I just ate about 4 pints of home made soup – beautiful bacon and lentil job! Bucket loads of onion and carrot in there, and 4 rashers of bacon too… mmmm.

Was meant to be for the next few days, but like a crack addict I just kept going!

Be wary if you’re attending Portsmouth ED tonight – might not be the great unwashed making a the ‘odours’ tonight 😉

DrP

Soup, you say.

Hmm.

*strokes beard*

I can offer some wholemeal bread to go with that if you like. Just handmade my first ever loaf, hasn’t turned out too bad either 🙂

Good job. The pleasant way to eat lots of healthy veg IMO. This afternoon I made~:

Roast beetroot soup , with tomatos, chilli
Squash and fresh tomato soup with bacon

Made toad-in-the-hole today for the first time, first time I’ve eaten it since childhood too… Big success with kids+wife, will be making it again.

Needed gravy though, will have to make some next time.

I made a red wine gravy with balsamic red onion the other day, insanely good. It’s the little things.

Ah yes Toad in the hole. I made it last Sunday and it was a huge success, with onion gravy, yum.

OK, now need gravy recipes, and you are both perfect candidates to help out here 🙂

gravy granules + boiling water! 😛

gravy granules + boiling water!

🙂

Gravy granules hard to get hold of in Madrid… which is probably for the best!

You need the Marigold Swiss bouillion vegetable powder.
Make up some of the powder with boiling water.
Gently fry the onions in butter to soften them (see below for better method). Add a small amount of flour to make a roux, then slowly add the stock,to make a lovely gravy.

Delia Smith browns her onions first while cooking the sausages to make them almost black around the tips for 10 minutes on the high shelf of the oven. This gives a sweetness to the onions and nice brown colour to the gravy.

My red wine gravy was essentially this, though I didn’t have tamari to hand so used dark soy sauce. Adding a teaspoon of Marmite really kicks it up the arse.

My party trick is to do red onions on a medium heat with a dash of clear honey, generous twists of black pepper and a good glug of balsamic vinegar. Pitch that into the gravy after it’s softened, awesome.

Cheers, both recipes sound pretty good!