Soupy goodness!

Happy Tuesday, peeps!! I am delighted to report that I am finally over my cold and feeling relatively human again - hurrah!!

I am also happy to report that last night's sausage and bean soup was a total success - hurrah again!! In fact, to quote my wonderful hubby, it was my finest soup to date! :-)

If anyone fancies having a go, you can find the recipe here: sausage bean soup

I made a couple of tweaks to the recipe - I didn't use the celery as I think it is the devil's vegetable and will not allow it in my cooking!! Also, I didn't have any kale so I put a green bell pepper and some fresh corn in instead.

We're quite lucky it tasted good as it makes a ridiculously huge pot of soup (the recipe could easily be halved) and we shall be enjoying it again for dinner tonight!

On that note, I had better try and get my ass back to the gym *groan*

Laters ........ x

Random updates .......

Hello again!! What have you been up to over the last couple of weeks? I have been ridiculously healthy - living mostly on soup and fruit, and going to the gym just about every day - and am pleased to report that I have lost 4lbs, which puts me half way to my first mini goal of losing 8lbs (the weight I've put on since we got here) by my birthday next month. Hurrah!! :-)




We had a lovely time at a cheese and wine party for our friend Rose's birthday last weekend. They were terribly organised and had planned out which cheese went best with which wine and laid it all out in order. It was a good theory, and everyone stuck to the plan at first, but people soon honed in on their favourite wine, then eventually it was just what was open (or needed to be finished so we could open another!) Good fun was had by all!!




















The highlight of the weekend just passed was getting to play with my ravioli machine and ice cream maker that Hubby gave me for Christmas :-) The ice cream wasn't quite set by bedtime so I'll have to get back to you on that one, but we have high hopes! The ravioli though - well, that was another story ...........

We chose to make sausage and ricotta ravioli and made a wonderful filling for the pasta. The pasta was a little more tricky though!


We had never made pasta before, and the first batch turned out really dry - although I cant rule out operator error! I found a different recipe and this one turned out a lot better. The tricky part, though was the making the pasta in to sheets without a pasta roller! I spent 45 minutes trying to roll out 4 sheets of pasta t0 1/16th inch thick, but the bloody sheets kept shrinking so by the time we were ready to feed them through the ravioli machine they were too thick :-( We managed to squeeze them through and made some pretty authentic looking ravioli, but as they were too thick they just didn't cook properly and were like little sausage filled bricks! But, as it was now 10pm, we were bloody starving and didn't really care so we ate them anyway!!





The verdict? The filling was great, and Hubby's sauce was delicious. The pasta had potential, but it was just too thick, so I will be adding the Kitchen Aid pasta roller set to my wish list and not attempting ravioli again until I have it!!


To finish off today's entry, I'm adding a new goal to my resolutions!


I am an avid collector of cooking magazines and am very bad for seeing things I want to cook, then putting the magazine in a pile and forgetting about it. So, I have spent the last couple of weeks going through the magazines and pulling out all the recipes I want to try, and my new resolution is to make at least 2 new recipes a week.


Tonight's new menu item will be leek potato and bacon soup. Tune in tomorrow to see how that went, along with the ice cream update!!