Is real life Peace Soup actually any good??”

And, to my unending delight, the answer is yes. I deliberately picked recipes that I thought might blend well together, and it was a good sign that the kitchen smelled great as the soups were all simmering. Robyn was the first to try them all combined and declare it good, which gave the rest of us the courage to do the same. Brandon had the great idea to use Josh’s 4-compartment sauce dishes to try each soup individually first:

They did all taste good individually, though the seaweed stew was a little too fennel-heavy for me (you might recall from my Root Cake endeavor that I hate anything licorice-flavored). The baby corn soup was fine until I tried an actual piece of baby corn, a substance I hadn’t touched in decades because my memories of it were pure disgust. Sure enough, the texture of the outer kernels reminded me of couscous (my textural nemesis), and the inner core tasted metallic. 0/10, will never consume again.

But, when I “Put It All Together” (making sure to not get any actual pieces of baby corn in my ladle of baby corn soup) with a sprinkling of Parmesan and smoked Gouda, it was actually really good! Even the fennel taste became mild enough that I didn’t mind it. With bread and butter on the side, butter tarts for dessert, a mug of white wine, and lots of good company, it was altogether a lovely evening. I returned to the Cave of Recombobulation (my apartment) exhausted, happy, and (as we talked about the the end of Fraggle Talk Classic’s “Doomsday Soup” episode) with my hope meter refilled.

Look, some aspects of Gestures Broadly are gonna get worse before they get better. And I don’t have answers. But here’s what I know:

Food is a love language. Caring for the people in your community is resistance. Rest is resistance. Not everyone can be protesting on the frontlines—we also need cooks, babysitters, librarians, coders, nurses, storytellers, etc. Joy can and must be part of our long-term survival and revolutionary strategies.

This silly and wholesome event is not something I could have accomplished on my own, and that is actually the whole point. Boober can’t save the world by himself, and neither can I, and neither can you.

I rarely disagree with my fellow ToughPig JD Hansel on Fragglish matters, but I don’t think Peace Soup is a mediocre metaphor for combining our individual cultures into the Great Melting Pot of American multiculturalism. I think it’s a great metaphor for combining our individual efforts in trying to fix the tangled mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. The episode starts with Boober worrying that he’s not contributing enough to help solve the overwhelming problems plaguing everyone, and it ends with the Fraggles, Merggles, Craggles, and Doozers coming together to help contribute what they can. And it works. Peace Soup isn’t just wordplay on “pea soup,” it’s also wordplay on “piece soup”—the fable of Stone Soup teaches us that when each person contributes their own little piece, we can feed everyone.

Turns out being the Soup Guy is actually very important.

The Recipes

Radish Noodle Soup (Adapted from Blair Lonergan on The Seasoned Mom)

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp olive oil
2 large carrots, peeled and diced
2 medium stalks celery, diced
1 medium onion, diced
2 bunches radishes, chopped
1 Tbsp minced garlic
2 teaspoons minced fresh thyme (or ½ teaspoon dried thyme)
1 bay leaf
10 cups vegetable broth, plus extra to thin if necessary
3 cups uncooked noodles
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

(1) Heat the oil in a large pot on medium heat. Add the carrots, celery, onion, and radishes and cook until the onion becomes translucent. Stir in the garlic, and sauté for about 2 more minutes.
(2) Add the thyme, bay leaf, and broth. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer until the vegetables start to get tender, about 15 minutes.
(3) Stir in the uncooked noodles. Continue simmering the soup until the noodles are just barely al dente (timing according to box directions).
(4) Season with salt and pepper to taste, remove the soup from the heat, and stir in parsley and lemon juice. Serve with additional fresh herbs for garnish.

Seaweed Stew (Adapted from Melissa Clark on NYT Cooking)

Ingredients:
¼ C extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for serving
1 yellow onion, diced
3 tsp fine sea salt, plus more as needed
2 carrots, sliced into ½-inch-thick rounds
1 celery stalk, diced
1 fennel bulb, trimmed and diced, fronds reserved
4 garlic cloves, minced
3 cans of dried cannelinni beans, rinsed
2 quarts cold water
1 (4-inch) square nori seaweed
3 thyme sprigs
1 package (about 3.5 oz) dried ready-cut kelp seaweed
salt and pepper to taste
grated parmesan
toasted country bread, for serving

Preparation:

(1) In a large pot or Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium until hot but not smoking. Add the onion, carrots, celery, and fennel and satué until they start to soften. Add the garlic and sauté until the garlic is fragrant, about 2 minutes.
(2) Add the beans, water, kombu, and thyme sprigs. Bring to a boil over high heat. Lower heat, partially cover the pot and simmer gently until the beans are done.
(3) When beans are cooked, discard the kombu and thyme sprigs. If you have an immersion blender, stick it in the pot and give it two or three pulses to create a creamy broth. Most of the beans should still be whole. Or, scoop out 1 cup of beans, purée them in a food processor or blender, and stir them back into the pot.
(4) Stir kelp into the pot and simmer until tender, about 10 minutes.
(5) Add salt and pepper to taste. If you have fennel fronds, chop enough to make 2 tablespoons and stir into the pot. Serve with parmesan and toasted bread.

Pumpkin Bisque (Adapted from Cheryl Malik on Easy Healthy Recipes)

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, diced
2 medium carrots, diced
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh thyme leaves
1 (15-ounce) pumpkin puree
4 cups vegetabe broth
1 cup heavy cream
Salt and pepper to taste
Optional garnish: roasted pepitas, smoked Gouda

Preparation:

(1) Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onion and carrot and cook them for about five minutes or until they begin to soften.
(2) Stir in the garlic, spices, and fresh thyme.
(3) Add the pumpkin and broth. Bring to a boil and adjust the heat to maintain a simmer. Simmer the soup for 15 minutes or until the carrots are soft enough to puree.
(4) Puree the soup with an immersion blender, or blend it in small batches in a stand blender. Once the soup is smooth and creamy, add the cream. Stir and heat the soup for a minute or so before serving.

Baby Corn Soup

Ingredients:

3 Tbsp oil
1 tsp fresh ginger, minced
1 tsp garlic, minced
1 tsp green chilies, finely chopped
1 Tbsp cilantro/coriander leaves, finely chopped
1 cup baby corn, sliced into rounds
2 Tbsp bell papper/capsicum, diced
2 Tbsp mushrooms, diced
4 cups water
1 tsp soy sauce
4 Tbsp cornflour mixed with 1 cup water
Salt and pepper to taste
2 Tbsp cabbage, diced

Preparation:

(1) In a pan, stir fry the ginger, garlic, cilantro, and green chilies for about 2 minutes.
(2) Add the vegetables (except cabbage) and stir-fry for 2-3 more minutes.
(3) Add the soy sauce, water and salt. Let it boil, reduce the heat, and simmer until the vegetables are cooked.
(4) Add the cornflour mixed with water and stir constantly till it thickens slightly.
(5) Add salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with chopped cabbage.