Skip to main content

My Secret Life with Bees in Literature; Beetroot and Apple Soup

My Secret Life with Bees in Literature



The other night as I was going to bed I turned on the radio (RTE 1) and happened to hear the reading from The Book on One. It was an extract from Virgil's Georgics concerning bees. The Georgics is a poem completed c.29 BC, comprising four books that deal with crops, trees, livestock and bees. What I was listening to was a translation by Peter Fallon (www.peterfallon.com), founder of the Gallery Press. The reference to honey as manna caught my attention and I continued to listen to Virgil's ideas on providing an ideal environment for bees to thrive in. The translator was the reader. The spouse and I agreed he didn't read well. Nevertheless I soldiered on for the sake of my blog!
Other bee-related books I have enjoyed in recent years are The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd and The Beekeeper's Pupil
by Sara George. As far as I can remember the former is about a community of women protecting each other and the latter a fictional account of Francois Huber's application of the scientific method to the study of reproduction in bees.
Is it apt that today I am planning to make bee...troot soup (!)?



Later the same day ... Beetroot and Apple Soup



Well, I have made the beetroot and apple soup as shown in The Soup Book. The ingredients are onion, garlic, fresh beetroot, potato, apple, stock (chicken or vegetable - I used vegetable), sugar and lemon juice, garnished with fresh chopped herbs (parsley, chives, dill or coriander, or a mix) and creme fraiche, soured cream or yoghurt. I hesitated over this choice as I didn't like beetroot as a child. Anyway, I got out my food processor to use for grating the vegetables and apples. I have only used it before for liquidising and blending, so I had to take the time to figure out how to grate with it. It wasn't as efficient as I had hoped because I had to take the lumps back out of the bowl and chop them manually.



We've just had lunch. The soup tasted good - the apples helped to tone down the beetroot and it looked good with the garnish. That's two soups this month already. Will I be able to keep up the pace?





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tuscan Bean Soup

Tuscan Bean Soup This recipe calls for canned beans (borlotti, flageolet or cannellini) and as I have been tidying and cleaning out our cupboards I've used cannellini beans. I have to mention that the younger offspring has done an impressive job on the cupboards. That's enough about him. Back to me and my soup! Other ingredients include onion, carrots, leek, garlic, tomatoes, tomato puree (I substituted sun-dried tomato paste as there was an open jar of it in the fridge), chicken stock (I had to use a cube as my home-made reserves have been used up) and spinach.When ready it's served with ciabatta bread, grated Parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil. So it's quite a rich soup. We've just had the Tuscan bean soup for lunch. All enjoyed it. The adult males were particularly forthcoming in their praise. The spouse liked the "tomato-ey sharpness" and mused that ham stock should be considered as an alternative to chicken stock. Bees' Cheese and other recipes H

Lovage Soup

Lovage Soup   Today I made lovage soup, the second recipe by Sophie Grigson in The Soup Book that I have used in the last four days. She introduces the recipe with these remarks: "If you don't grow this old-fashioned herb yourself, ask around among your gardening friends or head down to the nearest garden centre to see if they sell it. " As I mentioned in my last blog entry (18th May), lovage now features among the herbs in my front garden. As the spouse left the camera at home, I took some photographs. Parsley, sorrel and lovage in Minnie's garden. Rosemary, parsley and lovage in Minnie's garden.  I had hoped to add chervil to my collection of herbs - there's a recipe for vegetable and chervil soup in The Soup Book - but "Young Stephen" wasn't able to source any for me. At least he tried. Just while I'm mentioning Stephen, I have to reveal that the spouse and the older offspring claim that he has been mention

Mulligatawny Manoeuvres

Mulligatawny I see it's only been six months since I last made mulligatawny. The first time was back in May 2011 when I followed Roopa Gulati's recipe in The Soup Book ; last September I used The Essential Asian Cookbook . Today I used Rick Stein's India , a Christmas present from the spouse. It's one of those luxurious recipe books with thick paper and beautiful, vibrantly colourful photos. We had all been impressed by Roopa's recipe, less so by the second book, so how would we fare today? Well, those two recipes both involved apple. Rick's did not, so I felt that this must be a more authentic recipe. If Anglo-Indian cooking has any authenticity these days. Still, Rick states that his recipe is on the menu at the Madras Club in Chennai. It involves making a spice paste first and then the soup. Ingredients: The paste called for coriander seeds, cumin seeds, peppercorns, curry powder, turmeric, garlic, ginger, and fresh coriander, curry and mint leave