Hot filling soup

The weather has been bad almost all week. Fortunately the earthquakes that happened in Turkey and Syria did not affect Israel; there were also some minor earthquakes in the north of Israel but these were barely felt (3.5-4.5 on the Richter scale) and caused no damage. Instead we had heavy rain and strong winds for three or four days. All week long I have had a runny nose, and twice I had to go to bed early as I felt very tired and/or very cold.

Today was dry and colder than the thermometer would have me believe. Whilst walking the dog in the afternoon, I decided to make soup in the evening, so that we would have something warm and nutricious to eat (and not fill ourselves with bread all the time). I checked what we had in the fridge - onions, carrots and parsley - but no courgettes or anything more interesting, so I ran down to the kibbutz shop and bought some courgettes, a leek and a can of black beans (I don't know what these might be called in English).

Before starting to cook, I first peeled some carrots then diced them. Following this I diced the courgettes and then the leek. I put some olive oil into a deep saucespan and heated it whilst I diced an onion; this went in first. After a few minutes of frying, I added the leek, and then a few minutes later, the carrots and parsley. After this mixture cooked for a bit, I threw in some pearl barley and quinoa (much less than a handful each), along with the black beans and their accompanying sauce. After a few more minutes, I began adding water, at first mixed with (vegetarian) chicken and onion soup powders, and then plain boiling water. I added various condiments, such as cumin, ginger and oregano. I then let the soup boil before reducing the heat and continuing to cook for another hour.

By the time it came to taste the soup, the level in the saucespan had reduced somewhat - a sign that the liquid had been absorbed by the barley and quinoa. My first bowl was very tasty. This kind of soup is somewhat different to the vegetable soup that my wife sometimes makes; in fact, there's almost nothing in common except for onion and carrot. She was somewhat sceptical about the soup before she tasted it, but afterwards was very generous in her abundant praise; "better than soup one gets served in a restaurant", she said. We both had a second bowl each. 

As usual, the soup looks like something the dog brought home, but I concentrate on taste and not on appearance. It looks more the CMB than something edible [scroll down to the section 'Microwave background observations', where there is an image of the CMB].

I don't think that I've ever made soup at home; I used to make it in the kibbutz kitchen on Saturdays when I worked there, but even then, that soup was different. Certainly I never added barley or quinoa (I don't think that we had even heard of quinoa in the 1990s). I may have to add more water later on as the barley is liable to continue absorbing liquid. Now we know what we'll be having for supper tomorrow evening. 

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
24	11/02/2006	One small step	Programming, Psychology, Kaizen, The brain
451	11/02/2012	A change is gonna come	Films