Hello and welcome to The Compost Bin. I'm Compostwoman and I live with my family in rural Herefordshire. We have nearly four acres of garden and woodland, all managed organically and to Permaculture principles, which we share with Chickens, Cats and assorted wildlife. We also grow a lot of our own food, run courses in all sorts of things and make a lot of compost!

I am a Master Composter and have spent more than a decade as a volunteer Community Compost adviser with Garden Organic and my local Council.
I'm a self employed Environmental Educator so I run workshops and events where I talk about compost, veg growing, chicken keeping, cooking, preserving and sustainable living. I also run crafts workshops and Forest School/outdoor play sessions in our wood.

We try to live a more self sufficient lifestyle here, as best we can, while still having a comfortable life and lots of fun.


To learn more about us click on the About Compostwoman tab and remember to click on the photos to make them full size!


Sunday 4 May 2008

Soup making frenzy

I have spent this afternoon making soups...3 different sorts to be precise!


I wanted to use up some rather old bulb Fennel which came in the veg box and also I had a rather old Celeriac, so made up a recipe of Celeriac, Fennel and Celery soup using shallots and garlic grown by us and some ham stock from cooking an organic gammon joint.



I also made some Pumpkin soup, using one of my stored Lady Godiva pumpkins. Compostman very kindly chopped the Pumpkin into chunks for me and I roasted it in the oven whilst our Sunday meal was cooking. This variety has "naked" seeds which are good to dry and eat!


The Pumpkin soup used Onions and Garlic and home made veg stock.

The final soup was a vegan Lentil and assorted root veg soup...using Onions, Garlic, Kohl rabi, Swede, the trimmings of Celeriac and Fennel from making the other soup and an organic soup mix of Pearl Barley, Lentils, and Peas in with home made veg stock.


I have altogether made 10 portions of the Celeriac, Celery and Fennel soup. 14 portions of the Lentil and Veg soup and 18 portions of the Pumpkin Soup. All portions are VERY generous!!

I used home grown herbs for flavour and butter to cook the shallots and for the vegan soups I used a vegan spread to saute the onions !!

All are now in the freezer...waiting to be eaten YUMMY!!

All the veg was either grown by us or came from our veg box provider 5 miles away..and the meat stock came from an Organic farm less than 10 miles away, as did the butter.

The spread is UK made but not sure where!! So almost totally zero food miles for all of it which makes me very happy indeed!

I am still seriously considering doing a set period of a "15 mile diet"...it WOULD be easier to do from now until October, as we produce all our own fruit and veg during this period and I could get organic meat and dairy from within that limit..Hmmm..will have to have another think about this!

The "buy nothing" challenge was quite do-able and has become second nature..I stop and think and question EVERYTHING I want to get now and try to get it Free cycle or library or borrow it or charity shop it if I can...so maybe a new challenge is in order??
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