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Soup of the day

I am a soup person. Especially with winter coming up, I'm already looking forward to eating lots of it. Not that I don't like soup in the summertime. But soup simply tastes better with the wind blowing outside, and snow and hail hitting the windows. Or when you have just come back from a long walk out in the freezing cold. Mmmm...

Anyway: today we had Sweet Potato Soup. Was it any good? Well, we sure didn't have any leftovers:

It was the Anti Dairy Fairy who provided me with the recipe, which you can find here. It's not that I am dead set against dairy products. But some people simply are allergic to them. Personally, I also notice it when I have been eating too much dairy: I get more cranky than otherwise and I tend to get rashes. When I drop the dairy, away go the rashes. And the crankiness? Well, that depends on other things as well :-)...

Anyway: if you're looking for some fine recipes which also have the benefit of not containing any dairy products, you know who to turn to!

Note: I changed some of the sweet potato for pumpkin, and added an extra pinch of salt. But that is, of course, a matter of personal taste. The soup, in any case, tastes great, with hints of Thailand stirring your taste buds. Must be the coconut milk, of course. But if it hadn't been for the Anti Dairy Fairy, I probably would never have tried to put that in my soup. So kudos to her!

May the Farm be with you

Even though I always used to prefer Star Trek (especially the original series: remember captain Kirk, mister Spock, Bones, Scotty... and those brilliantly silly cardboard walls or styrofoam rocks), I cannot say I did not enjoy Star Wars just as well. The Force has now joined uhm... forces with the Organic Trade Association and Free Range Graphics to promote organic (that's the way I like them best) vegetables and other foods in a short Star Wars spoof called Grocery Store Wars. Cuke Skywalker, Obi Wan Cannoli, Princess Lettuce, Ham Solo, Chewbroccoli, C3Peanuts and Tofu D2 take on Lord Tader and The Dark Side of the Farm.

According to Mike Durret on about.com, the only computer effects are the laser blasts and lightsabers. The rest of the action was brought to life with strings, sticks, wires, and trick camera angles. He believes that "the results are cute and glossy, providing several smiles during the intergalactic parody set 'not long ago in a supermarket not so far away.' " I tend to agree. But see for yourself: http://www.storewars.org/flash/index.html.

Thanks to Philip Young for bringing this to my attention. Wonder why he didn't just post it on his own blog? Oh, I get it: he prefers to leave the silly stuff to me... Well Philip, glad to oblige! ;-D

Holy smoke

I cannot begin to describe the smell that's been hanging in our kitchen, or our house for that matter, these last few weeks. It reminds me of my grandparents' place. The house is no longer there. It was sold and demolished after my grandmother died a couple of years ago. My granddad had been gone for some time then. He was a slaughterman: he used to go around in the area to slaughter the pigs that people used to breed at home in those days. He also smoked their hams for them, and these chunky lumps of pork would be hanging near the fireplace to dry. That smell is locked inside my nostrils for the rest of my days.

Now, my brother-in-law usually brings home some smoked bacon from Austria. He goes there for snowboarding a couple of times a year, and has found a nice B&B the landlady of which, Maria, apparently knows where to get her hands on some of that traditional delicacy. Of course it's not as good as my grandfather's hams used to be. But I'll settle for this alternative any time...