Soup Swap is the brainchild of Knox Gardner, a Seattle technology consultant who got tired of eating only his own soup creations, and decided to invite some friends to trade soups. From there, it became an annual event, and now swaps happen all around the country, all year long.

Here's how it goes. You cook six quarts of soup -- and all your friends bring six quarts of soup. And everyone leaves with six soups she didn't cook, which provides culinary inspiration, six instant and super-cheap dinners and a freezer full of memories. It also provides a rollicking good time. I went to my first soup swap last year -- here's a picture of the fancy labels my husband and I made for ours:

That's Burt Reynolds' 1972 Cosmo centerfold on the label for Justin's Beefy Mushroom Soup and me as Cooking Mama for my chorizo-chickpea-kale soup. We came home with a magnificent cioppino, the best split pea soup I've ever eaten, and something very murky whose label fell off, which is still hunkering in a corner of my freezer a year later.

1) Invite a bunch of people (Soupswap.com recommends at least six).
2) Everyone must bring six quarts of frozen or freezeable homemade soup.
3) On Soup Swap Day (which is designated January 22, but can be any day), bring your soup to the party.
4) Commence the "Telling of the Soup," wherein each soupmaker brags about what's in her soup and what makes her soup so wonderful.
5) Draw for picking order and let everyone pick a soup in order. Go around five more times til everyone has six soups.
6) Go home with soup.

National Soup Swap Day is Saturday, January 22. I suggest you host! Provide nibbles (because the soup goes home with the soupies) and labels for those who forgot. Entertainment will be amply provided.