Today’s soup was practically free, as it was made using tomatoes, chilli and a potato grown in the garden.

Tomato and chilli soup (serves 4)
3 lbs tomatoes, chopped
1 red chilli, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 potato, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 litre vegetable stock
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp tomato puree
100ml double cream
Salt and pepper

Fry the onion and garlic in the olive oil for a few minutes, until soft
Add the tomatoes, tomato puree, chilli and potato
Season with salt and pepper
Simmer for about 30 minutes
Add the cream
Blend

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As courgettes are in season at the moment, I’ve been having courgette soup for lunch every day for the past two weeks made with yellow courgettes from the greenhouse, and green courgettes from Riverford.

This week, the soup has been made from our home grown yellow ones.

I’d never even heard of a yellow courgette before, let alone seen one, but The Meat Eater assured me they were supposed to be yellow and weren’t just unripe green ones.

Yellow courgette soup (serves 3-4)

1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 large yellow courgettes, chopped
1000 ml vegetable stock
30g cheese (I used strong cheddar), diced
chilli flakes (use as much as you want, to taste)
salt and pepper

Fry the onion and garlic in the olive oil
Add the courgettes, stock and chilli flakes
Season with salt and pepper
Simmer for about 15 minutes, until the courgettes are tender
Add the cheese and stir until melted
Blend until smooth

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Innocent asked me if I wanted to try out their new veg pots and this morning a courier delivered to me a big box containing four to try, including their brand new Portuguese red pepper piri piri veg pot and a sneak preview of their Thai sweet chilli veg pot that launches in April.

Also in the box was a hessian bag containing fresh thyme and parsley plants (which can be put into an empty veg pot with some more compost and left on a sunny windowsill [remembering to water them every now and then], four wooden forks and some purple napkins with white polka-dots.

Lovely.

Each pot has a cardboard sleeve wrapped around it with heating instructions and on opening today’s pot of choice which was the Innocent Piri Piri Veg Pot, saw a serving suggestion of ‘try adding some cooked prawns’.

THIS KIND OF THING REALLY WINDS ME UP!

Bah.

According to the card that also came with the veg pots, since January their entire rage of Innocent veg pots has the Vegetarian Society’s special stamp of approval. The one I opened didn’t display the special stamp of approval, so I’m assuming that when it does, it won’t suggest serving it with a dead prawn or two.

I heated up my veg pot in the microwave as instructed (you can also heat it on the hob but it recommends it to be heated in the microwave: saves on washing up, too) and had a peek in the pot. Cubes of potato mingled with beans and red pepper in an orangey red sauce. I generally avoid cubed potatoes after an unfortunate experience involving some Bombay potato consumed a few years ago, but I won’t go into that now.

On the cardboard sleeve, it says it’s spicy. There was a hint of paprika but no real spiciness and definitely no chilli kick. Then again, I haven’t got much of a palate, and would definitely fail Masterchef’s taste test.

On the whole, it was fresh and tasty and not like a microwaved ready meal at all (apart from the fact it is a microwaved ready meal, obviously).

Recommended if you’ve forgotten your packed lunch and need something tasty, quick and easy to eat in the office (although I’m not a fan of people eating hot food in offices but I work alone at home and can stink the place out as much as I like).

Nutritional bit:

Naturally low in fat
300 calories
3 portions of your daily veg
High in fibre
Source of protein

Suitable for vegetarians and vegans (if you don’t follow their serving suggestion)

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Last week I was ill. Not very ill, but ill enough that I wouldn’t have gone to work, had I a job to go to in the first place.

So, because I was ill, I should have been eating healthy meals but because I was ill, I couldn’t be bothered to make any and so I lived on a diet of crumpets and packaged food. Why wasn’t The Meat Eater looking after me and making me healthy meals, you may ask? I also asked him the same question.

Bah.

What I should have had is this bean and vegetable soup. It’s one of those soups that make you feel healthy just by looking at it as it’s crammed full of, um, beans and vegetables.

It’s taken from The Vegetarian Student Cookbook which contains loads of quick and cheap recipes, more of which I’ll be testing and posting soon.

Bean and vegetable soup (serves 6)

1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1.2 litres vegetable stock
2 carrots, diced
150g mushrooms, chopped
2 courgettes, diced
700ml passata
400g tin cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
150g green cabbage, shredded
3 tablespoons freshly chopped basil
salt and black pepper

In a large saucepan, soften the onion and garlic in 4 tablespoons of the stock for 5 minutes, with the lid on. Stir in the carrots, mushrooms and courgettes, season and cook for 2 minutes. Stir in the passata and the remaining stock and bring to a simmer, then cover and cook for 10 minutes.

Mix in the beans and cabbage, re-cover the pan and simmer for a further 10 minutes. Adjust the seasoning and stir in the basil just before serving.

Credits:
Bean and vegetable soup
Recipe by Tamsin Burnett-Hall, The Vegetarian Student Cookbook, Ryland Peters & Small

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I must have gone off salad as, although there’s been loads of salady type stuff in the fridge, all last week I’ve ignored this and made myself cheese and coleslaw sandwiches instead. That’s not quite in keeping with the eat healthy lunches regime I usually have. So I decided to go back to the make a load of soup on Monday to last through the week thing. And today’s lunch was spiced carrot and lentil soup from the BBC Good Food website. I love that site.

I also loved the soup. Easy to make and whilst probably a bit hearty for a summer’s day (well, it would be if we had a flipping summer’s day), it was very filling.

Along with the soup, I decided to excel in today’s flurry of domestic goddessing and made some home made bread. Well, home made as in out of a packet mix and made in the bread maker. I used half the packet and 2 hours and 53 minutes later, out came the smallest loaf of bread in the world. Is it just me or does it look a bit like a curly dog poo?

Still, curly dog poo notwithstanding, the bread was quite dense and very filling but very nice, especially as I had it while it was still warm, fresh out of the bread maker.

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I love salad dressing but as I love to drown my food in sauces and dressings, I usually choose a low calorie one. The problem with this is that they don’t usually taste of much, so when I got sent some Righteous All Natural Salad Dressing to try, I was a bit perturbed on reading the label that it contains 66 calories per 15ml.

Still, as I don’t like to eat too much crap, I was pleased to see that they’re made of 100% natural ingredients, with no additives, preservatives, thickeners, flavourings and also they’re vegan (it says 100% vegan on the label, but surely you can’t be 99% vegan?)

Today with my lunch of salad leaves, red pepper, feta cheese, sweet corn, kalamata olives, cucumber and tomato (I would have had some cannellini beans too, but after opening the tin and draining them, I forgot to add them), I tried out the Ginger & Toasted Sesame Dressing and keeping in mind the 66 calories per 15ml thing, I didn’t pour half the bottle over my salad.

I didn’t need any more than 15ml as it was delicious and I’m looking forward to lunch tomorrow!

Righteous All Natural Salad Dressings are available in three varieties:

• Ginger & Toasted Sesame
• Lemon & Mustard Seeds
• Raspberry & Sweet Basil

and each 225ml bottle retails at £2.69 and available from Harrods, Harvey Nichols, Selfridges, Whole Foods and Partridges.

For more information, visit www.loverighteous.com

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Quorn have added a new addition to their deli range; Quorn Roast Style Sliced Fillets which can be eaten straight from the pack or added to salads, wraps and sandwiches.

Low in fat and high in protein, you’ll find them in the chilled cabinet but I froze them and then left them in the fridge overnight to defrost before using them in my sandwich today.

Here they are in the pack:

And here’s the construction of my sandwich.  And yes, I know it’s white sliced (Kingsmill to be precise) but it’s what The Meat Eater fills the freezer with.  (Four drawers in the freezer and he fills three of them with bread.  Bah.)

Squeeze some squeezy mustard mayonnaise onto the bread and add the Quorn fillets.

Add some salad on top.

Two minutes later you have a nice sandwich. 

And very nice it was too.  And because I’m such a classy chick, I accompanied it with a mug of Cup a Soup.

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Vegan Planet is a cookbook I’ve had for years but only made one recipe from; a recipe I didn’t really like but after recently reading good reviews about it on amazon, I thought I’d give it another go.  Rather than risk giving The Meat Eater something that would downgrade me from domestic goddess to domestic idiot, I thought I’d better experiment on myself first.

So, this week’s lunch for me is miso soup with tofu and spinach which sounds disgustingly healthy and as I was making it, I was a little worried that it would taste disgustingly healthy, with ‘disgustingly’ being the operative word and it certainly was one of those soups where you could feel healthiness coursing through your veins but it tasted very nice.

There is tofu in there somewhere, honest.

Miso soup with tofu and baby spinach (serves 4)

6 cups water
1 ½ cups baby spinach leaves, cut into thin strips
½ cup thinly sliced white mushrooms (I didn’t have any mushrooms, so poured in some mushroom ketchup instead)
3 tablespoons minced scallions (that’s spring onions to us English people)
1 tablespoon tamari or other soy sauce
¹⁄₃ cup mellow white miso paste (I only had brown miso, so used that)
4oz extra-firm silken tofu, drained and cut into 1/4-inch dice (I used normal tofu; the stuff that comes in a box; isn’t silken tofu that runny stuff that comes in a carton?)

1. Place the water in a large pot and bring to a boil over high heat.  Add the spinach, mushrooms, scallions, and tamari.  Reduce the heat to medium and simmer until the vegetables soften, 3 to 6 minutes.  Reduce the heat to low.
2. Place about 1/4 cup of the hot soup mixture in a small bowl and add the miso, blending well.  Stir the mixture back into the soup, add the tofu, and simmer for 2 minutes, being careful not to boil.  Taste, adjust the seasonings, and serve hot.

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A cookbook I haven’t used for a while is Vegetarian Express by Rose Elliot so I had a flick through it yesterday looking for inspiration for this week’s soup and came across a recipe for spinach and potato soup.

It was very nice.

And very green.

Ingredients
(serves 5)
1 small onion, chopped
400g spinach
400g potatoes, diced
1400ml vegetable stock
1 tbsp olive oil
Ground nutmeg
salt and pepper

1. Fry the onion in the olive oil for about 5 minutes
2. Add the potato and cook for about 5 minutes
3. Add the spinach and press down, stirring occasionally until it softens and wilts, about 5 minutes
4. Add the stock, bring to the boil and simmer for about 10-15 minutes, until the potato is tender
5. Remove from heat, add nutmeg, salt & pepper and blend

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Two friends said on Facebook how nice pumpkin soup was and I said if it was anything like butternut squash, then I couldn’t be bothered with trying to peel it and one of them said no, you just cut it in half and scoop the flesh out, so I thought oh, ok then, pumpkin soup this week it is.

Unfortunately, is turned into was, as Tesco had no pumpkins (why didn’t I think of this a week earlier?) and so butternut squash it was.  My original recipe called for buttermilk but I couldn’t find it in Tesco (where would it be?  I looked on the fresh milk aisle, the long life milk aisle and near the cooking ingredients but couldn’t find it) and so as my original recipe called for a pumpkin and buttermilk and I came home with butternut squash and no buttermilk, I thought I’d better find a new recipe.

I found this recipe which is a Gary Rhodes’ recipe and I’ve decided that Gary Rhodes is either a) a spiky-haired tight git; or b) anorexic or c) neither of the above and I’m just a fat pig, as his recipe says that it serves 4 but I had a third extra amount of butternut squash and stock and it only serves three.

Still, even though it didn’t make a huge amount and it was a pain in the you know what peeling that butternut squash, the soup was thick, creamy, velvety smooth, delicious and a gorgeous orange colour.

Hurry up tomorrow lunchtime.

Butternut squash soup
Prep time: 10 mins [I took flipping ages peeling the butternut squash]
Cook time: 40 mins
Serves 4: [more like 3 and that's with my extra butternut squash and stock]

Ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, sliced
1 clove garlic, crushed
675g butternut squash seeds removed and cubed [I used just over 800g I think]
1/2 tsp ground ginger [I used about 3/4 tsp to go with the extra squash and stock]
600ml vegetable stock [I used 900ml, as I didn't use orange juice [see below] and had extra butternut squash]
100ml orange juice [I didn't use this as I'm not a fan of sweet stuff in my food]
salt and black pepper

Method

1. Heat the oil in a large saucepan.  Add the onions and garlic to the pan and fry until softened, but not coloured.
2. Tip in the butternut squash and add the ginger.  Cook for a further 5 minutes, stirring from time to time.
3. Add the stock and orange juice and simmer for about 30 minutes until the squash is tender.
4. Leave the soup to cool slightly, before pureeing with a hand blender until smooth.  Season to taste, reheat if necessary and serve.

Ingredients

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