Garden Fresh!

Today we had Green Goddess Soup. It's called that because it's green and I like alliteration, not because I think I'm a goddess. But if you want to think so, that's okay.

The soup included, from The Southerner's garden: kale & New Zealand Spinach and from The Farmers' garden - organic broccoli. It also had potatoes, green beans, onion, and secret spices. Okay, the secret spices are actually not that secret. I used Italian vinaigrette salad dressing base from Penzey's. I once made salad dressing out of it and it was totally gross, but it's nice in soups.

The bread was the usual, with olive oil. And The Neighbour brought her famous chocolate chip cookies. We were treated to a lovely flute performance by The Flautist (new nickname, for those of you keeping a cast list) on one of those wooden Japanese flutes that I can't spell properly. Very charming and we all enjoyed it. The Fix-it Guy could barely stay upright and if The Southerner hadn't kept him talking, I'm pretty sure he would've slumped all the way down onto the couch and taken a nap. It was because he and The Fleece Lady had traipsed all over the island for the Garden Show.

The Pastry Chef did show up, but The Sous Chef decided to lay low since last night she came over to cook and ended up reading a novel on the couch while I made both the soup and the dinner. That's okay, next time I'm going to read on the couch while she cooks!

And that's about it from here. Hope you have a great weekend.

An absence in the neighbourhood!

It's that time of year again...the Neighbour's birthday. We laid out the Birthday Princess banner (most recently worn by The Fix-it Guy on his birthday - sorry, no photo) and the bread of choice was her favourite, corn bread....but where was the Birthday Princess? Nowhere to be seen, that's where! The banner sat forlorn and abandoned, the cornbread got scarfed down by everyone except The Neighbour, and the very mild (as in not-spicy) three bean soup was enjoyed by all...all except The Neighbour.

Never fear though. She did not fall down her stairs or trip over one of her cats, she simply spent the day on a hike with a friend. And I did manage to save her both soup, and one piece of cornbread.

We had a very nice time in spite of her absence and The Sous Chef brought a bunch of her friends from Uni, so it was something like a party (with soup instead of beer). We had a full house, and even spilled out onto the porch - a very nice day indeed.

And I still have the Birthday Princess banner for the next princess...I believe that might just be The Sous Chef (she's already "ordered" her cake - she wants a vanilla one like last year).

Have a great week everyone!

It wasn't my fault!

Last Sunday, blogger was down so I couldn't post about Sunday Soup. I actually didn't go to Sunday Soup, so it would've been hard to come up with much to write anyway. I had a big week on the road last week (book signings, yay!) and so I actually hid out at The Neighbour's house for a while catching up on my to-do-before-I-go list.

This week was quite the scurrying around for soup. I didn't even make it until 3pm! We'd gone down to Victoria for the weekend to do a book event at Tall Tales Books, and so yesterday was a bit crazy. But I made my old stand-by, Potato-Leek, and everyone was happy. It all worked out great. And The Fix-it guy brought a salad with the yummiest dressing ever. Mmmm...lots of garlic! He even let me keep the leftovers. Oh, and did I mention he grew the lettuce? Yep!

It was nice enough to be out on the porch for the FIRST time all year, so The Neighbour and I sat out there for a while, but there was fresh bread and olive oil on the table, so everyone else stayed in the kitchen, sopping up the oil with the bread and having a lively discussion on...yep, the oil disaster in the Gulf. Sometimes, it's not all fun and games at SS, but serious conversations are part of it too.

Anyway, thanks for checking in and see you next week!