Jan 5, 2011

mainly carrots, a soup

cold winter days call for a soup and the fact soups are easy...







and the fact that i had 4kgs carrots "left over" from christmas. i meant to make a carrot and rice casserole before christmas, but never got round to it. i originally meant to use just carrots for the soup, but then started digging into the fridge and freezer, and found a bag of frozen celeriac and rutabaga cubes, minced green parts of leek and parsley stalks, and the flavoured (sun-dried tomatoes) cream cheese in the fridge, and an onion in the pantry.







first roughly chopped the onion, put the kettle on medium high and added the onion, leek and celeriac/rutabaga (frozen) and parlsey stalks and let simmer for 5 mins to thaw whatever was frozen and to soften the onion.







mixed well after adding the cubed carrots and let sautee for a few minutes, before...







...adding water until the mixture was barely covered, veggie stock will work as well. i added 1 tsp of herbamare buillion mix before putting the lid on and letting the kettle simmer on medium low for 15 mins, which was enough for me...







...to play with the camera and take pics of the dog. he did't seem too happy to be woken up in the midst of his mid-morning nap







time to take out the stalks...







...put in the cheese and the immersion blender. i tried to make the soup quite smooth, but there are always pieces of carrot that managed to avoid the squishy-mushying machine. the looks were quite alright, but i felt fancy and added 2 tbsp all purpose flour in a scant 1 dl of cold water (mixed well) and brought the soup to a boil to cook the flour, as well. not something that you will taste, but perhaps the soup looked nicer. very tasty and once again, no salt added.






i did think it needed a "kick" or something, so i got out my hot sauce and added a careful ½ tsp of it. i love hot sauce but my stomach doesn't, the tiny amount did round up the flavours







little parsley as garnish and crisp bread to go with, perfect lunch on a semi-cold day (-12C)



Jan 3, 2011

happy new year & ramblings...





hopefully you've been kind to yourself with new year's resolutions. oh, could be most of us should contain less fat, more more fit, show acts of kindness to people we know (and to strangers), save the planet and be better persons overall. i happen to think that most of us have lives to live, jobs to go to and these things take a strain on you, taking too much on your plate isn't a good thing. i feel that one should balance duty and fun, the scales a tad more on the fun side!

i have, however, made one resolution: i will not, once again, buy clothing to myself in finland. let's face it, my closets are bursting even with boxes full of donated pieces, and i just won't wear out what i have any year soon. things might change if i need to start wearing my own clothes at work, but that's something i will not worry about right now. last year i succeeded pretty well on this issue, i only bought 4 items in finland (not counting underwear), not too much when travelling, either.

there are some gastronomical challenges that i need to tackle, making soufflé and creme brulee and flambeeing something (maybe i even flambee the creme brulee!). i will also start paying (more) attention to what there is in the pantry and fridge, and not to waste food because the best-by date was weeks ago. i'm pretty sure that certain someone and i could live for weeks with just freezer and pantry items. (it looks like we'll be eating a lot of rice in the coming weeks...)

lastly, there will some house-cleaning here at liisamarja's, some of it you can already see (however, this change needs a bit more adjusting) right now the sun is shining and the dog needs his walk...i'm heading outdoors, cleaning can always wait!

all the best for 2011, be kind to yourself!