Soup

After yesterday's frost, a different winter arrived this morning. When last night's band of heavy rain met the residual cold air it turned to snow on the hills. Down at our level, it's been dark, cold and damp all day.

But winter does have some pleasures, and one of them is home-made soup, best enjoyed after a morning's walking in the hills.

This is a vegetable soup, one which gives us particular pleasure when, even in December....

....all the main ingredients are still coming from our own garden. The most surprising garden product this year was one entirely grown and nurtured by Mrs Diary - the garlic. We didn't expect garlic to survive in the wet summer we've just had, but some cloves stuck into a rather unpromising bed almost two years ago suddenly woke up and proved us wrong.

I can at least claim some credit for the excellence of the vegetable soup. The recipe comes from a book I gave Mrs Diary over 50 years ago when we were courting. Unlike modern recipe books, it has no pictures, few fancy ingredients, and no TV celebrity author - just good, wholesome recipes.