While I am not a massive soup eater at any other time of the year, winter is an exception. Being someone who appears to feel cold quite easily and acutely, I crave all the comfort I can get. This year we have been literally living on one particular type of soup that we both enjoy (we have quite different soup tastes…) and which I have been making on repeat every two days or so for weeks at a time.
A bowl of filling, chunky soup is a particular saviour when you come back in after a run in the cold, which we both tend to break up our ‘stuck inside’ days with. Duncan runs every day and I every other day and knowing that I have a pot of bubbling soup to return to always makes me more excited about my run. It also helps us to avoid arguments as we are on slightly different schedules to each other in the mornings and our hunger cues are often quite misaligned. Duncan tends to get up ravenously hungry while I have all the time in the world to eat my breakfast, as I rarely feel hunger first thing in the morning. I am a natural owl (twit twoo), I’ve always been like that – to my mum’s despair. Getting me out of bed in the mornings was always highly annoying (sorry mum – love you!!) and sometimes I would get up and then fall asleep on the toilet while leaning against the wall…True story! These days, I wake up, do some meditation, followed by some online procrastination (which I am trying to stop) and a 30 minute back yoga and only then I’m ready to have my breakfast and my morning coffee by which time Duncan is already starting to idly think about his lunch. A ready made pot of soup allows us each to reheat ourselves a portion and no one feels starved or forced to eat because of the other person and by evenings our appetite and timing usually falls back in sync. This soup is really simple to make. I chop all the veggies (apart from garlic which I like diced finely) quite roughly so it only takes about 5 minutes and other than that all you need to do is to give the soup a stir every now and then so that it doesn’t catch. You can get on with other things while the soup makes itself bubbling cheerfully on the stove. Super simple, delicious, filling and healthy! And lastly, I want to dedicate this soup to my long time friend, Magda, as it was our conversation last week that prompted me to write this recipe up on the blog. Hope she and everybody else who decides to make it enjoys it as much as we do.
