Sunshine Soup For Cloudy Days

Now, pardon me for sounding a little cliche but I love the sunshine.  The first day it comes out after winter, I bask in it like I've neer seen it before.  But what to do in those dull winter days, when it's raining and horrible?  This is Britain, we get a lot of them.

My dad has one of those special lamps that wake you up with artificial sunlight, it's pretty cool and it does make you feel a little cheerier.  But I don't have the cash to be going round buying lamps and turning every room I enter into my own personal sunbed....

So instead I usually try to make something colourful and delicious.  Which is where my sunshine soup idea came from.  It was inspired by a recipe I found in my great-grandmas old cooking manual called "Yolk soup".  It had an egg on top.  I've tweaked it beyond all recognition, half of the stuff listed in the recipe book went out of production before I was born and it called for an awful amount of lard & animal fat...  I first posted this recipe on my weight-loss blog and I got a lot of people saying it helped with bloating, so that's a plus I suppose!

Plus it's sweet & savoury, something I love.

Anyway, Here it is: Sunshine soup minus the egg.  Don't let that stop you though.

2 large carrots, peeled and sliced.
1/2 butternut squash, peeled, deseeded and cut into small cubes
1 clove of garlic (I don't mean the whole garlic!) Sliced or crushed
1 red pepper, cubed
1 medium red onion, cubed
1 medium white onion, cubed
1 reduced salt vegetable stock cube
1 teaspoon of honey

1/2 teaspoon of vanilla essence.
1/2 pint of boiling hot water.
1 1/2 teaspoons of ground coriander
a sprinkling of cracked peppercorns.
A magazine. A watched soup never boils after all...

Makes enough for two generous bowls of soup.

Shove everything into the saucepan. (A random tip, I find putting the butternut squash a the bottom makes things cook a little more evenly).

Make up the stock in a jug - add the honey, stir it into the veg, pour over the veg, add the coriander, put the lid on & leave to simmer on medium heat for about 20 minutes.

Now take out a magazine, have a cuppa or manically try and clean up the mess in the kitchen. Whatever floats your boat!

When it's been bubbling nicely, and the water has reduced slightly - blend it up.

After blending, leaving it OFF the heat, add the vanilla essence.  Stir gently and leave for a few minutes.

Dish up into bowls, sprinkle the pepper on top & serve.

Hello sunshine! Goodbye blues!