Get Out Your Sweaters. It's Soup Season.

If this time of year finds you like us, a little torn—missing tomatoes but happily roasting our first winter squash—then let’s just agree to slurp it up and admit the arrival of soup season. This week’s recipe bundle offers a super-fast vegetable-driven miso meal, an equally easy fish soup, and the be-well chicken noodle standard. Yes, that one is a bit of a project so check out the headnote for a couple of possible workarounds. The common thread: all are based on water. Because we’re guessing that also like us, you haven’t quite wrapped your sweater around making stock yet.

Chop-and-Drop Miso Soup

A true clean-out-the fridge soup that makes the case for always keeping at least one tub of miso in the fridge. (Have you tried chickpea miso, yet? Please do if you see it. The difference between corny tasting garbanzos and slightly grassy soybeans is subtle but noticeable.) The idea is to get a pot of water on the stove to boil, then put a cutting board nearby. Working with the food that takes the longest to cook, start chopping and dropping. For lunch the other day, there were some lovely striped summer squash lollygagging in the produce bin with a couple of sort-of-shriveled cayenne peppers and a red onion. More rummaging turned up an almost empty jar of fresh ginger. You get the idea. Instead of the tofu at the end, you could crack in an egg, add a spoonful of cooked beans or grains, or stir in a little simply cooked meat.