Episode Details

“I started Queer Soup Night because the things I knew how to do were make a lot of food and throw a party.” - Liz Alpern

Liz Alpern knows how to feed people and give them a reason to come together. The creator of Queer Soup Night joins me to share her Five Rules for Nourishing a Crowd with Soup, from thinking through where people will eat to keeping things simple with a little flair. We get into the resourcefulness behind a great pot of soup, the power of showing up for your community, and why making a shopping list can be its own act of self-preservation. With her forthcoming Queer Soup Night cookbook arriving in January 2027 and now available for pre-order, Liz shares an approach to hospitality and activism that starts with the skills you already have.

Liz and I say “soup” 51 times in this episode, which feels like an appropriate level of enthusiasm. I love how deeply she cares about soup and how that passion carries into her activism and the community she’s built around feeding people. She thinks about everything from what’s in the pot to whether someone walking through the door will feel comfortable, welcome, and cared for. Her rule about starting with what you know really stays with me: Liz knew how to cook and throw a party, and she put those skills to work bringing people together when they needed it.

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I’m joined by the creator of Queer Soup Night, Liz Alpern, whose new book, Queer Soup Night, the cookbook, Over 50 Ways to Activate Community, will be available everywhere January 2027.

She’s here to share her five rules for nourishing a crowd with soup. She talks about the importance of understanding where the crowd will be eating, how despite best efforts, you can’t make everyone happy, and that it’s always great to keep it simple, but add a little flair. It’s a great conversation for anyone interested in upping their soup game, but also understanding how to feed people and create community around activism.

When you have a moment, please subscribe and rate this podcast. So let’s get into the rules here on HRN. Liz, so nice to meet you.

Thank you for taking the time. I’m so excited to talk to you about Queer Soup Night and the new book. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. I’m so glad to be here.

Soup Community and Activism

There are so many dishes that exist in almost every culture. Bread, noodles, but almost none as prevalent as soup.

Yes.

What is it about this dish that connects people all over the world?

Oh, I could talk about this all day. A few things come to mind for me. At the heart of soup is resourcefulness. Whatever you got, you can turn it into soup.

My ancestors in Eastern Europe were able to pull together a few scraps of chicken, a half an onion, and a crusty carrot and turn it into something. When you’re talking about the way that ancestral cuisine developed, we’re talking about cultures that were resourceful, that didn’t have grocery stores, that didn’t have refrigerators. Every culture around the world developed in this way.

So every culture around the world developed a resourcefulness and soup is it. You can get so much out of so little.

I love soup. I love how democratized it can be. I have always believed that food is and should be political and stand for something. What drove you to bring together community, activism, and soup?

I have always been a passionate soup lover, if you can’t already tell from the way I speak lovingly about soup. Always dreamed of feeding everybody soup. So much of what I love about soup is the abundance. You can just picture that giant pot of soup.

I always envisioned