The verdict

I think this carrot with coriander soup turned out pretty tasty. I ended up thinning it a bit with more vegetable stock and I added some lemon pepper at the end because it seemed to be missing something. I, of course, deviated slightly from the recipe, using ground coriander because I did not have whole (you're supposed to toast the whole and then smash it with a mortar and pestle), using a little half & half rather than creme fraiche, and putting in a little shredded ginger root (which you could not taste at all).

The bread was the regular stuff, but I kneaded in some fresh chives (from The Southerner's garden!), garlic, black pepper, and Parmesan. It was a BIG hit.

We had a small turnout this week, but it was nice, as always. Everyone seemed to like the soup (either that or they didn't want to hurt my feelings) and I sent some home with a couple of people. The Southerner is not that fond of carrots, so he finally admitted, after pressing, that it wasn't his favorite soup. He was sitting to one side of me, kind of behind me, his spoon clinking against his bowl like he was really enjoying it and when I turned I saw that he was eating it out of one of my tiny ramekins! He didn't even like it enough to have a regular bowl! Haha! He thinks that hurts my feelings somehow, but not at all. Not everyone can like every soup. There are tons of soups I don't make because they sound yucky to me!

While I always say that dessert is NOT on the menu, Carol pointed out that I have come up with three special occasions in a row to justify dessert. This week it was my one year anniversary of being a landed immigrant in Canada. Once The Southerner comes in from playing...I mean, working...on his bike...and downloads the picture of my cake, I'll add it to the post. It was an orange cake made with olive oil for the fat, instead of butter. Quite interesting. I topped it with an orange soak (half a cup of sugar, half a cup of o.j., two tablespoons of butter, a dash of vanilla - simmered for ten minutes, cooled, and then poured over the cake while it's still in the pan). I actually made up the recipe for the orange soak, based on a vanilla one. It turned out really, really lovely.

Oh, here is the photo...I guess it's too dark to work on the bike outside. Undoubtedly, he'll move into the kitchen as unless I'm actually in there cooking, he thinks it's a great bike workshop (but I'm not complaining because he finally built me my own fixed gear bike this week)!




Calvin and Tigre came for a visit, as usual and while Sophie didn't mind, there was a moment where Calvin, hopped up on catnip, chased Grinder through the yard at full speed. It was just a stand-off though and no blows were thrown, which is good because Calvin's big, but Grinder has extra toes and enormous feet! Judging from the photos, it's probably hard to believe there was any kind of altercation going at all though.
Grinder Calvin

I'm not sure what next week's soup will be, but if you have any vegetarian soup recipes (or great bread ideas), feel free to leave them in the comments or drop me a line! And if you can think of anything we should celebrate next Sunday so we can have cake, I'm taking note of holidays...real or made-up.

Eat well...