Unlucky for some!

Friday 13th November 2015

At any moment the decision you make can change the course of your life forever.

Friday the 13th ay, should I blame that for the fact the smoke alarm I have woke me up at 2am with the most high pitched squeal!  It's one that you can't take the battery out of!  I've never jumped so high in my life, I was in a real deep sleep.  I didn't want it to do it again, so I went downstairs and outside and put it in the bin, hoping it wouldn't squeal again and if it did hopefully we wouldn't hear it!

Luckily I don't really believe all that unlucky stuff, even if my mom did once get run over on Friday the 13th when we were kids, it would've still been unlucky had it happened on Saturday the 14th!

I'm thinking as the weather is pretty grim and I have no plans, I might clear my desk!  Need to get a little more tidy, especially as I'm collecting these handbags, 31 so far, so impressed by my members generosity and I have a car full of food for the foodbank too, just awesome.

My minds a bit blank this morning, not sure what to write about, ooo we made soup in meeting last night, I didn't have a recipe, just took the veg that was left in the fridge, was a bit of butternut squash & cauli, peppers, potato, celery, then added garlic and salt and pepper and they turned out tasty.  I'm gonna be braver with it now, just chuck stuff in and see what happens.

I've been asked if you can put meat in these soup makers, there's a couple of recipes that say cooked chicken, but one say's seal the minced lamb, so I think you're probably safer with cooked meat, although you can Friday a chicken breast in 20 minutes, so why can't you cook diced chicken in a soup maker in 20 minutes?  I'm tempted to experiment, I shall let you know when I do if it works.

I need to make pea soup, so here's the two options I'm gonna choose from;

Pea soup

F&H or total 9pp

2 pints vegetable or chicken stock (use 5 or 6 oxo cubes) (3pp)

1 small onion, finely chopped

1 crushed garlic clove

284g frozen peas (6pp)

2 tablespoons freshly chopped mint

Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Put stock in large saucepan and bring to boil.  Add onion, garlic, peas & mint, cook at a brisk simmer for ten minutes until peas are tender.  Transfer in batches to blender and blend until smooth, season to taste, serve immediately.  Optional - Top with low fat natural yogurt.

Really Quick and Easy Pea, Ham and Mint Soup

Preparation time 5 minutes

Cooking time 21 minutes

Setting: Smooth

Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 600g frozen peas

• 20g fresh mint, leaves only

• 225g quality cooked ham, chopped/shredded

• 100g potato, diced

• 800ml hot stock, from cube (ham)

• Salt and ground black pepper

• 2tbsp olive oil

• 75ml (3 heaped tbsp) crème Fraiche

Method:

1 Place the peas, mint, ham and hot stock into the soup maker and select the smooth setting.

2 Season with a little salt and milled pepper add the olive oil and crème fraiche and using the blend button blend the soup again for 20 seconds and serve.

Right I'm off to get a cuppa and decide what to do with my day, this soup larks helping my weight loss efforts I'm sure!