River Cottage

This is almost unheard of but I have nearly 2 hours to myself, and THEN a hair cut booked. On a Saturday. So I’ve walked the dog, and done the washing up from last night, sorted out the washing and completed (in case you were worried that I was being all efficient there, please understand that ‘completed’ has a fairly loose meaning) my menu planner for the next couple of weeks. I’ve started compiling the shopping list (first shop of the month – the BIG one) and retrieved some bread from the freezer (the last sourdough loaf) for lunch. So that took care of the first hour or so.

Fortunately, apart from making sure the bread was out of the freezer, lunch is pretty much sorted due to my new ‘soup of the week’ regime, which is proving very popular (well, it is for me anyway). I make a batch of proper soup on a Friday night which will feed us over the weekend and then provide enough to be frozen in portions for the Husband to take to work with him for lunch.

Take last week. Soup of the week was Mexican Tomato and Bean. Along with some portions left over from other weeks, he had a veritable feast of soups throughout the week. That, some left over roast root frittata (on Tuesday) and the game pie that he made a couple of weeks ago which also got frozen into portions, along with the beetroot variation of the Pumpkin and raisin tealoaf also out of Veg Everyday - I was really quite jealous assembling his lunches. To be honest, anything that reduces the amount of sandwich making to be done has to be a bonus, but the flaw is that he gets the good stuff, and I go fridge diving every day. Sometimes this is good – it all depends on what we ate at the weekend.

Last weekend was a Veg Everyday triumph (ish). So my lunches this week have mainly been fusion soup, which in this case involved left over ‘3 root boulangere’, left over ‘steamed greens with a hint of garlic’ whooshed (technical term for what my ‘stickblender’ does) and some extra stock, then some left over leeks added in on Tuesday – more whooshing. It was rather tasty.

Soup of the Week this week is another new one for me – back to Veg Everyday and the Hefty Soups section – Parsnip and ginger. I’m definitely liking this section of Veg Everyday, and this soup is looking good. I have used ginger with butternut squash before, but haven’t really thought of parsnip as anything other than something to roast, although I do recall a parsnip risotto somewhere in the dim and distant past.

I had to grind up some cardamom seeds for the ‘ground cardamom’ specified, but otherwise, the ingredients are fairly standard store-cupboard stuff. I do usually have root ginger in the freezer because I got fed up of being told that I should have once too often. My major breakthrough has been to peel it before freezing it in chunks, because trying to peel it when frozen is a recipe for losing fingers but once it’s defrosted it just goes to a mush, and it’s all I can do to chop it up/grate it (or whatever is required) without worrying about peeling it too.

Back to the soup. Very easy to make – just a chop fry and simmer job, and I will do the finishing off with milk at lunchtime today. I suspect that the addition of cayenne may make it slightly too spicy for Pink, but I have decided to give it a go. Hopefully, then this will feed us for lunch today and due to other activities this weekend will give us plenty for the week. Who knows, I might even get some this time!