Soup lover Carol Knott has started a local chapter of the Calgary-based, non-profit organization, Soup Sisters. Thursday night marks its kickoff at Sunterra Market in Commerce Place downtown. Soup Sisters started a couple of years back in Calgary when founder Sharon Hapton began supporting women’s shelters with the simple gesture of providing homemade soup. Since then, the organization has expanded (there’s even a Broth Brothers) and is now operating in nine cities across Canada.

Knott, a special needs teacher, saw an item about Soup Sisters on television while convalescing on the couch after surgery earlier this year. “I thought, ‘I want to be part of it,’” she recalls. Six weeks later, after contacting Hapton and then hustling up a group of her own friends to launch the effort, Knott is ready to invite other local soup lovers on board. The Edmonton chapter is looking for volunteers (either groups or individuals) to support Edmonton WIN House with a monthly donation of five different kinds of soup.

Here’s how it works. In Edmonton, Sunterra chef Chuck Feist oversees the evening’s soup-making session, which volunteers pay $50 each to attend. (Thursdays kickoff, however, costs $95 to cover startup expenses such as freezers at WIN House). The regular fee includes the cost of ingredients, and participants also get to enjoy a meal of soup, bread, salad and wine.

The sessions see volunteers chopping, slicing and simmering, plus making labels with hand-written messages on them for the people who will receive the individual containers of soup. The soups are chilled overnight and then delivered to WIN House the next day, where some will be eaten fresh, and others frozen.

Knott says that groups from book clubs to corporate teams are welcome, and individuals as well. Thursday’s event will see special guests on-site, including former deputy prime minister Anne McLellan, as well as the mayor’s wife, Lynn Mandel, and Sandra Danco, executive director of WIN House. Hapton and some other women from the Calgary group are coming as well.

In future, the soup-making nights will be held monthly on Mondays from 6 to 9 p.m. at Sunterra Commerce Place. “It’s a great networking night, and a way to get the word out,’” says Knott of the kickoff event, which she hopes will generate 100 bowls, or 200 servings, of soup.

Knott knows the value of soup. She’s a big fan of the popular winter staple, hamburger soup. Every fall, she makes a big batch of the stuff and delivers it to friends, just to help everyone get back in the swing of the school year. “I hate to cook,” she admits. “But I’m really good at cutting and chopping … soup takes little effort, but it yields big results. You get a lot of bang for your buck.”

For more information or to book a Soup Sisters night, e-mail edmonton@soupsisters.org. You can also go to the Soup Sisters website at www.soupsisters.org and click on the Edmonton tab. The website has many soup recipes on it as well — yummy slurps created by celebrity chefs including Anna Olson and Bonnie Stern.