I'm not sure precisely when I started morphing into some strange version of Delia Smith, but it definitely does seem to be happening. It started when I change my eating habits and went from eating sandwiches and ready meals (unless Rud did the cooking) to cooking every single day for myself.  Usually fish and steamed vegetables, but occasionally stirfried vegetables with a variety of weird and wonderful experimental sauces.

Then I developed an urge for foraging in the local area!  It started rather gently with picking my own wild strawberries in the forest, and graduated via using our own apples from the garden and harvesting copious quantities of blackberries from the woods, which I froze in ever larger freezer bags, ready to make crumbles during the winter.

I graduated  to nutting expeditions collecting pocketfuls of hazelnuts which are absolutely delicious.  And then my most recent foray into gastronomic experimentation has been making my own soup!  I've had a problem with my oesophagus recently which probably stems from my operation in February, and the dietician is advised that I go back onto a liquid diet -- which I actually enjoy, but after a while of soup, I fancied a change.  So I decided to make my own.

The first effort wasn't unpleasant (at least at first), but I did find back to rather strangely I had absolutely no desire to eat it again after the first bowlful!  I think when one is attempting to make soup for the first time in one's life, red onion soup is perhaps not the easiest one to master, in all fairness.  And as I say, it was eminently edible but I did find a strange reluctance to have any more or even to keep it in the future.  It's one of those soups that you can't exactly taste as you go along because you just be tasting boiling onions which isn't that pleasant.  So you kind of have to wait until the end and then have a kind of surprise tasting.

 Today, I made carrot and butternut squash soup.  I have to say that I made the recipe up, I managed to break the blender in the process, and it is without a shadow of a doubt the best thing I've ever tasted.  So here it is in all its glory -- my recipe for carrot and butternut squash soup with a few extra ingredients.

•  chop one small red onion very finely -- ideally organic
  
•  fry until soft with a small knob of butter (that's a very small knob of butter, ladies, this soup can be very low-calorie if you don't mess around adding bad stuff)
• chop one butternut squash and 1 kg of carrots -- ideally organic
• add squash and carrots to the onion and add just enough water to be able to boil safely.
• and the leaves only of one packet of supermarket fresh coriander -- if you don't have fresh coriander, leave it out.  The dried stuff just won't taste the same
• remove from heat, allow to cool before placing in blender (very important you will break your blender if you add it while it's still hot)
• place in blender and blend until smooth
• return to saucepan and add one large can (400 g) of reduced fat coconut milk
• reheat and serve.  If you are saving some till later (and I think unless there are eight of you no matter how big your appetite you'd be hard pushed to eat an entire butternut squash and kilogram of carrots in one sitting) just stir very well and allow to cool.