Souperb!

What is it about soup? As soon as the days and nights reach that autumn point of equilibrium, my thoughts turn inexorably to the delights of the stockpot and the soup pan and I start to flick through my mental file of favourite recipes. DH and I are great fans of casseroles and stews, chilli and pasta, all the warm and comforting winter fillers, but for variety, economy and unfailing moreishness, there is simply nothing to beat soup.

I love it for its range of colour and taste and texture - the way it can be smooth and voluptuously creamy, or thin and delicate, or thick, chunky and satisfyingly filling. I love the fact that depending on the ingredients I have to hand, it can be simple and economical or luxuriously expensive. I love the knowledge that soup is forgiving, and difficult (though not impossible) to ruin completely, and that at its best it rises to a peak of perfection which is a joy to savour.

Like everyone I have my collection of tried-and-tested recipes, but one of the many wonderful things about soup is how inventive you can be with it, how easily you can take what you happen to have to hand and make something reassuringly familiar or deliciously different. The possible permutation of ingredients and flavours is vast and the resulting variety means DH and I are never bored when soup is on the menu.

Just think of the thick, slightly tart sweetness of parsnip and apple, or the luxurious creaminess of broccoli and Stilton, the warming earthiness of carrot and lentil or the savoury simplicity of French onion.

On a cold winter’s day, what could be better than satisfyingly tasty and filling ham and pea, made of course with a ham bone and proper marrowfat peas, and topped with dumplings? Split pea soup is lovely too, but not in the same league in my book. To be slightly more exotic, you could try the spicy richness of red bean and bacon, one of our longstanding favourites, crammed with tomatoes, onions and red peppers and tangy with paprika.

And whenever DH or I are under the weather and need cheering-up, we turn to the creamy comfort of chicken and rice, in our house made with the stock  from a traditional French poule au pot (chicken simmered with vegetables, herbs and garlic).

Of course, for the true soup addict there is no such thing as having enough recipes and I’m always open to new suggestions. These are a few of my favourites. Will you share  some of yours?

Image via Wylio

Burning the midnight oil

Old habits die hard. Five years after I retired for the second time, I’m still faintly haunted by my mother’s adage that “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” The trouble is that this doesn’t come naturally to me and never has done. Fundamentally I’m an owl, not a lark.

Though I enjoy the early morning when forced to experience it, my normal instinct when I wake up early is to turn over, snuggle down and go back to sleep. In the evening the converse is true. While DH will happily head off to bed and to sleep after the 10 o’clock news, I find myself perking up again, ready to go back online for an hour or two and even read in bed after finally switching off the computer.

The one thing guaranteed to make me put the light off before the wee small hours is the knowledge that DH will wake me in the morning no later than 9. Not that I want him to, you understand, it’s just that we’ve decided that we simply can’t allow our respective body clocks to get too far out of line or life would become much too complicated. So he gets up when he’s ready to do so and wakes me when my morning porridge is ready. DH is no cook, but he can make a mean pan of porridge (it must be his Scottish ancestry) so on most mornings making breakfast is his province, not mine.

The snag comes when he is on a rare trip away without me, as he is at the moment. As I type he’s in the process of taking an elderly aunt home from a visit to his mother’s and has left me to my own devices for a couple of days. As soon as I know there is no-one around to keep me in line, I fall far too easily into bad ways, as I did last night.

Oh, I was good at first. The TV went off at 10 and the computer about an hour later. I told myself I was tired after a busy weekend and needed an early night. So I was in bed soon after 11 and decided to reward myself with the opening chapter (or two) of my latest library book: A Question of Belief  by the superlative Donna Leon.

Who was I trying to kid? There is no such thing as reading only a chapter or two of a Donna Leon novel. Her writing is so good, her settings so atmospheric and her characters so well-drawn that I instantly found myself drawn into the story and emerged to find that it was almost 3am, my eyelids were drooping from tiredness and I was two-thirds of the way through the book. 

Even then something in me urged me to make a night of it and finish the whole book, but from somewhere I found a remnant of commonsense and made myself switch off the light. From habit I woke just before 9, heavy-eyed and sluggish, but still full of the guilty joy of reading in bed until I could read no more. I still have the final third to read, but tonight DH will be home and I will be good again – until next time.

Image via Wylio

And now for something completely different

Forty years ago, when DH and I had only been married a few years, the children were small and money was very tight, one of our greatest pleasures was listening to the radio. Back in those dim and distant days, radio meant, of course, the BBC, since in Britain commercial radio didn't start broadcasting until 1973.

We listened avidly to classic drama, current affairs and comedy and one of the now almost forgotten gems we loved was a comedy series, written and performed by the hugely talented Ronnie Barker, and entitled Lines from my Grandfather’s Forehead.  Back then Ronnie Barker was almost unknown, but the skilful and very funny short sketches he wrote for the series foreshadowed the immensely popular work he would later create as he became a household name.

Our absolute favourite among those sketches is one we have never forgotten and despite our increasingly unreliable memories, we can still recite chunks of it to each other after all these years. Tonight, however, DH made my day by discovering that it is now on YouTube, and I have just had the enormous pleasure of hearing it again and finding it just as funny and as clever as I found it back in 1972.

Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats for the Three Minute Hamlet.

 

It’s a conspiracy!

 

Since we got back safely to the UK, it feels as though the world of technology has been ganging up  against DH and me.  We arrived home in Wales on Thursday of last week to find that our phone line was out of order. Thankfully the engineers were able to come out the next day and have repaired the line after a fashion, but the phone is still crackly and our broadband is poorly again. Even the arrival of a brand-new router this week hasn't solved the problem completely, which is why your wonderful posts are piling up in my Reader faster than I can read them, let alone comment on them.

The dishwasher too chose this week to down tools decisively. I’d forgotten just how much washing-up two hungry people can generate in a day and how long it takes to do it. The more expensive model we chose last time not having lasted as long as we had expected, we chose a very basic one as a replacement and I already love it. Price is definitely not everything…..

Then there was the jungle which we usually call a garden. We always expect it to be pretty shaggy by the time we come back from our summer in France, but this year’s enormous rainfall has nurtured truly rampant growth everywhere and it’s taken every spare minute when it hasn't been actually pouring down (not that there have been too many of those since we got back) to begin to bring it back under control. I did mention that gardening is my main form of exercise, didn't’ I?

The crowning touch to a difficult week came when I logged onto Blogger earlier in the week to find that the powers-that-be at Google have finally carried out their threat and have pulled the plug on my beloved and comfortable old Dashboard. I hate the new interface with a passion because it is just so difficult to use for a person with cataracts and mine are definitely getting worse. This will be my first post using it and I am not looking forward to the experience. I may be some time…. 

Little boxes

…and big boxes and bags of all shapes and sizes. Suddenly I can’t see the living-room furniture for all the clutter. Yes, the Transit household is packing up and heading north again and another summer in Normandy is rapidly drawing to a close. Of course it will be good to see Wales and our family and friends again, but that doesn’t stop me feeling the usual pang at uprooting myself from what has become a much-loved home and area.

After getting up well before dawn on Tuesday, we leave France on the early morning ferry and by that evening we will be having supper with DS and his family. The next day will be spent with DH’s mother and by Thursday evening we will be home in Wales, rapidly taking the weight off the very small campervan’s uncomplaining suspension.

I plan to while away some of the almost six-hour Channel crossing drafting the post I’ve been promising you all for ages. It’s just been so busy here recently, with friends to visit, the village soirée or evening meal and social to attend, and a hundred and one neglected and now last-minute jobs to finish, that writing has had to take a very back seat. But the nights are drawing in and once I’ve unpacked and put everything away again, that will mean much more time for quieter occupations such as blogging.

So it’s au revoir to Normandy until next year and soon we’ll be welcoming each well-known landmark, as we make our way back over Offa’s Dyke to the green hills and quiet valleys of our beloved Mid-Wales. I am so very fortunate to be able to spend my life in such beautiful places.

Image via Google