Our Inspiration
Stone Soup is an age-old parable in which hungry itinerant strangers arrive in a town with nothing but an empty pot. The villagers decline their plea for a few scraps of food, so they melt snow to fill their pot with water, drop in a stone and bring it to the boil over a fire in the town square. The curious villagers ask the strangers what they’re making. “Stone Soup” they explain, “it’s delicious as you’ll see, but would taste even better if you could spare a sprig of parsley!”. So somebody contributes a sprig of parsley, then another fetches some vegetable scraps from home, somebody throws in a spare onion, someone else a bone… The pot continues to simmer as one villager after another throws a scrap of this or that in the pot until they have a delicious, abundant and nourishing soup. Both the villagers and the strangers sit down to feast together.
This parable is Stone Soup Syndicate’s namesake and mission statement. We’ve dropped a stone into a pot to draw friends and strangers alike to contribute to and be nourished by our broth.
Our Mission
Stone Soup Syndicate are a congregation of creatives who founded a freely distributed independent street press with a counter-cultural spirit. We have evolved to become a digital platform that continues to foster a space for a boisterous yet convivial discussion about food and its place in all of our lives.
We believe you can have many conversations through the lens of food. Sure, we love cooking and preserving and searching for interesting places to eat, but mostly we’re interested in the environmental, social and ethical aspects of food, and discussing how all of these things intersect.
We also hope to enable you to produce some of your own food in harmony with your ecosystem, and to encourage you to share the proceeds with those around you.
Our Supporters
Food is something family, friends and communities have always gathered around, and we’re very grateful so many people gathered around us and contributed to funding our physical magazine. Without you, we wouldn’t have been able to produce our 11 volumes, and we wouldn’t have been able to build the community that formed around them.
Contribute to the soup
We may no longer produce a physical magazine, but intend for our website to continue to be a place that empowers writers and illustrators to produce with conviction in their own voice. We have no editorial tone policing and we’re not afraid to speak truth to power. There are always chairs available at our kitchen table, and if you’d like to pull one up and contribute something to the Stone Soup platform, please get in touch.