Onion Soup & Barbie Bread

Soup has to be one of my all time favourite comfort foods, what better to feed the troubled soul with than smooth, silky butternut squash soup laced with cumin or steaming chunky vegetable soup or indulgent creamy mushroom soup, mmmmm.  I always have home made soups in the freezer and I love making them.  Yesterday, looking for something to use up some onions, I decided to make some cream of onion soup in the slow cooker.  The recipe is from a book I picked up recently in a charity shop, Slow Cooking Properly Explained by Dianne Page, after a friend recommended the recipes in it.  I love using my slow cooker, there's nothing better than driving home smug in the knowledge that dinner is all ready and waiting!  So, onion soup....here's the recipe:

1 1/2oz butter
1lb onions, finely chopped
2oz plain flour
1 3/4 pts chicken stock
salt and pepper
1/4 pt double cream
chopped chives, to serve

Heat the butter in a large saucepan, add the onions and cook gently, stirring occasionally, until softened but not browned.  Stir in the flour.  Remove from heat and gradually stir in stock.  Season lightly with salt and pepper and then bring to boil.  Transfer to slow cooker.  Put the lid on and cook for 6 to 10 hours on low, stirring in the cream for the last 30 minutes.  Adjust seasoning to taste and serve sprinkled with chopped chives.

Now to illustrate just how religiously I follow a recipe!  ;oD  To start off with I used oil instead of butter to cook the onions.  It doesn't mention a type of onions but I used red onions as I had some that required urgent attention!  I didn't use pepper and I added some nutmeg.  And I didn't use double cream.  I do actually have some double cream in the fridge but chose instead to use evaporated milk.  And lastly I whizzed the soup to sexy smoothiness and couldn't be arsed to go into the garden for chives to sprinkle about!  So, my soup probably wasn't anything like what the industrious slow cooking author intended but it was lovely and here it is served with wholemeal toast and Jarlsberg cheese sprinkled with my current fave spice, smoked paprika.

I was also on a mission yesterday to use up some rapidly squishying beetroot from last week's organic veg box and decided to plump for using them to make what is affectionately known as Barbie bread chez Savill!  ;oD  Barbie bread is otherwise known as beetroot bread which I make in the breadmaker and it makes for a pink culinary experience as you can see!  It doesn't taste overtly beetrooty but it is yummeeeee!

                                    

A little bit of baking

I love to bake, I find it very therapeutic.  ;o)  This afternoon I developed a headache that wouldn't go away so I headed into the kitchen this evening to soothe my troubled brow by flinging a few ingredients in a bowl and getting mixing!  Given my lack of brain power at the time I didn't make anything too challenging just....

                                     

...some flapjacks....

                                    

...some vanilla cakes with chocolate icing and....

                                     

...some peanut butter biscuits.

The troops are happy and, hey presto, my headache has gone!  ;o)

Pantry Passion

I make no bones about it, I love my pantry!  It was a long time coming and was worth the wait as far as I'm concerned!  Bit of background for you....I live in two former railway cottages which we've knocked into one.  The half we lived in originally had been treated to lots of "improvements" but the newer half was pretty much original when we took it on.  The opposite number to what is (at least for the moment) my airing cupboard was originally a pantry.   Having always operated in a small fitted kitchen I couldn't wait to have my very own pantry.  It was finally completed last year and I have loved it with a passion ever since.  ;o)  This week we repainted the pantry walls, after a slight issue with mould last year left some horrid marks in a few places, and I thought I'd share a few pics now it's all up and running again. 

My pantry door.  ;o)  I picked up the shabby but lovely fingerplate at the local junk shop and knew it would work perfectly for the pantry.  My lovely brass pantry sign was made by my husband (he worked as a etcher) as a surprise Christmas present when I was in plaster after breaking a bone in my foot.

                                    

We wanted to re use the original terracotta tiles from the pantry and I love the way they look.  They vary in colour and the floor isn't perfectly level but they are perfect in my eyes!

My meat safe was in the pantry originally and I wanted to keep it.  It needed a bit of repair and sprucing up with a lick of paint but it's a sturdy fella an holds lots of tins, jars and packets.  The wire crate next to the meat safe came from my father in law's and acts as my bottle store!  Sloe gin, home made wine, ruby port, grenadine and more.....yum!

                                   

A view of the bottom two shelves.  I'm working on collecting interesting tins and glass jars.  You may have guessed by now that I want a vintage flavour to my pantry.  ;o)  The cream and green enamel bread bin  belonged to my great grandmother (known as Big Nanna).

                                     

 

The top shelf here is mainly baking ingredients - did I mention I love baking??  The enamel sugar tin was inherited from my mother in law and I found the matching flour tin at a car boot sale.  The Radiance Toffee tin was a recent 50p bargain!

Look I have space on the top shelf, wonder how long that'll last?!  The middle shelf here houses lots of grains and pulses in Kilner style jars. 

                                     

                                    

A couple of closer shots of the tins.  The cake patterned tin was a recent junk shop find, full of sewing stuff!

                                                 

And lastly a shot of one of the glass jars that we've been experimenting on with a labelling idea.  My husband came up with the idea of trying blackboard paint on the jars so that I can use chalk on them and change them as and when I need to.

There we go, a whistle stop tour of my pantry!  ;o) 

Squash Soup

For lunch today I had some of the aforementioned squash soup along with tomato and cheese flatbread.  The soup is super (ha ha!) easy to make, I just fried an onion in a little oil until softened and then added the chopped squash and some cumin and enough stock to just cover.  Cooked it until it was soft and then added some milk and whizzed it to the sexy smoothiness you see here.  ;o)  I'd like to say the flatbread was home made too but alas, it isn't!  I like to have a variety of bakery stuff in the freezer and would like to have more home made than shop bought so need to work on that one.  I have a breadmaker and make 90% of the bread we eat and even though I always mean to make and freeze loaves, rolls etc it rarely happens!
As an aside, I love these soup dishes with plates.  ;o)  They were a present from a lovely aunt of mine and with my soup obsession (Oh, didn't you know?  It will become evident as I continue to blog!   LOL) they get alot of use.  ;o)   

Starting out...

I've long wanted to start a little food based blog and, inspired by reading Julie & Julia, I've finally taken the plunge!  ;o)  I'm not a foodie, I don't have bags of food knowledge but I like to cook and I love to bake, I want to learn, expand my cooking skills, try new foods and new recipes and share it all on here.  ;o) 

My husband likes to garden.  ;o)  Earlier this year he saved some seeds from a squash I'd had in the box of organic veg I have delivered every week.  He planted some of them and after some due care and attention a lone baby squash appeared and grew into a monster!  I wasn't sure what sort of squash it was but, with a little research, I have discovered that it's a Turks Turban squash.  Apparently they're often grown as ornamental squashes but I can attest that they're good to eat!  ;o)  I peeled and chopped some squash and roasted it in a little oil with chestnut mushrooms and smoked paprika, yummmmeeeee!  Here it is:

I need to find some more squash recipes to try as this squash is a huge beast and even though I made some cumin laced soup with it yesterday (squash makes the most velvety sexy smooth soups!) I still have more than half of it to get through!