Watercress Soup; Bee My Honey

This weekend's soup is watercress (one of two recipes in The Soup Book). It contains:

• onions,
  
• watercress (stalks cooked with the onions; leaves added later),
• pears (cored, but no mention of peeling. I left them unpeeled. You have to take risks),
• vegetable stock (cheated and use cubes), and
• cream.

I've have got as far as liquidising the soup ready for a dinner party. I'll add the cream when I re-heat it.

Bothar - Bee My Honey Appeal, 2010

Bothar (www.bothar.ie) is an Irish charity that "enables families and communities worldwide to overcome hunger and poverty and to restore the environment in a sustainable way." One of its projects is the Bee My Honey appeal which takes place in the run-up to St Valentine's Day. Donations (Eu50, Eu90 or Eu125) go towards supporting families in Uganda, Tanzania and Cameroon to set up beehives. Project families learn how to keep bees and can make money from honey and wax; the environment benefits at the same time.

Incidentally, I've made honey and brandy ice cream for the dinner party. It's from a recipe I cut out of a news paper a long time ago.

And in today's Irish Times Weekend there's an article about two Irishmen who have made a documentary film, Colony, about honeybees in the USA. Here's the link - www.colonymovie.com.

Asides - Two children on a bus

When I was bringing the two children into town on the bus, my child was putting his pal through his riddle paces. He asked: "If it takes fourteen men twenty-four hours to dig a hole, how long will it take seven men to dig half a hole?" The pal responded: "Well, it takes three people to hold my sister down for her eyedrops, so ..."

It might have taken a while using this variety of logic, but I am sure he would have worked it out eventually.