Today, we had mushroom soup. It is only the second time I have made mushroom soup, and it is the first time it has actually tasted of mushrooms. The previous attempt tasted like I imagine musty Victorian wallpaper paste would taste. It does take a lot of mushrooms, but the Christmas ordering frenzy is upon me, and we did have a lot of mushrooms. My version uses onions, garlic, a stock cube, mushrooms, fresh thyme, water and vegetable oil. The version on the internet used cream and butter too, and didn’t have thyme in it.. Internet soup recipes often use cream and butter, but I decided that we could do without it, and I seem to have been right. My view is that soup is supposed to be frugal and healthy and filling it with dairy products is not the way to go.

I’m not sure if I will try it again. I like mushroom soup but carrots are a lot cheaper and don’t shrink so alarmingly when you cook them. We ended up with two large bowls of soup. If I’d filled the pan with that amount of root veg it would have made six or eight bowls.

In the evening we had spicy lentil burgers which we found in the back of the freezer. They had been lying there, undisturbed, since the first lockdown. We moved things round to fit a turkey crown in, and found several packets that we had forgotten. I always say that we should get more organised in the freezer, but I never do anything about it. That sounds like a New Year Resolution just waiting to be made. And the good thing about it is that I will be able to make it next year too, because it never gets done.

To go with the burgers I cubed a lot of root veg (carrots, swede and parsnip) and added sweet potato before boiling until softened. They went into a wok with onions, leeks and sliced greens to become a vegetable hash. I used the water from the boiling in another pan of veg, which became vegetable soup. I’m pinning my hopes on soup as a way of getting through Christmas without significant weight gain.

I couldn’t find my soup pictures so I used a waterlily.