"soup recipes" news and stories

Each week, I link up eight food-related stories and blog posts from the previous week that somehow caught my eye or tickled my fancy (this week, it's mostly sweets, soups and eating on the cheap). Here's the list for this week:

1. One way to save money in the kitchen is to do the processing yourself. Culinate breaks down the difference between cutting up a chicken yourself and buying it pre-skinned and quartered.
2. On Minimally Invasive, Amy uses inexpensive pork necks to make a deeply flavored and warming ragu.
3. For those of you who like lots of mashed potatoes (or applesauce), but don't like the work of peeling, invest in a Peel-A-Meal electric peeler.
4. Need a good, professional way to get your knives sharpened? Try doing it by mail!
5. Orangette serves up a Tomato Soup with Red Onion and Cilantro Stems. Sounds delicious and economical.
6. Deb at Smitten Kitchen makes a batch of Salted Butter Caramel Sauce. There are no words for how good that sounds to me right at the moment.
7. Want to eat less meat and but still eat well? Here are some quick and simple vegetarian dishes to check out.
8. CityMama's Best Split Pea Soup ever has me adding ham hocks and dried peas to my shopping list.

What's a better meal on those cold winter days than soup? Of course, with temps around 45 to 50 in Boston today, I can't really say "cold winter days" (to me there aren't many things more depressing than a warm day in January), but soup is always good, right?

The Boston Globe has two soup recipes in their Sunday magazine. One is for Winter Vegetable Soup, which includes whole tomatoes crushed in a bowl and Parmesan cheese; and a recipe for Miso Soup from famed local chef Gordon Hammersley, which seems to go crazy on the mushrooms. Does the recipe really call for 4 portobello mushrooms, 10 large mushrooms, and 2 ounces of dried shiitake mushrooms, and then also adds on a 1/2 pound of mixed mushrooms (shiitake, crimani, portobello, or oyster)?