Tag Archives: mushroom soup

A Day with Few Results

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After a day which produced very little in the way of results, I prepared the soup pan, set it going and sat down to read blogs before writing. I had just come to the end of the reading when the alarm went off. Time to do combat now – just me, a pan of mushrooms and a hand blender. I will be back later to write the rest of the post.

Back now. The soup was more watery than usual, which was actually good, as it is usually too thick. I added a sprinkle of dried Italian herbs tonight, which added to the flavour, and all was good. We then finished off the mixed fruit crumble Julia had made at the weekend with the last of the cream (it had lasted for three meals, which is quite good).

Northamptonshire Red Cross fundraising flag. Quite dull, as it has the same thing on both sides.

During the day I gave Julia a lift to the dentist, went to visit a couple of friends in their shop and, I confess, did very little until it was time to make soup. Julia is much the same. We are blaming it on our slow recovery from Covid. Next week we are hoping to be more active. But next Wednesday I have a blood test, a Shingles vaccination and a day at work. It is going to be more active whether I like it or not.

I’m already starting to think about my display for the Numismatic Society next month. The photos are some that I have taken to illustrate the display.

The one below is a better example – no rust on the pin, for one thing, plus it has a date and a location on it. In a collecting area which is bereft of reference material, this is important stuff.

Reverse

Obverse

Five to Go!

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It’s beginning to occur to me that I really ought to become more interesting for my upcoming 3,000th post. The trouble is that I’m actually becoming more boring. I can tell this because I keep repeating stories. Mostly I remember and delete them, but it’s happening more and more. Then there’s the general feeling, when trying to think, that I’m running through porridge. I just seem to go slower and slower as the resistance builds up. This is despite making serious efforts to improve my sleep patterns. It has got so bad that tonight I had to describe “the button on my torch that makes the light go on” to Julia. Then it occurred to me that the word was “torch”.  With a memory like that it’s not a surprise that writing poetry is becoming more of a challenge. Fortunately, this sort of thing is the exception and I’m not ready to vegetate just yet.

Tonight I watched one of the kids from across the road on his way to football practice. To lace his boots up he raised his feet and put them on top of the garden fence  (waist high!). I can’t even raise mine a quarter of that height. I was going to say that it’s only a few years ago that I could flex my back so far that I was able to stand on my fingers. All my fingers, not just the tips. However, now that I come to think about it, that was 20 years ago. A lot has changed since them.

These days I have to put my feet up on a step (just a low one, as they don’t lift so far, as previously mentioned) to allow me to reach. Some exercises are probably called for. Unfortunately my poor memory means I will write that today and won’t remember it until next week, when it vaguely drifts through my mind. I may have to start writing things down to remind myself.

Currently, the house is full of the smell of mushrooms. As soon as I finish here, it will be filled with the sound of fast-revving electrical machinery. Yes, it’s mushroom soup for tea again. Wednesday soup is becoming a habit. It’s a good, healthy habit, so I’m hoping it takes root. That way I don’t actually need to remember it, I just do it. In 20 years time the staff in the care home will probably be puzzled as to why I wander into the kitchen and pick up a hand blender every Wednesday . . .

We have cream tonight, which I bought for the bread pudding and quiche I didn’t make. Julia used it for making cream and strawberry scones yesterday and we will pour some on the fruit flan tonight, so I may put a drop in the soup too.  After all, I wouldn’t want to get too healthy too soon. It was a bit of a luxury, as I can make quiche and bread pudding without cream, but I don’t want to cave in to the cost of living crisis and live like a pauper.

Home made Mushroom Soup with an olive roll and a scatter of pumpkin seeds and spring onion

Souper Sunday

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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.