What do you think?
Rate this book
Seconds: More plant-based, no-broth soup and stew recipes from one soup cook to another
Caroline Wright is a cookbook author who was given a year to live from a brain cancer diagnosis and asked for soup from strangers; this is not that story. Then, after she survived, she started making soup for her new friends by delivering soup to their porches and calling it Soup Club; this is also not that story. Instead, this is the story of the many faces of soup healing, what soup love looks like as conveyed through the first cookbook where Caroline poured it into with the help of her friends in Seattle. In this sequel cookbook to Soup Club, Caroline offers even more of her signature soup recipes-- full of vegetables, all made simply without broth in ways that make you smile-- along with stories like hers from cooks around the country about how making soup transformed their lives. It is a story of a different kind of Soup Club, one with an open invitation, beginning with reading these pages, and accepted through pulling out a soup pot.
164 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2024
2 people want to read
About the author
Caroline Wright
27 books18 followers
Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Caroline Wright is one part ordered editor and one part wandering artist. These qualities, along with an insatiable appetite, combine to support her food editorial career as a cook, author and stylist.
During college in Paris, she fell in love with the rebellious attitude of her friends who adapted their nation's culinary traditions, without sacrificing skill or technique, to make the experience of eating and cooking more approachable. That irreverent but practical space is still present in Caroline’s most favorite projects, fueling imaginative recipes that hold beautiful and tasty food as the standard. Formal training at La Varenne cooking school introduced Caroline to the culinary language and skill she honed as a food editor at Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food for two years. For the following decade, Caroline worked from her home kitchen in Brooklyn and various test kitchens in New York as a freelance food editor, stylist and busy cook.
In addition to her work as a cookbook author, Caroline collaborates with photographers and editors as a recipe developer, food stylist and culinary writer. Caroline is constantly exploring unexpected ways to serve comfort in every recipe, story or photo she makes, so follow along as she plays with her food, here and here. Caroline lives in Seattle with her husband and two boys.
Caroline Wright is one part ordered editor and one part wandering artist. These qualities, along with an insatiable appetite, combine to support her food editorial career as a cook, author and stylist.
During college in Paris, she fell in love with the rebellious attitude of her friends who adapted their nation's culinary traditions, without sacrificing skill or technique, to make the experience of eating and cooking more approachable. That irreverent but practical space is still present in Caroline’s most favorite projects, fueling imaginative recipes that hold beautiful and tasty food as the standard. Formal training at La Varenne cooking school introduced Caroline to the culinary language and skill she honed as a food editor at Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food for two years. For the following decade, Caroline worked from her home kitchen in Brooklyn and various test kitchens in New York as a freelance food editor, stylist and busy cook.
In addition to her work as a cookbook author, Caroline collaborates with photographers and editors as a recipe developer, food stylist and culinary writer. Caroline is constantly exploring unexpected ways to serve comfort in every recipe, story or photo she makes, so follow along as she plays with her food, here and here. Caroline lives in Seattle with her husband and two boys.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 1, 2025
Significant errors (almost one per page) in both narrative text and instructions, including missing commas, clumsy sentences, inconsistent Oxford comma, and content errors (surely "1/2 cup paprika is incorrect?!?). General layout, photo layout, and format problems. The binding is very tight and won't stay open; paperback isn't a great choice for cookbooks.
The instructions rely extremely heavily on parentheses, even when the parenthetical comment is instruction rather than an aside: "cook, stirring often, until vegetables have softened (about 10 minutes)" (p 24), "(You should be able to see the bottom of the pan when you stir the thickened onion with a spoon)" (p 64), or "(Dry and reserve pot; return to stove)" (p 78).
The photos frequently span the inner gutter, frequently to the detriment of the content. It's also weird that the photos are in black and white when they focus on people in kitchens making soup-- the fresh ingredients seem like the obvious focus of a vegan cookbook but lose their shine here. Not until page 64 did I realize there's a little Instapot icon at the bottom of recipe instructions. No directions were present in the front of the book for how to interpret this symbol. The number in the icon refers to the page in the back of the book to turn to for Instapot instructions-- these instructions reference the non-Instapot recipe, sometimes multiple times, require the user to flip back and forth repeatedly. This is not a user-friendly feature.
Many measurements are given in cups for things that logically should be given by weight-- fresh oregano, grated carrot, etc.
Each soup's "blub" is weird, mostly. While the short content is better than the industry standard of a whole paragraph of useless self-referential history, they almost all come off as strange. Are they written by AI or tossed off in an afternoon? The voice is all over the map.
There are no recipes I could make without amendments for my chronic illness, except the bread recipe. That's not the fault of the book, but others with food limitations may also find it not worth the time to adapt or substitute, since the wealth of other errors or sub-standard reviewing/editing in the text make it reasonable to assume the recipes are also not fully accurate and kitchen-ready.
Program prompts: none
Discussion prompts: none
The instructions rely extremely heavily on parentheses, even when the parenthetical comment is instruction rather than an aside: "cook, stirring often, until vegetables have softened (about 10 minutes)" (p 24), "(You should be able to see the bottom of the pan when you stir the thickened onion with a spoon)" (p 64), or "(Dry and reserve pot; return to stove)" (p 78).
The photos frequently span the inner gutter, frequently to the detriment of the content. It's also weird that the photos are in black and white when they focus on people in kitchens making soup-- the fresh ingredients seem like the obvious focus of a vegan cookbook but lose their shine here. Not until page 64 did I realize there's a little Instapot icon at the bottom of recipe instructions. No directions were present in the front of the book for how to interpret this symbol. The number in the icon refers to the page in the back of the book to turn to for Instapot instructions-- these instructions reference the non-Instapot recipe, sometimes multiple times, require the user to flip back and forth repeatedly. This is not a user-friendly feature.
Many measurements are given in cups for things that logically should be given by weight-- fresh oregano, grated carrot, etc.
Each soup's "blub" is weird, mostly. While the short content is better than the industry standard of a whole paragraph of useless self-referential history, they almost all come off as strange. Are they written by AI or tossed off in an afternoon? The voice is all over the map.
There are no recipes I could make without amendments for my chronic illness, except the bread recipe. That's not the fault of the book, but others with food limitations may also find it not worth the time to adapt or substitute, since the wealth of other errors or sub-standard reviewing/editing in the text make it reasonable to assume the recipes are also not fully accurate and kitchen-ready.
Program prompts: none
Discussion prompts: none
Displaying 1 of 1 review