Pea and Sausage Soup

Pea and Sausage Soup 

Yesterday (Saturday 27th November) I made pea and sausage soup for our dinner. The spouse was in a hurry to get out early to do the shopping because we needed to be in Dublin city centre on time for the protest march against the forthcoming austerity measures (figures for the numbers attending vary from 50,000 to 100,000). I had to think quickly: we would want something substantial and warming. One of the handy features of The Soup Book is the recipe chooser section which lists the recipes under these headings: Vegetarian, Chilled, Hearty, Healthy, Spicy, Main Meals, and Quick. Pea and sausage soup is listed under Hearty, Main Meals and Quick, so it seemed like an apt choice for three people who would return home cold (and one of whom would be cooking) and for a fourth who would be returning from a rugby match.

The ingredients for pea and sausage soup include carrot, leek, celery, potato, parsley, dry white wine, chicken stock, Toulouse sausages and peas (frozen or fresh).  We weren't sure what was special about Toulouse sausages but a quick search on the internet told us that they are made of chopped pork, garlic and white wine, and may contain bacon.  We weren't able to track any down so we substituted decent plain pork sausages.

We arrived home, had a rest and then I started to make the soup so that dinner would be over by the time we had to sit down to watch the younger offspring's favourite television programme - you know the one that starts early in the autumn and runs all the way up to Christmas (I'm not watching it next year. The spouse reminded me I said that last year). The preparation time is supposed to be twenty minutes, but I always take longer to prepare. I am not a lover of peas, but this soup was really tasty. As suggested in the introduction to the recipe, we ate it with German rye bread. The soup is quite sweet because of the peas and carrot. The three males all professed to like the soup and so it will be added to the list of soups to be made again.

Bee Space 

For anyone wondering, I still haven't finished the bee box yet. I haven't forgotten.

I thought I'd look up references to bees in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. We have the seventeenth edition (revised by John Ayto and published in 2007); it can also be found on line. Our edition states: "As the bee is a social insect, the word 'bee' has been given to a social gathering for some purpose, such as a SPELLING BEE." The on-line version adds that there are also apple-bees and husking-bees, and that this use of the word bee (i.e., as a social gathering) originates from the English county Devon.

Honey-Dipped Points

I started this blog as a means of ensuring that I would get good use out of a new cookery book, and not just follow the same small handful of recipes, as I have tended to do with the books accumulated over the past three decades.  Recently I have looked at some of my older books to see what recipes they include that contain honey. This week I have picked out Rose Elliott's Not Just a Load of Old Lentils.  This was first published in 1972 and the spouse and I bought our copy in 1984 while we were going through our vegetarian phase.  Not Just a Load... contains two recipes for salad dressings that contain honey: honey dressing and honey and mint dressing. The former requires 1 TBS of clear honey, 1 TBS of cider vinegar, 3 TBS of oil, and seasoning, all of whic are combined. The honey and mint dressing contains the same ingredients, but with the addition of a TBS of chopped fresh mnt or a teasp. of mint sauce.

As I flick through the rest of book, I cannot say that we used it extensively.  It has a soup section but I know soup-making was not one of my priorities at that time. I'll finish now. Another hectic week ahead.