40 Soups - Mushroom

Over on my old blog Serendipity Child I started a series of posts call 40 soups based on a theme on a blog I follow by Elise Blaha, although I didn't get far with it, I loved it and have decided I would like to carry it on on this blog.  I really love soup and as it is coming into Autumn and winter when soups are the perfect warmer I thought I would share them with you.
Not only are soups easy to make they are also nutritious, enabling you to eat a few portions of your five a day in one easy meal.  My toddler usually likes them to, I give him the unblended version so he has pieces of food to pick up with his fingers and leave out cream because he has a dairy sensitivity.
This week I made mushroom soup for the first time. I didn't follow a recipe (I rarely do for soups) I just thought about what I would like to do and went ahead.  It isn't the cheapest soup to make because it required a whole pack of mushrooms, but was very very tasty.

I used:
One pack of organic chestnut mushrooms,
One large organic onion,
Three cloves of allotment garlic,
One kallo chicken stock cube,
1 tbs organic olive oil,
A dash of organic double cream.

To begin I chopped the onion and garlic and fried it in the olive oil.  I then chopped the mushrooms and addded them till they went soft and watery.  Next I added enough water to cover the mushrooms plus a bit more and added the chicken stock cube.
After cooking for about 15 mins I blended the whole thing and added the cream.
Served with crusty white bread it was absolutely delicious and tasted just like a bought fresh mushroom soup.
What soup recipes do you love?

Allotment Update

Or - What went down at the allotment in 2013:

I originally took on my allotment from the local council about 5 years ago, shortly after we moved into the area, things have changed so much there over the years, but I am still not on top of it.  I wonder if you can ever be "on top" of mother nature?  This year I knew that I didn't want to over do it by planting loads of different, exotic vegetables, so stuck with what I know works and what I could manage.  With it being such a dry hot summer things didn't flourish as much as they could have if I had watered on those dry days but I still
harvested a modest amount of food considering how little work I put in.  It is so difficult to get down there with a toddler in tow, he is so curious and loves to explore so I have to either go there and hope he falls asleep in the car on the way or wait until I can go there with someone else who can watch him while I get on.  I am still so thankful to have it though it will be wonderful when Boris is a bit older and I won't have to worry about him eating something he shouldn't or wandering into other peoples' plots.

So now I am just starting to shut everything down at the allotment in preparation for both winter and my impending childbirth, covering the ground in plastic and picking the last of the harvest, a few small beetroots and, some runner beans and a couple of courgettes.  My mum helped me a couple of weeks ago, tidying the edges, tucking everything under the plastic and laying more plastic to keep the weeds at bay.

So I thought it was a pretty good time to do a little review with some photos of the allotment I took a few weeks ago.  I can't believe how much the weather has changed in such a short amount of time!  We were in the heart of summer what seemed like yesterday and now it seems like everything is closing down.
So here is what went down:

The last of the courgettes

The last of the rather straggly looking runner beans,

Small harvest

View of the whole allotment, my mum helped me put down the black plastic. 

What are you currently doing at the allotment?  Are you putting anything in?  Or just taking things out and covering things up? 

Fun Things to do with Toddlers - Shaving Foam Play

I think, as with most ideas, I found this activity for the first time on Pinterest, I thought it was a great, fun idea and had to give it a go.  Obviously I had to wait until a time when it was unlikely that Boris would put the shaving foam in his mouth and as we had such lovely weather this summer it was no problem waiting for a good day to go outside and do it.  If you have wood or lino floors you could do this inside, but I felt it was too risky with carpet. I had put off doing this activity for ages because I was thinking it would be a waste of money because Boris wouldn't be into it, and neither my husband nor I use shaving foam, but when I saw I could get a can for 26p I thought why not?!
The basic idea is to spray some shaving foam on the mat or floor, drip food colouring onto it then allow the little one to smear the colours into the foam with their fingers or, if like me your toddler hates getting stuff on his fingers, with a paint brush.

 He soon became very interested in the little food colouring bottles and had a nice time lining them up, chewing them and trying to take the lids off. 

He picked up a plant pot the was lying around and I was very impressed by his creativity to press the pot into the foam and watch it squirt through the holes. 

It was an entertaining activity for me as well as Boris, he had a go at smearing the colours round with the brush and was fascinated by scooping the foam up onto the brush and flicking it about.  It was funny for me if he got even the tiniest bit of foam on his fingers because he insisted that it immediately be wiped off.  He is so funny about having stuff on his hands.  He was very disturbed when I sprayed a blob onto his hand!

This was a great fun activity,brilliant for sensory play and learning about the qualities of materials, but does need careful supervision, it was no trouble to clean up, I just hosed down the mat.  You could do this in the bath too, but I am a bit paranoid about all the chemicals and not really wanting them on Boris' skin. 
I think there are opportunities to develop this activity further with bowls and spoons and scooping and maybe squeezing it through different objects, also would be fun to make beards and hats and the like with it if you aren't paranoid about parabens and artificial fragrances like I am!!

Have you tried this activity or something similar?  What are you doing with your toddler now the days are getting shorter and the weather less welcoming?