Not quite Vegetable Soup

Not quite vegetable Soup

After a fabulous Christmas lunch with the family Natalie made a huge batch of stock from the turkey carcase and left over veggies, has been a usual event for a few years. Normally Natalie would then use some of the stock to make a soup, well this year I'll have to do my own, so here I go.

Ingredients

- 1/2 litre turkey stock.

- 2 carrots

- 1/2 a small swede

- 8 - 10 Brussels

- 1 large parsnips

- 2 shallots

- 175g smoked bacon cubes

- seasoning

Start my peeling and finely chopping the shallots, then in a large pan add a little olive oil and fry off the bacon until nice and golden, it does not need to be crispy. Add the shallots and cook gently until translucent and soft.

Next peel and dice the remaining veggies so they are roughly the same size and add to the pan and soften for 5 minutes. Add the stock and simmer slowly until all veggies and tender. Remove a quarter of the veggies and a little of the bacon leaving all of the liquid in the pan, blitz with a hand blender (you can add the soup to a larger blender at this stage if you wishuntil smooth and they return the chunky bits you removed, this will give you a little texture.

If you do not have some home made stock simply buy a tub of fresh.

Serve with some fresh bread and you've got a great meal.

Enjoy

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Christmas Lunch at Natalie's

Christmas Lunch at Natalie's

I was not going to post today as time has been precious with the kids and concentrating on photos was not a priority, however, I captured shots which told a good story of our lunch so here they are.

Back to normal service tomorrow and it's going to be a corker.

Enjoy and I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas.

M&S All Butter Mince Pies

Marks & Spencer all Butter Mince Pies luxurious, rich and utterly scrumptious, these festive treats from M&S may cost a little more than most but boy are they worth it. fabulously rich short sweet pastry filled with an amazing sweet mince meat recipe. It has all that you expect from a great sweet mince meat rich fruit, a full flavour of Christmas spices and good hit of booziness without being over powering. Hot or cold these are by far the best shop bought mince pies I've tried in many years.

Go out, buy some now just to make sure you serve the best to the Christmas visitors

Mince pie and chips

Mince pie and chips a fabulous day with the kids and Natalie at the Christmas Experience at Paultons Park, Hampshire.

We all had a great morning on the rides and then headed to the restaurant where the kids enjoyed chicken nuggets and chips for lunch (parents may have had the odd chip), as I do not usually shoot food in such a real life environment I wanted to share these and to show that it's not always necessary to have great control over your environment to get some good results (all shots taken with my trustee Nikon 50mm f1.8

After lunch we went to see Santa, the kids were blown away and more than a little impressed that Santa knew all of their names, it was great to see. Once the kids had got their presents it was time for the grown ups to have a cup of mulled wine and a mince pie. The kids had a great time and this certainly got them into the Christmas spirit and I got some better shots than expected.