The Observer monthly food supplement this week was 20 of the ‘best’ seasonal classics. It happens every year – food publications do an autumn special on comfort food.

Now, I may be a little stuck-in-the-mud, not down-with-the-food-kids, but I cannot see a beetroot and egg salad as autumn comfort food. Nice easy recipe but I am not sure on these darkening evenings, the Best Beloved would see a beetroot salad as anything very comforting.

Neither am I convinced by fish fragrant aubergines  and likewise chickpeas, swiss chard and soft poached eggs – but that maybe because I am not a huge chickpea fan and have never mastered a poached egg.

( I have never doubted that Jeremy Lee has a much more refined palate than me but would love to hear that his real idea of comfort food is spaghetti hoops on toast.)

Risotto yes, dal yes, a really good bolognese yes, but where are the savoury pies, cassroles/stews? I fancy the tomato curry but expecting to get ‘fresh green peppercorns 2 branches’ in Petersfield is as likely as hearing the government say they might have got a few things wrong.

So, onto soup. 

I should point out at this stage that I have taken no photos – artful or otherwise – of the soups I make so recipes come without illustrations. Sorry.

There is a rather interesting soup recipe in the Observer supplement which I might do. 

And hats off to Olia Hercules (partly for having such a good name) but also because she says what all soup cooks know, suggestions on  what you can substitute, and using up stuff from the freezer or fridge.

Soup is a staple in our house not least because the BB has home-made soup with bread and cheese every day for lunch come rain or shine. He likes his smooth, so a stick-blender is great and not much washing up. 

I like variations on a minestrone but as he is soup king, smooth soup commentary comes first and you will have to go to the end to find the chunkier stuff.

Did you know that the word restaurant morphed from restoratif, which was soup sold by street vendors in 16th century Paris. https://soupmakerguide.co.uk/soup-through-the-ages-the-history-of-soup/

I like that, soup is restorative, healthy and comforting and a great way to use those veg found at the back of the fridge or reduced in the supermarket, or a glut of tomatoes or courgettes etc etc.

It also keeps for days and is a good source of the 5 veg a day.

I am no good a writing recipes – no wonder all these chefs and famous cooks have assistants to test and be accurate with quantities, it is not that easy.

But here goes with some soup stuff.

Basically, you need some stock, some veg, meat if you want it, and some thickening agent – potatoes, sweet potatoes, red lentils, squash….. 

If like me you like to get a few meals out of a roast chicken, you can make stock and that adds a real nice depth. Take your carcass and put with a litre of water and some flavourings – peppercorns, herbs or spices as you fancy a bit of salt, a bayleaf or two always helps I think.

Simmer for an hour or so. Take out bones and pick off chicken slivers and put back in. If you want a concentrated flavour then simmer briskly until reduced to half the quantity.

Soup 1 is a combination made from what was left at the back of the fridge more than a decade ago – I realise that sentence could be misread, so a minimum of food hygiene considerations do need to apply.

Soup 1

Chop up a two red peppers and get rid of seeds. Chop up some leeks say three of them. Some sweet potato chopped – one large, or two small say – these are quantity suggestions.

Obviously, the smaller you chop everything the quicker it will cook.

Cook the peppers and leeks in a glug of oil as Jamie Oliver would say, until softening and don’t let the leeks go brown at the edges.

Add in a litre of stock – cube, fresh, I use Marigold Bouillon – and the sweet potato. As well as any herbs/spices you fancy ( I don’t use any in this soup.)

When everything is nicely soft, blend it and taste so that you can add salt or pepper or whatever.

Soup 2

Take some frozen peas – use the same amount as you would a serving of peas per person. 

Peel and chop up some potatoes ( not new potatoes as they don’t mush well.) Use a medium sized potato per two servings.

Add in stock  to cover the potatoes and peas to say two centimetres above the veg. Bear in mind you can always add some stock if you end up with something too thick but it is not easy to take it out…

Cook until potatoes are soft and if you have some fresh mint, add the leaves in just before you think everything is cooked. If you have mint jelly or mint sauce, you can add a dollop after you have blended it. Best in mind that mint sauce is quite vinegary so be careful and taste as you go.

Soup 3

You can never overcook a mushroom – I am sure that is not strictly true but it is always surprising me that recipes suggest that you can cook a mushroom quickly and they are clearly just plain wrong.

Chop some mushrooms and gently fry in the aforementioned oil. Don’t worry if lots of mushroom liquid comes out, just keep going until if is pretty much gone. 

If you are channelling your inner posh cook, you can add a splash of mushroom ketchup ( and yes I can get that in Petersfield).

And you can put some dried mushrooms in hot water whilst this is happening and if the water becomes gritty you can lift out the mushrooms and add to the stock or if there is no grit add the liquid too.

I add some dried tarragon into the cooking mushrooms – a sprinkle.

Bear in mind that like cabbage, cooked mushrooms are a much smaller business than raw ones.

Brown mushrooms make better soup that white ones – but hey ho, let’s not get too picky.

Right, so you have been cooking the mushrooms for say half an hour, gently.

Peel and chop some potatoes/sweet potatoes quite small so say you have half the quantity of potatoes as you have cooked mushrooms.

Add potatoes, mushrooms, stock, etc to a pan and cook until the potatoes are done.

Blend and taste.

If you have a thick soup you can add some milk or cream and that does make it taste rather luxury-ish.

Soup 3

This is made of food from the excellent free shop in Petersfield which is run by volunteers and offers free food ( unsurprisingly) gleaned from people’s allotments, the local supermarkets who give stuff which is coming to its sell by date.

Chop up some courgettes/nearly marrows/marrows. Also chop up some tomatoes or use tinned tomatoes ( the best you can afford.)

Fry the courgettes and when nicely golden add fresh tomatoes and cook until they are a soft.

Meanwhile chop potatoes or sweet potatoes and cook in stock – stock should cover the potatoes with say an extra two centimetres. 

When pretty much cooked, add in courgettes and fresh or tinned tomatoes.

If you like you can add a dollop of pesto after you have blended, and stir around.

If you are feeling luxury-ish then before you blend – let the soup cool a bit – and add in a whole Boursin cheese.

Soup 4

Take whatever veg you have in the fridge – parsnips, carrot, celery, potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, swede, garlic. ( Not aubergines – never known a good aubergine in a soup) and put them into a pan with stock and a handful of red lentils. Cook, blend and that will work. You can add herbs and seasonings so taste as you go along. Sprinkle with cheese, brush stale bread with oil and cook in a 180 oven for say ten minutes or put under the grill and chop up into croutons. 

I know that was a bit slapdash as a recipe but hey if you have read so far, you will be a soup making expert.

Soup 5

So, at last a chunkier soup.

And here I steal from the River Cafe so I will just give you the link and say follow that and you will be onto a winner.

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/river-cafes-winter-minestrone

However, if you want something that doesn’t require cavalo nero, use a cabbage of any kind.

And here are some other options.

Carrots chopped, celery chopped, onions chopped, leeks chopped, garlic chopped.

Fry carrot and celery gently for quite a long time so that the edges go a bit brown. Add in onions and leeks and garlic. Add in a tin of tomatoes or not as you prefer.

Add in stock and bring to the boil. Add in a handful of pasta – any one will do including broken strips of spaghetti.

Take a tin of beans – any beans will do. Including baked beans but rinse them of their sauce and of course, red kidney beans need a very good rinse.

Add in some chopped chives, some parsley to counteract the garlic, or any herbs you have.

Add in some cooked ham/chicken/whatever you have – or some cooked mushrooms (see above and make sure they are cooked.)

If you want a thicker base, take some of the soup and blend then add back into the soup.

I can still remember the day I got my A level results.

I was expected to get an A (an A star by current standards) in English.

So, I had always been a bookworm and knew more about books than my fellow students, would be called back by my English teacher talk about books I had read which were not on the curriculum.

I had written a short story which got a national award. 

I was really on for a good grade.

I got an E.

I was absolutely devastated. 

I can’t even remember my other grades, I was so shocked by the English result.

So, a friend who had left school at 16 who was thoughtful, and in lots of ways smarter than me, and who died two year later in a motorbike accident, took me for a walk.

He made me walk a long way from my home, up to the Malvern hills and then up to the Worcestershire Beacon – and sit.

He had timed it right, so we watched the sun go down and he said to me, ‘You are more than your A level results. Whatever you do, I will still be here, and you will be amazing.’

He wasn’t, and I wasn’t.

But I have had a good professional life which has had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with my A level results.

Easy to say now, if I was back on that day, or on this day with those stupidly given grades, I would still be devastated.

So, for my niece who is funny thoughtful, amazingly smart, who is surprisingly 18 and who still disarms me with memories of how we checked out my jewellery stories, who knows to take a water sprayer on a hot dog walk, who has passed her driving test, who has thought about what she wants to do with her life much more than I ever had at her age…and so much more that are just between aunt and fave niece.

I salute you.

I want to say to you, ‘I will still be here for you and you will be amazing.’

It seems like a very, very long time ago ( time has warped) that I was busy bossing people around in the Oxfam bookshop, clearing out donations, looking for hidden treasures and reaching around another book sorter to put a pile of rejects into a plastic crate. Oh, those were the days….

But this weekend, we had a pop up village book swap/stall/get a new read event – and it was lovely.

I set up a WhatsApp group for our village of 70 households and someone put on a post asking for books for her mother.

That set me thinking that there must be other people looking for something to read, so I put a call out for people to donate books and leave them in our garage to disinfect.

With the benefit of Oxfam experience, and the knowledge that everyone sometime in lockdown has had a clear out, I said one bag of books per household…… I didn’t want a tsunami of books just a quality bubbling stream of good reads.

And in they came.

Mind you I was never sure that The Book of Sexual Disasters or Jeremy Clarkeson’s 4th book might fly off the ‘shelves’ and indeed they didn’t – maybe next time.

The weather was with us – so sandwiched in between cold and windy weather, we had a day of sun.

A neighbour leant us her long table, my best beloved went to Tescos to get banana boxes to display the books, and we stetted to set up.

People came and got books and chatted and swapped recommendations, and it was great to hear chatter around the yard – someone took a courgette plant I had been rearing and certainly don’t need, people waved from the lane, walked their dogs past us and stopped to take some books home.

I do realise this is a bucolic idyll blog and of course not everyone has that of a Sunday morning but one more nice story before I go.

So, one of the benefits of this horrible time is getting to know people I didn’t know, would never have met – we are a scattered hamlet – but now have and do.

I was delivering headbands – quite another story – on Saturday morning when I met up with  a couple and their dog.

She said she wasn’t coming for the book swap as she needed a book for her bookclub read which she was pretty sure we wouldn’t have.

‘Its called something like an impressive year,’ she said.

‘A Year Of Marvellous Ways?,’ I said.

‘Yes. That is it!’ she said.

‘I have it in the boot of my car,’ I said and gave it to her.

What was the chance of that….

This, dear reader, is my book of the lockdown.

And I have recommended it to six local people with very different reading habits and every one of them has loved it.

I don’t have one for you in the boot of my car, but I so recommend it 

Good reading whatever you are reading – but do go and find Marvellous, she is a real find.

Like many people, I am assuming, I have started keeping a plague diary. The problem is that like almost everything I do – especially at the moment – it is not well done.

So, I am left with a series of one line notes, written with no date and now seeming to be part of a list of memories from a far-gone era such is the time-warping experience of day-to-day life at the moment.

One aspect of our changed lives however is all too visibly present.

Jess was due a hair cut just as lock-down was called – in fact that day. With hindsight, I should have sucked her into the car, driven the five miles to her groomer – after all I wasn’t going to Snowdonia or Cornwall – and got her done.

But I didn’t, and now she is faced with the best-beloved using an array of more or less blunt scissors most days to just trim a bit here and there….

(There will come a day when I have to use those same scissors on the best-beloved’s hair and he will enjoy plucking my chin hairs – such are the admissions I am willing to make in these strange times.)

She is a sociable dog and has been very happy to have us both at home all day and a lot more people than usual coming walking past our garden.

She usually runs from one vantage point to another to bark at them – annoyingly I’ve no doubt though locals all call out ‘hello Jess’ – but now even she has largely given up on that, so many new people are coming past us.

Yesterday, we went for the full hour’s walk round a circuit we sometimes do. Usually the gardens I pass are empty but yesterday the circuit took twice as long as usual.

I met a lovely couple who gave me half a dozen eggs – they have chickens, ducks and geese so a interesting egg box – a lawyer working from home and helping asylum seekers, a volunteer for our local emergency group who I hadn’t ever met in person. ( She has a perfectly groomed dog and Jess was somewhat embarrassed as she might well have been.)

I met a family who are pretty sure they have had the virus but as we have no mass testing, they are not sure.

An asthmatic woman walking and living off the shopping from neighbours, a neighbour bringing me empty milk bottles.

So, this is the lovely neighbour who answered the call for the village to have some volunteers to deliver information including green, amber and red posters for people to put in their windows to indicate whether they were fine, in self-isolation, needing help.

The BB and I were having to get the packs together, work out who would deliver to each of the (only) 70 households and put them all together and in plastic bags hung on our back fence for those volunteers to collect.

It’s happening across the land I am assuming.

I am an expert at waving my hands in the air, saying I have a task to do and please could anyone come round and help. ( See also my wedding planning – done by a marvellous committee of women.)

This time, of course, that wasn’t going to happen.

‘Have a glass of wine whilst you do it,’ said my smart, thoughtful and oh so right neighbour.

‘Should have got a supply of white wine sorted,’ I texted back.

Ten minutes later a chilled bottle was on my doorstep. Lovely.

But they had no milk so I have upped my order from the milkman to supply them too. Thank you Matthew the milkman.

I haven’t written anything for so long that I am feeling rusty, and didn’t really want my return to be a plague diary – but hey ho.

Oxfam is closed, so all those lovely books ( and indeed the not so lovely ones – Jeremy Clarkson included) will be sitting there waiting for new homes for some time to come (perhaps not Jeremy Clarkson…)

Meanwhile, we usually are fans of hunkering down.

And usually that comes with winter and log fires and telly and the dog asleep on some piece of furniture, a stew in the Aga and friends for a long Sunday lunch.

Now it comes with all the above except it is Spring, and we can’t have anyone in the house.

We are the really privileged and I am seriously aware of that – we can afford to be where we are with no financial worries, we have a decent sized garden and are surrounded by fields.

But these are jittery times, strange times, no point of reference times, the calm before the storm times.

The times when you watch what is happening in Italy and marvel at the efforts being made to save lives and at the same time hope you never need to ask that for yourself or people you know.

I’d like to think this was bringing out the best in me but just like my inner cleaner, I am finding it quite hard to locate by better inner self at the moment.

But here are two things that made my day:

My lovely next door neighbour managed by a slip of the cursor to get 4 kilos of carrots in her Ocado order.

In a few weeks time she’d probably be able to sell those on some black market for shares in Zoom, but right now she has given me some.

My BB, never knowingly cooking a thing in his life, and who has a sweet tooth which he has been nurturing for all his years, did not seem to run through the options of soup, purees, carrot curry ( but then who would?) and came up instantly with carrot cake. (Recipes that don’t involve cream cheese all welcome.)

We are also about to spend some happy hours filling envelopes with advice and support stuff from our Parish Council for the locals, and another lovely neighbour offered to help.

Now normally, I would have flapped my hands and asked half the village in to help but had to say that we would manage.

She said, it would all go better with a glass of wine and I said, we should have stocked up with more of the white stuff – ten minutes later, a lovely bottle was delivered to our doorstep.

That will make today fine. Hope yours is too.

I am not sure that I want this to turn into an Oxfam-meets-cooking-blog, though maybe that would give it a niche following, but I have to say those two themes seem to be coinciding a lot.

And more to the point, the authors are mysterious.

So, here goes on cookery writer number 2.

Last week someone donated books from clearing out a family home – her mother’s, parents’, another relative – I am not sure. I was not on ‘duty’ just passing and having a chat with my colleague when she came in so I helped her in with her boxes of donations.

She pointed to a book and said, ‘You should look at the last recipe.’

I put the book aside to have a look at when I was next properly in the shop. ( And, luckily, it was still there when I did.)

And this is the last recipe:

And yes, I am not sure either whether children loved that teaspoonful and asked for more….

At this point, I should tell you, reader, this book is worth nothing in monetary terms.

It is not old enough to be valuable, it is not a ‘real’ recipe book, it is not written by anyone famous, it is a little bit of social history.

But it is interesting.

So, how come the ‘Recipe Book For Cooking’ ( and you do have query the possibility of a recipe book not for cooking, but moving on..) by Miss F Tharle dated 1935 has the first recipe dated 1934?

(Clearly, she was a jelly fan.)

In fact you have to go 15 pages to find a recipe dated 1935 and, by the way, except for two recipes – cheese soufflé and cheese straws –  the rest in those pages are all for sweet stuff.

We have Strawberry Soufflé, Coconut Cakes, Eclairs, Lemon Sponge, and more, before we get to Casseroled Chicken.

There are 68 pages before Miss F Tharle stops, and most of those are for anything you might fancy as a pudding, cake, dessert or just to satisfy your sweet tooth.

But what I can’t quite get is why a recipe ( Sponge Cake ) is dated 1935 on the page before one ( Brandy Trifle) dated 1934?

And the handwriting seems to be from different people. 

After Casseroled Chicken, the dating of the recipes stops, until Apricot Fancies on page 56 which is dated 1943, then Fruit Biscuits a few pages on, dated 1946, and much to my surprise, over the page, Lemon Cream, dated 1939.

Mind you, the Old Testament Cake on the previous page did catch my eye. No explanation of what to do – is that Biblical or what?

And the penultimate ingredient – 2 cups reduced to 2 teaspoonfuls of something I can’t make out.

So, from the book’s beginning in 1934/5 nowWorld War II has broken out, has been carrying on, and there are signs of it. 

(Personally potatoes are a big favourite, so points 1 to 4 are fine with me.)

Then the book has blank pages until at the back you come across another’s handwriting and interestingly, a conversion chart from American to British measurements.

And then the recipes are largely cut out from newspapers – ‘Recipes of Quality Collected by Lady Muriel Beckwith’ feature heavily.

Gone are the days of Chocolate and Vanilla Biscuits  and Apricot Fancies (1943), we are now looking at Game Hot-Pot and Canard Aux Olives.

Like all personal recipe books, there are a pile of bits and pieces shoved in at the back and interestingly, there are a number which are labelled NAAFI.

And reminders of the past, and that jelly is something to be enjoyed:

And even these paper doilies ( not a word I expected to be typing in 2019) are in the back – just put there by someone expecting to use them sometime soon…..

I have no idea who the author(s) of this little piece of culinary and social history are.

No doubt they are women. Were they related? How come the book has gone from one to the other?

Did all the people involved have a very sweet tooth?

Given that this book has come to us in Petersfield, not 50 miles from Brighton, and is a book of very largely, very sweet recipes, I do just wonder if Ruby Bran has anything to do with this book.

And I do just wonder whether the translation of American and British measurements meant at least one of our authors was a GI bride. If so, she left her cookery book behind and I am very grateful to have seen it.

PS Melting Moments: