Oh Dear!

I should have thrown it away and had cheese.

The weather here suddenly changed overnight.

After weeks of temperatures around 30°C (upper 80's F), last night the rain came in and temperatures dropped by about 10°C.   I have to say, going out to the market in the rain this morning it felt more like they had dropped by about 110°C....  but maybe that was just me.   I'm not a great fan of rainy, cold weather!

Walking around a very quiet Villereal, passing large expanses of naked street where normally there would have been all the supporting traders that summer brings, I began to think about lunch.  The cold weather, well, it was about 18°C, led me to thinking about a bowl of soup.

About a week or so ago I defrosted my big freezer....  I have a big old chest freezer and a much smaller combination fridge freezer.   Defrosting is something I should do every year....but I don't and when I finally get down to it I am always amazed at the assembled detritus collecting in the frozen depths.

This session had been no different, turning up a couple of bags of forgotten fruit, some completely lost minced steak and a couple of odd tubs of my home made soup, a true French potage made with whatever vegetables were available at the time I made it.   I had no idea what these soups were as the tubs had lost their labels which, interestingly, were not even still in the freezer!!!   I studied the frozen contents.... both tubs were a small portion of soup, one a simple potage and the other, what appeared to be a potage that had been blended to make it smooth.

I decide that on return home, I would mix the two soups and eat it with some crusty French bread.  Anticipating my delicious lunch I plodded round the half empty, very wet market in somewhat better spirits.

I didn't linger long, collecting the various bits of shopping I needed and popping into my favourite bar for a quick coffee, before heading off to the car park and back home.

It didn't take me long to find the two tubs of soup and, in order to speed things up, I gently warmed them before emptying the still frozen contents into a pan with a little water and started to heat them gently.

By the time I had put the greengrocery away my soup had defrosted and was beginning to warm up.  It smelt delicious as I cleared the kitchen table and got out a bowl and bread basket and, yes, why not, the butter dish!

I turned to stir the soup regularly as the big lumps of frozen goo gradually broke up and eventually, I became able to stir a warm liquid.  Habits are hard things to break and one of mine is to taste everything...taste, taste and taste again.  So I stuck my spoon into the now lukewarm soup to taste.... and was very surprised.

Delicious is not exactly the word....   no....   It was sweet, very sweet.  I could see the vegetables from the potage clearly now but, my guess was the blended "soup" was actually stewed apple.

Now, I should have binned the lot, cut myself some tasty French cheese and eaten it with the bread...  I really should have done that.  But I don't like to be defeated.  I'm nothing if not persistent.... some call me stubborn!   So, I decided to rescue the soup.

There were some nice vegetables in the vegetable rack....  There were one or two rather tired vegetables in the same rack... so I started adding bits...  I had the heart of a celery that had gone a bit limp, I had a couple of potatoes that had started sprouting, I had an onion that had split... and quickly I had a collection of vegetables prepared and boiling into the mixture.  Taste, taste and taste again...  It really was very sweet.   A couple more small potatoes, a tiny bit of salt, some fresh herbs, the end of a Belgian endive all were added to the pan, and finally it started to taste acceptable....

Oh, by now I had also realised that the stewed apple which had caused the problem in the first place, was actually the much sweeter stewed plums!!!

And so, my quick lunch was ready.  It had taken about an hour and a half against my anticipated 10 minutes.  It tasted very nice but not great, it was still quite sweet.  But, it had cleared out two old unidentified tubs of frozen food, a collection of tired vegetables, the remainder of last weeks vegetables and I had not used anything from today's shop.... well, except for the bread!

Like I said, I should have thrown it away and had cheese!