Soup of the Weird

It's been a while... it's been a few months since we've taken a trip down the lamentable avenue of Soup News From Around The World!

First we travel to New Jersey, where a Woodbridge restaurant worker was scalded in a soup fight. An argument over proper preparation for chicken soup. Sad.

South Africa, Eastern Cape province. 14 schoolgirls dined upon dagga soup each morning. Dagga is the South African street term for marijuana.

A sad end for a community's soupmaker in Jamaica... Remains of soup vendor found.

An exceedingly strange photoshop image for an utterly horrible soup story... Russian granny kills grandchildren with poisonous soup.

Unfortunately, this article's text is no longer available, but a Czech research team in Antarctica found and ate a 50-year-old can of soup left by British researchers.

Palm Beach, Florida. Man Finds Rare Pearl in Clam Soup.

Victoria, BC. Soup country. Woman Throws Hot Soup on Convenience Store Worker.

China, big whoops. Chef kills self and customers by adding rat poison to soup.

A followup from a previous story in San Antonio... Man Found Guilty in Manslaughter Charge over Fish Soup.

OK, in order to restore your belief in the goodness of soup, let's turn our attention to some kinder, gentler soup stories...

Hungary holds the World's Largest Soup Fest, with over 2000 kettles bubbling with the region's traditional fish soup.

On the other end of the spectrum, university students in Japan have created the World's Smallest Bowl of Ramen Soup, visible only through a microscope.

Note to self: Write more far-fetched grants... Bristol Scientists Recieve A Million Pounds To Find Out If A Robot Can Safely Stir Soup. Interesting article.

And the winner in the absurdist category for Soup News From Around The World, an article about Soup Contestants Lose Prize Because Their Soup Was Too Fresh. Rules broken included: growing their own herbs, using organic vegetables, and touching the ingredients!

Little Lord Fontleroy

This Soup Peddler business is a source of pride for me in a lot of ways, but one of my favorite aspects is something that may or may not provide much value for anyone but me... the selection of fonts that I use to design the little graphics for our food labels. I am a self-described font nerd, and I know there are at least a few of you out there like me. There may even be much bigger font nerds out there than I. There may be some who look down their noses at my font choices. I know I do the same. I scoff at vegetarian restaurants and their predictable use of Papyrus font. I lament the misuse of serif fonts on side headings. I love how the Gillman car dealership uses Gill Sans Ultra. A clever little inside joke. Like cooking, I don't have any training in design so my "accomplishments" are driven by a pure DIY spirit.

In the interest of nerdiness, I recently watched the movie (sorry, film) Helvetica. I highly recommend it. A real crack-up. It made me feel like some of my font choices have been perhaps glibly chosen. I thought back to my design of The Soup Peddler logo six years ago... I faintly recalled arriving at the choice of Monotype Corsiva, which has been occasionally pshawed by several professional designers. I still like it though. I was inspired to create a fictionalized early font analysis of the Soup Peddler logo design... you can find it here if you have the time.