Soup and house plans, an eclectic mix

James has been away in Germany for a few days so I've been free in the evenings to get a few things done. 

Last Friday I was given a bag of the worlds biggest parsnips, seriously, they were as long as the top of my washing machine! Thanks Kev! So I thought I'd cook up a big batch of Parsnip and Apple Soup to freeze, 'sure that'll use 'em all up' I thought. Well you need 1lb of parsnips, the recipe suggests 4 parsnips a pound. I weighed one parsnip, it was 1lb 4oz!!! These parsnips are going to go a lot further than I thought. I tried a different recipe to usual as this one has cream, I don't usually put cream in veg soup for the fat but I thought as I had a treat with my parsnips I'd go all out.

So the recipe's below, it's not too bad, smells sort of funky, but tastes nice. I doubled it so I'd have some left over. It's from a pinterest pin I found by Foodess.

• 4 tbsp butter
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 1 large potato, peeled and chopped 
• 2 medium apples, peeled, cored, and chopped
• 1 lb parsnips (4 medium), peeled and chopped 
• 4 cups chicken broth (I used 1 litre chicken stock)
• 1/8 tsp allspice
• 1/8 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 cup cream 
• salt and pepper, to taste

1. Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium-low heat. Add onions and saute until softened but not browned, about 8 minutes. 

2. Add potato, apples and parsnips; stir in chicken broth and spices. Increase heat to bring soup to a boil, then reduce back to medium low and simmer, covered, until vegetables and apples are very soft, about 30 minutes. 

3. Puree in batches, Stir in cream and season well with salt and pepper.

To be honest I didn't take a photo of the soup, it's not great looking and food photography is not my thing. I did take a pic of the parsnips though.

Mutant parsnips

We also had our planning consultant over today to show us the plans that he's drawn up for us. The best part was that he's already spoken to our planning officer and he's happy (so he says) with the plans so we don't need to go through pre-planning approval (slightly less cost).

They've got everything we wanted on the plans, it was just not at all how I expected, the whole configuration of the house moves around. We also have to take down all of the  old extensions that had been done previously on the house as part of the deal. To be honest they are incredibly ugly, it just means a lot more work, but hey what's more work?!

I'll try and get them scanned so I can put them on here, they're on A3 so they're difficult to take a photo of. I'll get a post together on the current configuration and suggested so you can have a nose.