Spicy onion soup recipe

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 31 August 2011 in cooking, recipes | 10 comments

One of my fellow drama tutors, Kat, lives off cup-a-soups — she’s 19 and working about five different jobs so she can afford to desert us in a couple of weeks and go to drama school in that London. She’s always rushing from this job to that rehearsal and that’s where the cup-a-soups come in handy. Most of the time I have no reaction to them but the smell of the French onion soup one makes me CRAVE onion soup.

Thankfully onion soup is a fun soup to make — not quick but still easy and frugal. I used to make a (veggie but otherwise) strict version of Delia’s but as with many things I cook, it’s evolved over the years. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my onion soup is now a little spicy. I do like my spice. Feel free to skip the chilli if you don’t like it hot – but the garam masala adds more flavour that heat, so do still use that.

I definitely recommend using a variety of onions if you can – include red onions for sweetness and colour. I used all boring white onions for the version pictured below because I got a big sack of them on a Ramadan special offer last week – I compensated by adding a little more sugar.

It takes a least an hour to make – half an hour for browning the onions then another half hour or so at the soup stage – but the slower the better really. A restaurant in Leeds used to make a 24 hour onion soup – talk about commitment! If I’m cooking other things at the same time, I’ll try for an hour for the browning then another hour at the soup stage but if I’m making it for lunch, it’s closer to an hour. Either way, the house smells GREAT. :)

Alphabet in August – U to Z

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 31 August 2011 in meta | 2 comments

This is a month-long creative exercise led by Chiot’s Run: descriptive words and pictures about me/my life starting with each letter of the alphabet. Most people are doing a letter a day but I’m doing it in groups instead. I’m a little behind at the moment because of one of the words for L and one of the words for P… :)

• Alphabet in August – A to D
• Alphabet in August – E to H
• Alphabet in August – I to L
• Alphabet in August – M to P
• Alphabet in August – Q to T

I’ve done five words for each letter up to now but I don’t think I’ll be able to manage as many for these difficult letters, or find pictures for everything! It’s also pretty hard at this stage coming up with words that aren’t just synonyms of previously mentioned things.

U is for unusual: I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was a unique and beautiful snowflake but I think it’s fair to say I am quite unusual in my habits and hobbies, certainly not what people expect when they meet me for the first time.

U is also for underemployed: With the exception of a few weeks here and there, I just about always have been, either in terms of workload/hours or difficulty of work. This is mostly by choice now.

and U is also for ubuntu & Ubuntu: the philosophy (“I am what I am because of who we all are”) and the operating system. Actually, I’m not particularly tied to Ubuntu per se, but in the 10 years I’ve been using Linux, it’s the distro I’ve used the most and I can’t see that changing very soon.

V is for video games: I’ve played video games all my life. My not so secret addiction.

W is for weird: Like with “odd”, not always in a good way.

W is also for waterbaby: Floating and paddling. Pools and ponds. Streams and the sea. They’re all good.

X is for XL: extra-large and extra-loud.

Y is for yarn: I like yarn.

Y is also for Yorkshire: my adopted home county, which I’ve gone on-and-on about before :)

Y is for yummy things: there is a reason I’m “fat”, “XL” and the one below – I’m all about tasty, tasty food.

And finally, Z is for Zaftig: I’ll admit I had a bit of help from a dictionary for that one but it’s definitely going on my “remember for Scrabble” mental list. Wonderful word, and one John has adopted as a nickname for both me and the dog!

Final thoughts

I’ll admit that the last half of the alphabet has felt like a slog (even though I had nearly all the words picked before I started) but overall, I’m glad I did it — as I said for Q, I’m not very good at finishing projects so I’m glad I finished something!

Reading other people’s alphabets – and seeing comments on my own posts, it seems we simple living bloggers have a lot of traits in common – perhaps we’re not all as odd or unusual as we think :)

Alphabet in August – Q to T

Posted by louisa on Monday 29 August 2011 in meta | 0 comments

This is a month-long creative exercise led by Chiot’s Run: descriptive words and pictures about me/my life starting with each letter of the alphabet. Most people are doing a letter a day but I’m doing it in groups instead. I’m a little behind at the moment because of one of the words for L and one of the words for P… :)

• Alphabet in August – A to D
• Alphabet in August – E to H
• Alphabet in August – I to L
• Alphabet in August – M to P

(Ok, that’s a bit of a cheat but I couldn’t think of any other ideas for a Q picture and while her very-much-missed brother Carbon has been featured, alongside Boron & Lily-dog, Carla hasn’t been used for a picture yet and dagnammit, she deserves to be. :) )

Q is for…

• Quick-learner: I pick things up quickly, which is useful given my many interests!
• Quick-witted: Cheating with another “quick-” word :) There is nothing like knowing other quick-wits to speed up your own response time.
• Questioning: I accept very little on face value.
• Quitter: Quitter is a bit too strong really, I’m just not a finisher of things. I’m good at doing the first 80% of things, bad at the last 20%.
• Quibbler: This goes with “questioning” I guess but in a bad way: I get stuck on the micro details in macro arguments sometimes.

(And egg shells are one of my favourite examples of recycling since they can be baked and fed back to the chickens as a calcium booster, enabling them to produce more eggs. Weee! That’s also one of the first pictures I took for my other site, How Can I Recycle This?, back in early 2006.)

R is for…

Small steps forward

Posted by louisa on Friday 26 August 2011 in meta | 2 comments

I was in the shower the other day, washing my face with my olive oil soap when it hit me – how little changes add up.

It’s one of those obvious things that I understand on a conscious level for ages, then I attain a mini-enlightenment and it suddenly becomes super clear, I suddenly know it at a much deeper level – like with the growing cycle a few months ago.

So anyway, I was in the shower and it occurred to me that the day we started using homemade soap, we immediately removed a whole lot of synthetic chemicals from our lives. And recently we’ve been getting all our fresh meat from Swillington Farm: previously we randomly bought local or organic but not as consistently as we do now, and whoosh, another set of chemicals as well as reduced food miles and improved animal welfare. Then yesterday, we had (expensive) bacon and eggs for lunch – the eggs were from our girls and instead of my usual HP, I had the wild plum ketchup I made the other week: both local, organic real food.

Just small steps, things that weren’t big decisions in themselves – in fact I couldn’t even call some of them even little decisions, just stuff we’ve started doing without thinking about it. I do like the occasional enforced big leap but I feel these almost-unnoticeable steps are more sustainable for us – soon we’ll be running a marathon without really noticing.

Sorry if this seems really obvious but as I said, I just suddenly feel like I know it on a deeper lever and wanted to share! :)

More damsons!

Posted by louisa on Friday 26 August 2011 in preserving | 0 comments

The wonderful Vic and John B have donated even more damsons to the Team Peach cause this week. Another 3kg/6.6lb! Thanks again Team B! :)

John’s happy with his three gallons of wine so these are definitely destined for jam. Or maybe damson cheese… To my recipe folder!