A Slice of Soup

I wish I had remembered to take a picture.  Bear got very enthusiastic with the new knife and chopped and sliced with gusto and in quantity.  It was mainly veggies with some stock added.  The stockpot takes 5 litres and it was full.  I just bunged in the veggies (I had room for parsnip, leek, onion, potato and carrot) with some oil, plenty of garlic, a couple of stock cubes, some curry powder and lentils and simmered away!  It ended up very thick indeed.  It wasn't quite at the 'eat it with a knife and fork' stage, but it was a solid meal.  DH went back for seconds just because he liked the taste, and bear and his pal emptied their dishes without any complaint.  They have both said that I can do that again.  I also froze five portions, so I have a good snack for bear when he comes home from school in this cold weather.  

I think it was a good value meal.  There is a lot of nutrition in there, especially as it was eaten with wholemeal bread, and even if you add in all the oil, spices, stock cubes, electric and lentils, it could not have come to much more than £4 for @ ten portions, and I didn't even use all of the £3 veg box.  

As for the rest - Sarah Head very kindly posted this recipe in the comments and her recipes have been pretty awesome so far.  I shall be testing this out tomorrow (all being well!)

Cabbage soup can be a bit hard to live with (lots of after effects!) but great if you're wanting to lose weight. My go-to recipe now for any green stuff is home made saag aloo, which means "greens and potatoes". Peel and dice how ever many potatoes you usually serve for the number of people or twice the amount if you like leftovers. Peel and dice one onion. Chop up your greens (I use whatever I have to hand, usually kale or cabbage, broccoli, spinach etc) Heat 5 tablespoons of oil in a large saucepan. When it comes to the heat, add 2 teaspoons of yellow or black mustard seeds and a quarter of a tsp of chilli powder (more if you like really hot food). Wait until the mustard seeds pop then add your potatoes and stir. Put the lid on and cook for fifteen minutes, stirring so it doesn't stick. About five minutes before the end of cooking, add the greens (longer if the cabbage is old or thick). Let them wilt on the top for a few minutes then stir them in with the potatoes. This can be served with any kind of meat or sausages. My daughter goes mad over it and her boyfriend really liked it even though it contained onions! Bear should enjoy cooking this. You can leave out the chilli if you don't like hot things at all. This tastes even better the second day and freezes well. - Sarah Head

I have a driving lesson tomorrow and it usually includes a comfort stop at a Morrisons big enough to stock Mustard seed.  I also have in some posh sausages with caramelised onion from Tesco.  The side effect of being gluten free is that the only sausages you can eat are the really good ones.  Tesco are really reducing their range, but so far they still have the good sausages.  I went through my 'favourites' list on their online shop the other day and so many of my items were 'no longer part of our range'.  Fortunately, Morrisons are expanding their online range, and it's perhaps why this morning's delivery came from there.  

News about writing here for those interested.  Also, it is apparently really important to include a pic in a blog post and I forgot to take a pic of the soup, so here is a pretty picture from free-images.com which is a version of saag aloo that is probably nowhere near as good as Sarah's.