Of sleep, walks, kitchens and 52 Recipes: Armenian soup
In no particular order:
I hadn’t planned to go off on a cooking extravaganza, but this morning I found myself with some time where the kitchen wasn’t completely full of sawdust (the construction of a bench seat has started, which means cutting and chopping and planing and sanding, and that’s just to find the screwdriver), so I thought I’d have a bash at this Armenian soup recipe I came across in the very lovely and long-time favourite Cranks Recipe Book by David Canter. As ever, though, I ended up chucking quite a few things in which weren’t in the recipe because I hadn’t got quite what was called for… Nonetheless, the end result was very eatable, and went thusly:
Armenian soup
Ingredients
A mug of red lentils
About ten unsulphured apricots
A large diced potato
A large onion, peeled and diced
About ten cloves of garlic, badgered a bit with a knife
Pepper
Coriander (ground and leaf)
Marjoram
A good squeeze of lemon juice (manky half-lemon found in fridge sufficed)
Cumin
A large pinch of cayenne pepper
About two pints of vegetable stock
Then…
Sling the lot in a pan and boil reasonably briskly for about twenty minutes to make sure the lentils aren’t going to kill you, then turn the heat down and leave it to mellow until, well, you remember that pans are not supposed to glow in the dark. Blend it when you’re sure that to do so might not mean scalding liquids making contact with predictably bare arms, then scoff the lot with some nice bread and butter. And no, the apricots aren’t at all weird, even though you thought they would be. What? That’s just me?
I am doing things other than cooking, I hasten to add; in fact, joy of joys, I’m at home full-time for just over a week thanks to the miracle of bank holidays and timely annual leave, and during this time we’re hoping to Finish – Once And For All – The Kitchen. Lots of irritations to sort out finally, like skirting boards and seating and painting here and there, and we’re hoping to get the tiles sorted too, which will be nice as they are sick-makingly lovely multicoloured handmade numbers from a Mexican fair trade co-operative. It’ll be so nice to finish something.
In other news, I very much fear that the small girl is working steadily towards stopping daytime sleep. She stopped sleeping in the morning just before she was one (and then resumed it when I went back to work and it was Quercus on morning duty, albeit briefly), and while I felt that that was awfully little not to have more than one snooze, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about. Seems like the afternoons are going that way too; it’s getting harder for her to drop off, or so it seems, and this afternoon we ended up going out for a puddle-jumping walk in the pouring rain instead, before catching a late forty winks mid-afternoon. I dunno. It feels very much as if she’s changing her rhythm at the moment, and we have yet to work out quite where it’s headed, so there have been some unusually-timed snoozes, and some interesting walks, and some ‘now? really?’ moments, but, for the most part, it’s all good.
And you?
Hi, love the blog
Your cooking sounds a bit like mine! ‘Oh I need that do I? Erm… I’ll just use this instead.’ It’s creative though, right!?
Good luck on keeping up the naps!
the soup sounds wonderful! does this mean that the next photo shoot will include pics of a finished kitchen posted? hmm,hmm? oldest grandchild is 4 1/2 now, & well on her way to no-nap, while #2 (at 2 yrs) has never seen the reason to nap beyond 45 mins…so i make’em lay down & ‘rest’ while watching a movie (primarily so i can get my exercises out of the way before sundown)!
Can you turn it in to ‘quiet time’ instead of ‘snooze time’? Time for her to sit in her cot and read a book, quietly, by herself, and have a little rest? I think it’s a valuable think to teach them – essentially you are starting to teach her to take time for herself and recharge her batteries, without that necessarily being through sleep.
And, let us not forget the value of having that hour in the afternoon to do the same oneself …
Mmmm….love it when you share recipes. Thanks the stars above me 3-year-old still REQUIRES daytime beauty sleep. Man is he a raving lunatic if he misses his nap!
oo sounds nice. dya think it would work without the apricots?
Nellie: why thank you, and hello! Yes, it is indeed creative (which is also a very useful word with which to dig oneself out of culinary holes…!), and long may it last, I say.
petoskystone: pics will follow in due course; I keep meaning to do it and then I realise that to the ordinary eye it probably looks nothing like finished; just recently a friend came round and I said ‘doesn’t it look much more finished now?’, to which she replied ‘ah yes, because everyone has a table saw and a mitre saw set up in the corner of their kitchen’. Ahem.
Ally: quiet time may be the way forward; at the moment the only thing that’s giving me pause and preventing me from just not even trying with the sleep is that when she does sleep, she seems to really need it, and often wakes up not very happy, as if something has interrupted her. I wonder if teeth are not the root of all evil, because I think that they may well be in the mix somewhere at the moment.
colouritgreen: probably, though the sweetness they give it seems to work really nicely. That said, it’d still be zesty and spicy if you had lemons and whatnot…?
I tried that soup from the original recipe (but x3 as 2oz lentils is a ridiculously small amount – as you too must have thoguht, from your ‘mug’ full). Delicious, thanks, I’d never thought to try it from just looking at the recipe, as it’s never had the air of a recipe that would be nice, if you know what I mean!
Hope the Easter Projects are coming along well.