Spinach soup, rawhide, and a comedy of errors

The last few days have seen a series of errors on my part. Some were innocuous enough: turning up to the wrong class at university because I thought I was in Group 2 (like all of last year) and I'm actually in Group 1. Others were marginally more serious: discovering that the reason my company hasn't been receiving mail as promptly as it should is because somebody put the wrong address on the website. And that somebody was me.

Anyway, no lasting harm done. I spent a rainy afternoon in the kitchen, where I promptly made this error:



I was peeling a potato, happily thinking about good it was that we only have a cheap peeler and there's no danger of peeling through half a fingernail like I've seen other people do. I immediately peeled through half of my fingernail.

Once I had jumped around the kitchen, sworn a few times, stuck the nail back down and trussed it up in first aid supplies, I got back to cooking, and made this lovely spinach, nutmeg and potato soup. Souper (sorry) simple, delicious and terribly good for you. There are no photos of the process because I was concentrating on not peeling any more fingernails.



Chunk up one onion, two peeled potatoes (do not peel your fingernail off whilst peeling potatoes), and fry in some oil over medium heat. Add around half a litre of vegetable stock (I like Kallo, it's less salty than others), and let it simmer for about ten minutes to soften the potatoes. Then cram in as much spinach as you can muster. I had a big bag of true spinach - the sort with huge leaves and long stalks, not the baby kind you get in supermarkets - which needed eating, and I just threw all of it in there. It was probably a good 400g, maybe more.

Put the lid on the saucepan for a little bit to get the steam into the spinach to help it wilt. When it's soft enough, stir it into the water with the potato and onion and give it another few minutes. Remove from the heat and blend it up. Season well with lots of black pepper and fresh ground nutmeg, and it will likely need a good amount of salt too. Give it a few tastes and adjust as you like it. The potato bulk makes this soup quite thick, which is how I like soup, but you could make it go further and thin it out with more stock if you wanted to.

I'm trying to cut back on my plastic waste (First World Guilt), so instead of my usual method of freezer bags, I portioned it out into three Kilner jars and stuck these in the freezer. Make sure your soup has cooled completely before you freeze it in glass containers, to prevent cracks. Mine appear to be intact. Phew!



In the meantime, Cowboy has a new project on his grubby hands. This, my friends, is a cow hide:



He's been commissioned to make some custom tack for a few riders in his area, out of braided rawhide, so the first step is to obtain a cow hide from the butcher, and stretch it out somewhere far from where you live to keep the stink away. He's borrowing a friend's barn for the process. I have no idea what you do next.

In other news, the banana oat cookies freeze wonderfully in freezer bags, and defrost nicely inside the plastic bag (guilt). They still taste soft and delicious once thawed. Hurrah!

Heart-warming broccoli and cheese soup

First up, here's a heart-warming, romantic exchange that Cowboy and I had early on in my trip out there this summer. I had asked him what he wanted from Walmart, and he said he needed shower gel.

B: What kind do you like? Irish Spring?
C: That's worked so far. If you want to get me something else, go ahead.
B: Do you want me to get something else?
C: If you want me to use it, sure.
B: It's nice that you're making an effort when I'm around...
C: That's what I'm saying - if you want me to use something else, you buy it and I'll use it. I'll let you make my effort for me.

See? Who says romance is dead? In the end I bought him the same shower gel he's always used (because it's cheap and I like the smell of it these days).

Soup! I had some broccoli pining in my fridge and some onions arrived in my vegbox today, plus soup is always a comforting thing to have in the freezer. I also really wanted something comforting in my stomach today. It's been one of those days.

Being conscious of the fact that I can't afford to buy new jeans and I need to stay the size of my current jeans, I like to steer away from recipes involving cream. This soup ends up a creamy consistency, and packs a lovely flavour, but is a touch less sinful than the cream varieties.

First up, slice up an onion and set it frying over some low heat in a little oil. I had half a courgette (that's zucchini to my America readers) hanging about in the fridge too, so I threw that in.



I love making soup in my one Le Creuset saucepan. It's indestructible and orange.

Chunk up the broccoli, stalk, leaves and all. It's all good nutritious stuff.



Throw it in with the onions and give it a good stir.
Then dice up some potato - I used a small baking potato, because I'm not educated about the differences between varieties of potato, and didn't care - and throw it in too.



I also suck at chopping, so I tend to use big chunks of stuff.

I only had the remains of a chicken stock cube, so that's what I used! Throw it in the pan, and cover with a little over half a litre of boiling water. Essentially, enough water to just cover the veg and make sure those potatoes cook through.



Add freshly ground black pepper, and some freshly grated nutmeg. There's nothing more marvellous than nutmeg.

Look at those fabulous stripes. I don't know about you, but I sort of see Totoro in them...

What was I saying? Seasoning! Don't worry too much about amounts just yet. The tasting and refining comes later.



Look at that lovely goodness... Mmmm... Let it simmer on a medium-low heat.

Cheese! Get your cheddar out. Grate a good handful or two.



(Side-note: there's a traditional soup recipe which is broccoli and stilton. Blue cheese isn't really my bag, plus it's expensive... Feel free to use stilton instead of cheddar if you love that blue cheese thing)

I like to use strong cheddar - at least a 4 or 5, because that way you get more taste from less cheese, and that's cheaper (in my head). This cheese came from Aldi. Don't dismiss Aldi when you're shopping - they have some wonderful products that I fill my stores with, and they are wonderfully cheap.

Once the potatoes are soft, blend your soup up. I use one of those stick blenders because I like how little washing up it generates. I don't like how much it splatters me, but you can't have everything.



It will be this gorgeous light green colour. Put it back on the low heat. Throw in your cheese!



Stir it around so it all melts in and becomes smooth and glorious. Taste, and add more seasoning if you need it. Mine needed more pepper, and, due to my low stock concentration, a little salt.

Serve it up. I ate mine without bread because I didn't have any to hand and was too hungry to defrost any. I didn't even need any - this soup is filling and delicious all by itself. I actually went back for seconds...



Enjoy!

Tomatoes

I get an organic, mixed fruit and veg box delivered every fortnight. I occasionally feel guilty about this, as it seems decadent and foolish when there is a big Sainsbury's around the corner packed with bargain food in plastic bags. But when I shop there I feel guilty about the obscene amounts of plastic packaging.

I use two companies (Abel & Cole, and Riverford), and like to pick and choose the better box depending on what they're offering each week. This week, because of the ridiculous English heatwave (not ridiculous), I ordered an extra salad box from Riverford to keep me going through the warm weather, when hot food is offensive.

What they sent me included this scrumptious box of tomatoes.



My natural reaction was to immediately shove my nose in the box and get a good long sniff. I adore the smell of tomatoes, especially when they're still on the vine like these bad boys. Reminds me of my Grandpa's greenhouse.

Then I set to work making a simple, but glorious, lunch. It's a kind of fake bruschetta. Bruschetta alla Bee? Something like that.

Here's how it happened:

1) Grab two slices of thick sliced multigrain bread from the freezer

2) Throw large chunk of butter into a frying pan over low/medium heat.

3) Fry bread on both sides, adding more butter if needed, until golden, sizzling and smelling like heaven. Ensure butter has soaked into entire bread surface. Set aside to cool slightly.

4) Dice tomatoes into reasonably large chunks. Put in a bowl.

5) Season to taste with salt, freshly ground black pepper, and a glug of balsamic vinegar.

6) Add a good handful of torn basil - mine was frozen in olive oil in, which meant I snapped off a bit and let the oil melt into the tomatoes. If you have fresh basil, all the better, just add a glug of olive oil to the tomatoes along with the seasoning.

7) Pour juicy, crisp, fragrant tomatoes and the juice all over bread.



I then ate this a little too quickly, because it was so very, very good. You could add a little garlic if you wanted. I sometimes cheat and spread garlic and herb Boursin on the bread for a cheesy, garlicky, wonderful addition. But often I find the simple tomato, basil, butter combo is just right as it is.

This meal takes about ten minutes to throw together, and is also a really good way to use up bread that has gone a little stale, because the butter makes everything soft and wonderful.

Enjoy!