Minnie's Soup Kitchen

The Secret Great Dublin Bake-Off My improv group have continued to meet at my house and other venues, which gives me lots of opportunities to try out new baking recipes. I have begun to work my way through Martha Day's Baking . Two weeks ago I made farmhouse biscuits and crunchy oatmeal biscuits, most of which I brought to a different event. The ingredients for the farmhouse biscuits include butter, light brown sugar, crunchy peanut butter, an egg, flour, cinnamon, muesli, raisins and walnuts.  My baking trays are not quite big enough, so the finished biscuits did not look like the neat rounds pictured in the book. It was the same story with the crunchy oatmeal biscuits. Never mind. The reaction to the farmhouse biscuits was particularly gratifying and so I have promised to make them again for the Hospice Coffee Morning at work. Biscuits good, but muffins better. Three weeks ago I made oat and raisin muffins and maple pecan muffins. The former were not exciting, but the latte...

Winter Minestrone with Barley and Beans This weekend I have something to prove, namely that this blog is regularly updated. The older offspring was lonely and sad in his temporary accommodation so the spouse and I phoned him. During our conversation he mentioned that my blog was more regular than my spouse's, which led to my decision to make soup sooner rather than later. I chose a book given to me by my brother-in-law "Tod" and his wife "Sal" a couple of years ago: the Riverford Farm Cook Book   by Guy Watson and Jane Baxter. The spouse, younger offspring and I were staying with them and they had a glut of courgettes, which they had cooked using various methods. On leafing through the book I came across a recipe for chocolate and courgette cake. I baked it for them: you couldn't taste the courgette at all, smothered as it was by the cocoa. I digress. Back to the minestrone. The recipe in the Riverford book lists leek, celery, carrots, turnips, garlic, ...