Afew weeks ago, I wrote about how much I love pureed soups.But as delicious and easy as these are, they tend to make soups on the light side -- best for a first course or light lunch.Sometimes, especially this time of year, I like a heartier, more-filling soup that makes dinner a one-pot meal.

I have a few favorites that I've been making for years. But I found a lot of new and interesting ideas when I leafed through the new 300 Sensational Soups by Carol Snyder and Meredith Deeds (Robert Rose, $24.95).

Those 300 recipes cover a lot of ground. The book has 14 recipes just for stocks. Recipes include just about all the classics, such as old-fashioned chicken noodle, Navy bean and ham, French onion, Chinese egg drop and Spanish gazpacho.

But what really grabbed my attention was the wealth of creative recipes. Some have familiar flavors with just a slight twist, such as the creamy corn soup with chipotle peppers or the butternut-squash soup with sage butter.

Others take familiar foods and turn them into soup, such as the guacamole soup, taco soup, chicken-pot-pie soup and shrimp-cocktail soup.Others go off in different directions. These include curried salmon in coconut stock and a garlic soup with slices of pork rolls stuffed with prosciutto, pine nuts and currants. A pureed potato soup adds parsnips to sweeten the pot and blue-cheese croutons for a piquant counterpoint -- and the veg-etables are first roasted with rosemary for even more flavor.

A creamy chicken soup incorporates pesto and potato gnocchi.And I can't forget the desserts -- a frozen chocolate soup, mint-chocolate chip soup and pina colada soup with caramelized pineapple (and optional rum).Snyder and Reed's penchant for tweaking tradition is reflected in the book's last chapter. This is full of garnishes and little extras to give soup a special boost. Its widely varied recipes include risotto cakes, spicy mustard croutons and fried shallots.

One extra I particularly like is the fruit salsa that adds a Caribbean touch to black-bean soup.Another soup that caught my eye is a mushroom soup studded with Italian meatballs and sprinkled with Parmesan cheese.

Finally, I was drawn to the simple broth filled with wilted arugula -- though baby spinach would work great, too. Into that broth goes a whole roasted salmon fillet, roasted grape tomatoes and some feta cheese. It's not just a bowl of soup; it's something much more.But then that's the beauty of soup. You can do so much with it.As Snyder and Reed say in the book, "Nothing makes a house feel more like a home than a pot of freshly made soup."And they add, "Soup is not just another meal -- it's comfort in a bowl."