Browsing: soup

I question whether or not my lunches will ever be the same after last week’s cook-a-thon.  For five consecutive work days me and four of my ambitious colleagues set out to cook up a lunch storm.  Starting last Monday and ending Friday our goal was to cook soup for five on a budget using ‘ethical’ ingredients – the winner to be judged on taste, ethics, and value for money.  In a mouthful, it was a yummy success and although the winner has yet to be announced – I couldn’t care less.  The fact that I was served a lovely bowl of soup every day last week, saving me in the region of £15.00 which I normally spend buying food lacking in all things good and healthy, made me a very happy woman indeed.

However the real point of this blog is to highlight my soup, the only green and non-vegetarian soup of the week - Twanna’s Easy-peasy Pea and Smoked Bacon soup. A delicious, hearty soup/meal, ideal for lunch or dinner and it doesn’t break the bank. It’s perfect for those of us on a budget during these credit crunching times.

You could say my soup recipe is a little like that of Innocent Smoothies, nice and simple yet not nearly as expensive (sorry Innocent no harm intended just telling the truth – as I see it).

So here it goes – ideally all ingredients are organic and where possible local and/or Fairtrade:

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Tomato Soup With A Kick!

With the pressure firmly on, it was my turn to step up to the (hot)plate and deliver a bowl of super soup.  Although I fancy myself as a bit of a budding Jamie Oliver in the kitchen, I have only ever made two big pans of soup before; one was the test run for this dish, and the other was the dish itself.

The competition this week has been fierce; John Torode and Gregg Wallace (by the way, what exactly is an ‘ingredient expert’? Isn’t he just a freeloading greengrocer?) would have been salivating like Bloodhounds at the earlier offerings. I couldn’t let the week simply dissipate with an uninspired offering, and the bar had been set extremely high. A touch of the jitters had set in at this point.

So to the soup. I decided to whip up a Spicy Tomato concoction - but with a twist. Now, this isn’t the kind of twist that was popularized in the Christmas special of The Royal Family where Dave and Denise lumped a knob of Stork into mashed carrots, it was a touch more adventurous than that.

First I got the carrots, onions, red peppers and garlic and chopped them finely. I lashed them into a pan of hot olive oil, where they were left to soften.  Next I had to don a pair of gloves used only by employees at Sellafield, as the chills were brought out and finely diced and added to the pot. Seasoning was added at this stage, a pinch of salt & pepper and some organic spices (basil and thyme).

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Spicy Winter Vegetable Soup

So, day three of the EthicalSoup-erStore Soup Challenge, and the task falls to me to prepare the lunchtime broth. Now, I’ve made soup before, but I like soups to be thick and chunky, and I have a feeling that some of my classic family recipes that have been handed down from generation to generation may be slightly too eccentric for some of the palates here…

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