Making the most of Sunday

You will be thinking practically all I eat is soup and bread. Well, it is heading into winter here, and I love soup and making bread. Today I've whipped up a brew of my "not minestrone" minestrone soup. I say "not minestrone" because traditionally minestrone has beans, but Mr B makes a fuss if he has to eat anything other than a baked bean, so I leave them out. Here is the general recipe. This is a throw it in the pot and it will work recipe.

1. Brown bacon (I used 100g, but you can use as much as you like)


2. Throw in one chopped up fat onion and continue sauteing.


3. Chop up one fat potato, 2 big sticks of celery and 1-2 cups of cabbage and throw into the pot.


4. Add water to almost the top of the pot (I forgot to say I use a big pot)


5. Add 1 tin of tomatoes in juice (chop up roughly if not already chopped) and 1 little tin or pottle of tomato paste.


6. Throw in a handful of dried pasta (because Mr B loves it).

Boil it all together for a while. Season with salt, pepper and smoked garlic salt (if you have some).

Serve with a sprinkle of cheese if you can bear to part with lots of money to get some.

Here's my bread in the oven. I wanted to make 2 loaves so I have enough for sandwiches during the week.

I had some extra dough so I rolled it out and spread it with sweet chili jam.

Then I rolled it up and sliced into little swirls.

Unfortunately while I was letting them rise a bit more on the table (waiting for a vacancy in the oven, as you can happily do with bread) something dreadful happened.

Someone was hungry.

Luckily she was only halfway through scoffing off the whole tray when she was caught, sweet chili jam sticky upon her whiskery lips. There were a few left for the intended consumers, so I bunged them in the oven. May I just suggest that you don't attempt to remove these from the tray as soon as you get them out of the oven. My finger hurts. Burnt by sweet chili jam that stuck like superglue to my fingers while I flapped around trying to get them under the tap. Bugger, bugger, bugger!

I'm proud to say I had an outstanding baking afternoon, apart from the obvious little issues I faced. Here are the banana muffins I made from bananas Mr B promised he would eat, but didn't.

The one missing was a test muffin. I had to make sure they were fit for human consumption (the dog certainly wont be getting any!

I'm off to grab a slice of bread and a bowl of soup. I'm pretty proud of myself. If I can do it, so can you!