New Year Resolutions DO NOT start till tomorrow.

~   Menu   ~

Leek & Watercress Soup

White Wine Spritzer

Affogato

Am I or am I not correct in thinking that New Year Resolutions don’t strictly apply till after all the bank holidays?  I hope I am correct because I got up (OK it was 11.30 am) all inspired to eat healthily and was at first pleased at having missed breakfast.  Unfortunately a few minutes later I had chunk of Christmas Cake with brandy enhanced coffee for Late Elevensies.  Bugger!

I then did some fridge sorting out and found I had a bag of watercress, hardly used …

… so made some healthy soup and had that for late lunch.   

Leek and Watercress Soup

1 large leek – thinly sliced and cleaned (see here for how to clean leeks like a boss)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 medium potato

vegetable stock
2 handfuls of fresh, clean watercress

Add to Pinterest for future reference!

~ Heat the olive oil and toss together with the leeks till they are coated. ~ Turn down the heat, cover the onions completely with a pieces of foil, pressing down onto the surface of the leeks.
~ Put a lid on the pan and cook very gently till they are completely and utterly tender and are starting to caramelise a little.
~ Peel and slice the potato and add to the onions.
~ Add enough stock to just cover the potatoes, bring to the boil, turn down the heat, put on the lid, (throw away the piece of foil or recycle it or something) and simmer till the potatoes are tender. 

~  Run through a food processor or liquidizer together with the watercress (maybe saving back a few leaves to garnish)
~ Taste and season.

*** See below!!

Unfortunately this was followed by an Affogato!

Affogato 

This is simply a modicum of ice cream (flavour of your choice) with a shot of espresso poured over, sometimes enhanced with a little spirit and often sprinkled with crumbled Amaretti.  I made mine with my homemade Double Vanilla Ice Cream, Low Calorie Black Coffee and a wincy bit of brandy.  I crumbled over an unwanted biscuit from the bottom of the seasonal festive tin. 

Tomorrow I start on my Cunning Plan.  Honest.

*** News from the Future!

Since writing this post I have published several cookbooks two of which are relevant to this post …

1.   Soup: (almost) the Only Recipe You'll Ever Need! ~ which gives one key recipe plus over 60 soup recipes based on this “genius” recipe together with all the information I can think of to help readers go on to create their own soups.

2.   Luscious Ice Creams without a Machine ... or much time or effort or having to mash the stuff as it freezes ~ this is the same sort of thing, one easy no churn ice cream recipe plus over 100 delicious ice creams, ancillary recipes and useful info.