Another soup (I know this is backwards!).

1. Buy a butternut squash from Aldi for 39p (nb. this will NOT be organic). You may need to do this a few days beforehand, depending on how far Aldi is from your work.
2. Phone your daughter from work at 4pm and tell her to put the oven on, cut the squash into 4, rub it with some olive oil and roast it in the oven for approx 45 mins.
3. Buy some onions and nice bread from M&S (after all, the squash was 39p!).
4. Remember to go straight home from work. Do not go to a bar for cocktails first. IT'S ONLY TUESDAY FOR GOODNESS SAKE!
5. Fry the onions in some olive oil, add a diced big potato (that's a big potato, not big dice) and some floppy bits of veg from the bottom of the fridge.
6. Add about a litre of stock. Cook till the potato is soft.
7. Meanwhile scrape the squash flesh from the skin - your daughter can eat the skin, it's nice.
8. Put the nice M&S bread in the oven to warm up so you can pretend you've made it yourself.
9. Add the squash to the rest of the soup stuff and liquidise it. Put a tea towel over the blender or you will be spending the night in casualty and the rest of 2007 having plastic surgery to your face. Taste it (the soup, not the tea towel) and see if it needs anything, like some marmite, or paprika, or whatever.
10. Serve. If you don't eat bread (like me) and are too disorganised (like me) to have any gluten-free in (because M&S don't sell that!) you can dip slices of cheese in, that's very nice!
11. Follow with an M&S toffee mousse but make your children eat kiwi fruit because you've got 7 as they just keep coming in the organic veg delivery!
Next week - what to do with all those non-ripening Avocados you've collected from your organic veg deliveries!

NB. If you don't have a blender, you can use a potato masher, or so I was told by the colleague I sat next to on the bus home. If you don't have a daughter, you can borrow mine. She will bring her own knife, but will need supervising with gas ovens.

M&S New Potatoes and some Soup.

I bought some Organic New Potoatoes in M&S the other day. They were quite expensive (but cheaper than a Mojito, which is what happens if I go left when I leave work) but they had kindly washed them ready for me to use. Anyway, on (once again) to soup. Because it's easy and I'm lazy.

To make Celeriac and Potato Soup you will need:
1 large Celeriac
A few potatoes (I used 6 small M&S ready washed New Potatoes, you can use dirty common ones if you must)
A medium onion, or 2 small ones, or even a large one, it makes little odds.
Some sort of stock flavouring (cube or powder, unless you're really fussy and want to use real stock, in which case you need to get out more).
Salt and pepper
Some oil (Extra virgin Olive oil is not, obviously, necessary!)
A machete.

Chop the onion, fry it till it's see through in the oil. Meanwhile, imagine that the celeriac is the head of the person you loathe most in the world and run at it with the machete and give it a thorough killing. Chop it into cubes about the size of a cube. There is no other way to get into a celeriac. Add the celeriac cubes and the potato (also cubed - and washed, if you're common) to the onions in the pan. Fry them for a bit then cover them with water. Put the lid on the pan and turn the heat down and cook it all till the celeriac and potatoes are soft. Put the soup in the blender (not all at once, unless you want it on the ceiling - remember the teatowel protection against facial scarring!). Whizz till smooth. Taste the soup and add stuff till it tastes the way you'd like it to taste. I added some salt, some pepper and a smidge of powdered cumin.