On my mind ...

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With winter's end coming soon and the forecast tomorrow for heavy rain, I'm thinking of making another thick vegetable and barley soup, like the one (above) I made a couple of weeks ago. This uses fresh vegetables from the garden, grains from the stockpile and soup bones and a little meat from the freezer. It's a complete frugal meal that will last us for quite a few days, or it can be frozen for later.

The photo above shows my latest experiment - sprouted soup mix. I want to make soup with sprouted grains but didn't know if the common mixture of grains and legumes in soup mix would sprout.  They did! You can see above the barley has sprouted, so have the split peas. I'm not sure how it will end up in the pot, but at the moment I think I'll add some soup mix and cook as normal, then add the sprouted soup mix at the end.  I don't want to cook the sprouts too much, they are quite soft and the added texture will be a great addition to the soup; we'll have test tastes and modify it as we go. When we have this soup, I'll write about it.


ADDED LATER: Morag wrote to urge me to add a warning about using beans for this soup. Eating uncooked or undercooked beans, particularly red kidney beans, is dangerous and any form of bean mix should not be used for sprouting like this.  Please read this. Thanks Morag.

What is on your mind today?