In celebration of Vegetables

I'm really taking stock these last few days. I've withdrawn into a world of knitting, eating, sleeping and blog reading. After the last few weeks of moving (again) across London and OFSTED I just am left completely drained. In these situations I find the best thing to do it ply oneself with as much fruit and veg as possible and just take stock.


We have a Farmer's Market near here on Sunday so I was finally persuaded to leave the house and break my solitude. On the way, something truly AMAZING happened but I can't blog about it yet because it would involve spoiling a surprise for my BFF. I did feel the usual love of being outside and no longer being contained come flooding back and as we started filling our canvas bags with tons of vegetables and shaking off soil as we packed them away in the kitchen, I remembered why I love farmer's markets so much.

LOOK at the colour of this soup. Go on, look. That's not photoshopped. That's just the joy of good wholesome cooking and a peek at some potentially spring like sunshine on the work surfaces. Here's what I did:

1. Take one large pepper (seriously, it was the size of my face), chop roughly and throw in a pan with whole, but peeled garlic cloves. Add segmented red onions (I used three little ones), drizzle over oil, salt and pepper and roast for about 30-40 mins in the oven.
   
2. Meanwhile chop 1 courgette and 2-3 medium carrots into as small peices as you can be bothered. Drain a tin of beans or pulses unless you have time to cook them up from dried. I chose Chickpeas.
3. Add roasted vegetables to blender along with one tin of plum tomatoes and pulse till fairly smooth.
   
4. Fry off carrot and courgette till tender in a little olive oil before adding the chickpeas and roasted vegetable mix. I usually top up with a little water rinsed round the tomato tin so it's not too thick.
   
5. Add 1/2 tsp dried chills, 1 tsp Worcestershite sauce and season to taste.
   

Devour when it's tender enough for you. This is a good size portion for about 4 people.



What's this? Oh that's the fresh bread I made from mincing up some of the extra roasted garlic and fresh herbs.....