Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Pheasant and Apple Soup  The recipe for pheasant and apple soup in The Soup Book is by Carolyn Humphries , who provided the recipe for the Italian wedding soup I cooked in September. It wasn't one I was planning to make when browsing through the book last weekend, but during the week I alighted upon it and thought it would fit the Christmas bill of fare . The ingredients include a small pheasant, onion, sweet potato, a cooking apple, cider, chicken stock, cinnamon, a bay leaf and cream.  Carolyn suggests using other game birds, such as pigeon or partridge, if pheasant cannot be found, but the spouse located a pheasant in a local speciality butcher's shop around the corner from where we live.  We put it in our spare fridge out in the garage so it wouldn't pollute our main indoor fridge. The spouse claims he could smell it in the garage, but I didn't notice anything too horrible.  I brought it indoors this morning and we had a look at it. The spouse made the first in...

Fennel and Apple Soup  This morning I decided to make fennel and apple soup - no particular reason. It looked straightforward. From the ingredients listed - spring onions, garlic, fennel, celery, a cooking apple and vegetable stock - all I needed was fennel and the apple.  Off went the spouse to the shopping centre. After a while came the text: "No fennel." The spouse is very pleased with the new green grocer up at the shopping centre. He finds him very obliging and chatty. The green grocer had no fennel, having thrown the previous day's supply away. The spouse would have taken even that, saying it was "only for soup." Only for soup? Harrumph! Anyway, the green grocer explained that fennel doesn't keep well. According to Celia Brooks Brown's introduction to the recipe, fennel will store better in the fridge if you remove the feather fronds. (I hadn't heard of Celia before but she has her own website .) I went down to the local green grocer's pl...