The best soup in the world

Well, hello there. It's been a while since I posted something. 

Frankly I have been busy neglecting my health by working and studying. 

But now spring has arrived and I have more time and energy to put on deliscious and healthy food.

First harvest in the garden comes from weed, the nettles. Use gloves and a scissor to pick them, you surely know why. Nettles makes a perfect tasty and healthy soup, filled with vitamins and minerals.

Nettle soup

Pick 3 L lightly packed nettles. Wash them in the sink with lots of water.

Boil a large pan with water and boil the nettles a few minutes.

Drain off the water, but save it to water the plants (great fertilizer)

Chop the nettles finely in a blender

Take the large pan and melt a large piece of butter (or coconut oil)

Whisk down 3 tablespoons of flour in the melted butter

Add 2-3 liters of boiling water while stirring

Add vegetable broth (3 chunks or 1 dl liquid)

Add the nettles and boil for 5 minutes

Give the soup some spices, pepper and chili

Eventually add salt.

Serve with egg halves

Hot and sweet tomato marmalade

It looks like two cans of sunshine and it's not far from the truth. This marmalade is easy peasy to make and you only need three ingredients to make it.

First of all, you need tomatoes. This tomato is a Russian outdoor bush tomato. It is easy to grow in buckets and it gives you plenty of golden mild tasting tomatoes.

Then you need a chili fruit. Just one. This chili is not very hot so I used a large one. If you use a hot chili, use only half of the fruit. The red one at the bottom was picked for this marmalade to give it some red decorative dots.

Recipe

1 kg peeled yellow tomatoes cut to pieces

1kg sugar with pectine (marmalade and jam sugar)

1 chili fruit finely choped

Add everything in a saucepan and boil on medium heat until the tomatoes "falls apart". Remove carefully any foam and pour in clean cans. 

I'm so happy for this years growing season. All my vegetables has been growing very successful this summer. Usually at least one wont thrive. The warm weather with watering everyday did the trick. Here's my bed with kidneybeans ready to be picked, enclosed by nasturtiums.

My sugar snaps has grown all the way up in the apple tree. It's over 2m height and still gives me crispy, sweet and stringless snaps. This is the best sort ever it is called English saber (but translated)

 This is how I treat my vegetable beds when the crops are harvested. I turn the tops and soil with a fork and mix it with grass clip.

 Do you grow your own veggies? 

Taking care of the harvest

It has been a great summer for my lemontree this year. I planted it in a huge pot and it growed wildly. I haven't seen any budding lemons though even if we got lots of flowers. Maybe it put all energy to grow branches and leaves. 

Anyway the branches became to long so I cut a few off and put them in pots to see if there will be any new lemontrees. Wouldn't those become a great christmas gift or birthday present?

 The leaves in front of the pots will be stored in the freezer. Yes these will be excellent for adding a hint of lime in a stew. You know you can buy those dried lime leafs in asian food stores? These are the same but when you put them fresh in the freezer you save all the essential oils for the stew. I get some clever ideas sometimes ;-)

Another clever idea when you get too many zucchinis. Chop them up and put them in the freezer. I chop them in slices and cubes. The slices are a great topping on a home made pizza.

I don't buy much canned or frozen vegetables during the winter season when I grow and store the excess my own.

Juicing

We didn't get a single apple last summer, it was so rainy and cold. This summer, on the other hand has been so sunny and warm and my appletrees are almost breaking of the weight of apples. A good thing is that the apples of my 3 trees doen't get ripen at the same time. I have three different sorts and they have different purposes.

I can highly recommend to juice the apples and store it in the freezer to get good summer vitamins during the whole winter.

It is important to rinse the apples first to get rid of bug and eventual dirt. Another note; I pick my apples from the trees, not the ground.

The apples doesn't need peeling, cut them in chunks and remove kernels and the little twig.

When juicing, you get a foam on top and sediment at the bottom of the can. Skim the juice and try to avoid the sediment when pouring up in bottles for the freezer. 

For serving, you can add a third of water. I have to add a little sugar as well to get the children to drink.

My juicing machine looks like this, the brand is OBH Nordica. Waste comes out to the left and the juice in the can to the right. It is a bit limited when using. For example you need to stop adding apples and rinse the clogged strainer/separator every other minute.

If you don't own a juicer or can afford one, at least here in Sweden, there are farms that have juice presses where you can leave your apples to get juice in return for a fair price.
I'ts a huge problem here (well for me) were people don't bother to take care of all the fruit but they buy their juice and jam in the store instead, weird or what?

Grow your own "bamboo" sticks

Ok, it's not exactly bamboo sticks. It's rather the function of them I describe. The candy smelling, white blooming bush; schersmin. I have one in my garden and every spring, a few stems are dead (while new ones sprouting). These dead ones are perfekt as growing support, straight, sturdy and long lasting. 

This is how my borlotto lingua beans looks with the stems as support. During the winter they are stored outdoors leaning against a wall and holds the next growingseasons without breaking.

 Picture of the lunch, squash, salad, leaves from celeriak, radish, onion tops and pesto of dill.

Different containers for growing seeds

It's time for growing vegetables. As many vegetables are sensible for the frost nights of the north they need to start the season indoors or in a green house. If you have a large vegetable garden you need lots of pots for the seeds. But with a bit of fantasy these pots can be almost for free. 

With a pot maker you can make pots out of news paper. These are perfect for plants that you don't need new pots along the indoor growing. Here are some pots with sweet corn. The paper pots stands on a plastic tray for minced meat.

A tray for lego bits, actually Legos Christmas calendar with 24 boxes is another clever solution. I grow suedes in this tray . 

All my kaleplants have problems with earth bugs. They are completely invisible so it took time until I realised why all my seedlings died. To protect the kale plants, you need a moist air. Plastic containers for baby tomatoes are perfect little green houses. They will keep the air moist.

This is how it looks under the lid.

To be continued ;)