Soup Sisters

Providing hot and nourishing soup to the poor, indigent or just plain hungry of Morton since 1022

Unlike many of the guilds and charitable groups in Morton, the Soup Sisters only emerged in the last decade, with the long winter of 1022 causing much distress to the poorer elements of society, whose lack of professional status or guild membership meant that the facilities of Guilds Care were not available to them.
Beginning from the work of three sisters (Amya, Enna and Onnaya) the soup sisters have become a mainstay to these needful citizens making use of food waste from homes, shops and the markets to produce broths, pottages and similar heart warming foods which are for the most part prepared in the members own homes, though in the depths of winter they will often be found setting up in the market places of the town as the markets close at the end of the day's trading.
Despite their name they are not exclusively female, with as many male as female members.
Despite their charitable purpose they will sell their soup to those who can afford it - many a cup is consumed in this way and quite impressive donations have been received by the Sisters when courting couples or trade groups are involved. Even the poorer users of their service will often donate a bit, or in kind, recognising that they are saving the cost of ingredients, fuel and time and that there are almost always others in a worse position than they are¹.

Structure

Like many of the town's organisations the Soup Sister's organisation is based on the wards of the town - each ward's members supporting the ward and it's immediate neighbours. In some wards there is little to no explicit organisation - just the individuals who see themselves are part of the organisation and arrange with each other who will be doing what and when. In others, notably near the market places the Sisters are more organised with the leader in the ward colloquially known as Onnaya (she having been the youngest of the original three, who had dragooned her elder sisters into helping her). These Onnayas will also co-ordinate activities across the town to ensure that soup gets where it us needed.
In practice, the roles within each ward split into three groups - those who seek out the donations of ingredients, those who prepare the soup and those who distribute it as the skills needed for each vary but most members will be familiar with at least two of the roles.

Type

Social, Brotherhood

Example Soups

The recipes below show a typical soup and a more minimal one. With the reliance on donated ingredients, no two batches would be identical and the savvy user of the soup kitchen would try to be among the last served from the container (for the denser and more nutritious fragments tend to concentrate there).

Soup for the Poor

Eight pails of water, a quarter pail of grain, half a pail of dried pulses, four pails of vegetables, herbs as chance provides, two porros of salt, an ox’s head.
Boiled six hours, this will produce one hundred and thirty porros2. Boil the meat and take off the first scum before the other ingredients are put in.

Another Soup for the Poor

A pail of water, 6 porros of root vegetables (any), 2 porros of oats, one each of grain and leafy vegetables.
To be boiled for three hours.

¹ This is not necessarily the case - but nobody likes to feel that they are right at the bottom of the pile and being able to make a contribution in return for the soup is felt by many of the poorest to be an important showing that they are not completely destitute.
² In addition to being a weight measure, the porro is also a measure of volume with one porro (volume) being the volume of water that weights a porro (weight). Confusion can arise when dealing with goods that can be weight or volume measure (such as grain) and it is fortunate with this recipe that the volumes are such that a pail has been used as the standard measure. For reference a typical pail holds around 18-20 porro of water.