Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Pear and Stilton Soup Pear and Stilton was the perfect soup to make on a busy day. It was quick to prepare and took only twenty minutes or so to cook.  The ingredients include onion, unsalted butter, pears, chicken stock, Stilton cheese, lemon juice and chopped chives. The younger offspring was elsewhere, so it was left to the spouse, the older offspring and me to taste and appraise.  I liked it and the testosterone-fuelled ones enjoyed it too. What more can I say? Bee Brief  Here are a couple of items I came across during the week. Smart bees are facing lethal threat (Irish Independent, 19th July 2010) I'm not quite sure what this Irish website is called but the people behind it seem to be involved in bee keeping and selling hives . Check out the blog. Agroscope - The Swiss Bee Research Centre.  From Bill Bryson's At Home - A Short History of Private Life : "[John Lubbock, a banker and keen entomologist who was known to Charles Darwin] had a particular i...

Cream of Asparagus Soup The process of selecting the soup to be made at the weekend usually involves my making a unilateral decision on a Friday evening or a Saturday morning. On one occasion I decided on garlic broth because I had a lot of garlic in the fridge (see blog of 4th March) and last weekend I chose the chilled avocado and rocket soup because of the glorious weather. This week was unusual in that I let the spouse have the final say. I checked the inside cover of The Soup Book to see what vegetables are in season in June and asparagus caught my eye. I love asparagus, usually served with buttery Hollandaise sauce (the spouse's is pretty good). There are two recipes for asparagus soup in The Soup Book - cream of asparagus and asparagus and morel. The spouse said he lost interest at the mention of morels (did he think I was saying morals ?), so cream of asparagus it was for today. The other ingredients include milk, nutmeg, egg yolks and cream; chopped parsley is the garn...