Spice up your soup

Hello, how are you getting on with your home made soup, I see some of you have been squishing your ingredients to a pulp. More power to your elbow, keep on squishing.

Barbara asks where do I buy my spices, thank you for the question. My spice cupboard is very sparse, I chucked a lot out a couple of years ago. They had been shoved to the back and were never used, so I thought, why am I keeping them. Everything I have is here. I very rarely buy spices now, don't want to go back to the situation I was in before with far too many. The ones I use most are the curry powder, turmeric, and garlic powder. I buy big bags so they last ages, and I know I am going to use it up. The last time I bought garlic powder they only had smaller packets, now I need to go back and get some more. I get them from the Asian shop in town. I don't decant them into containers, I fold the top down and secure with a clothes peg. No need to buy those fancy plastic clips. 

I have three little jars, and I've just noticed I have two black peppers. Someone gave me the Saxa pot. 

I buy a few packet sauce mixes from the Cash and Carry, they also have a market stall. They are 20p each. I ignore the fact that some of them are supposed to be used for meat dishes, I buy them because they are cheap. I never use a whole packet for one meal, I just add a teaspoonful, or shake a bit out of whichever one I fancy at the time.  

I also get these from the Cash and Carry. The Bisto is out of date by one year, and the stock cubes were out of date in February last year. Both were 50p each.

And there you have it.I know very little about spices, I use them sparingly, a lot of my food has no spices at all. I like to taste the vegetables. 

So, what is the soup for today then. I ate a portion of yesterdays soup for my lunch, and this afternoon I made some sprout and parsnip soup. I used a small pan because I only wanted to make one portion, and I boiled the veg instead of steaming it. Chop the sprouts in half and slice the parsnips. I added a little bit of the chicken tikka masala mix, a shake of pepper, and a shake of the Mexican taco spice mix. That was all that was needed. Boiled it for about eight minutes. 

It was a sort of light beige colour, not as dark as this picture, it doesn't look very appetizing here. I stirred in two spoons of plain yogurt, and it was amazingly yummy. It tasted of parsnips with a spicy flavour, not too hot, just right. One to make again, I think.

I'll have a look and see what I've got for tomorrows soup. Another home made experiment. Could be interesting. Thanks for visiting, and welcome to the new readers. Toodle pip