DIY Cup-a-Soup

This is soup-er quick and soup-a-licious...I couldn't resist it sorry!!?!

We have a lovely old gentleman who lives across the road from us, sadly his wife of 70 years passed away a few years ago.  Over the years that we have lived here (7 to be exact), we have grown to love Mr & Mrs Yates, they have always be so kind to us and love having conversations with our kiddies.

We regularly take Mr Yates some dinner, cakes and drawings...my kids love to draw some very interesting things & feel that Mr Yates should be the recipient (maybe this should be the feature of my next post, lol!?).

Anyways, I had some large clear disposable tumblers left over from something and spied them the other day when I was making soup.  And lo and behold the literal 'cup-a-soup' was born, haha!!

I poured the soup in, covered it with clingfilm and instantly a platform for the roll to sit on is made, ta da!!! 

Now cover the roll and hey presto you have a soup dinner ready to be transported to neighbours, friends, family with no worry of having to track down your soup bowls.  

And if it's still hot when received, the recipient can dunk away with their roll, drink/slurp/spoon the remains and then put the tumbler in the recycling bin = no washing up (particularly handy if the person is poorly).

Well that's all the inspiration for today...probably loads of people have already discovered this phenomenon, but I was amazed by it so it just had to be shared, lol!!

Soup is back on the menu :)

Roasted butternut squash and red pepper soup

adapted from recipe by andyh

posted on allrecipes.co.uk

My mother in law found a recipe for 'roasted butternut squash soup' on allrecipes that was delicious...and as usual we were all fighting for seconds!!  I thought it might be extra yummy with some roasted red pepper in, so I tried it when I got home...and it is :)

Ingredients
serves 4

2 medium sized butternut squash
2 medium size onions
2 cloves of garlic
1 red pepper
a couple of sprigs of thyme
1 litre of chicken stock 
salt and black pepper to taste
a splash of vegetable oil

Preparation
1. Roughly chop the squash flesh, onion and red pepper into large chunks, and crush the garlic cloves.

2. Put all the chopped vegetables and thyme (I pull all the leaves off and sprinkle them on) on a roasting tray/tin and pour a small amount of oil on, tossing them till they are all covered in oil.

3. Roast in a pre-heated oven at 180C/Gas  for 30-40 minutes, or until all the ingredients have a nice caramelised colour on them, but not burnt...sometimes parts of my onions get burnt and I just chop those bits off :)

4. Pick out the roasted red pepper chunks and put in a ziploc bag while you make the stock (this is to help the skin of the pepper peel off easier)

5.  Put the rest of the vegetables in a blender, with half of the stock and blend.  

6. Now peel the skin off the pepper chunks and add to the blender, then gradually add the rest of the stock to the soup till it gets to the consistency you like.  Serve with crusty bread (smothered in butter if you're anything like me!!).

I forgot again to take a photo of the above soup...I think I was too hungry to stop and take a pic, but here's one I took earlier of the original Roasted Butternut Squash Soup.

photo of 

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup