Today's inspirations

1. Vegetarian caldo verde:

This is a website I just found and looks very appetising and inspiring: Lisa's Kitchen - Healthy Vegetarian Recipes and Cooking Hints

I found it while searching for a vegetarian version of the Portuguese dish Caldo Verde, et voila:

Caldo verde

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 whole dried red chillies
4 large potatoes, diced or sliced
6 cups cold water
1 large bunch kale, chopped finely
1 tablespoon sea salt
fresh ground black pepper

Heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Toss in the onion, garlic and dried red chillies and stir for 3 minutes. Add the potatoes and stir for another 3 minutes.

Pour in the water and turn up the heat to bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce the heat again to medium and let the soup boil gently for 20 minutes.

Remove the soup from the heat and take out the red chillies temporarily. If a creamier soup is desired, use a hand blender to roughly purée the vegetables, leaving just a few of the potato chunks unblended for taste and texture. Alternately, use a potato masher to mash some of the potatoes into a coarse blend.

Put the soup back on the stove and add the chillies back into the pot. Stir in the kale and resume boiling gently for about 10 minutes or until the kale is soft and wilted. Just before serving, stir in the salt and season with ground black pepper.

2. Caldo verde from "Eat the Seasons"

Here's the sausagey version though just in case ;) still need to make my mind up which one I'll try tomorrow!

450 g potatoes, peeled and sliced
2 cloves garlic, sliced
half an onions, finely chopped
225 g curly kale
110 g chorizo sausages, sliced
black pepper
extra virgin olive oil, to serve

1. Put the potatoes in a large saucepan with the garlic, onion, salt and pepper and enough water to cover generously. Simmer until tender.

2. Pass through the fine blade of a mouli-legume, or mash into a smooth puree. Add a little more water if necessary to thin to a soupy consistency. Return to the pan and adjust the seasoning, adding plenty of pepper.

3. While the potatoes are cooking, cut any tough stalks from the kale, then roll up the leaves and shred very thinly, into threads rather than ribbons.

4. Bring the soup back to the boil. Stir in the kale and chorizo and simmer for 5 minutes. Ladle into soup bowls, pour a drizzle of olive oil over each one and serve.

3. Reading: I listened to a track from Brian Tracy today while literally 'walking on sunshine', thanks to a beautiful Spring-like day, and he talked about how important reading is in developing ourselves and suggested an hour each day. The first book I'm going to read, I've already started to be more precise is "Sexual Energy Ecstasy - A Practical Guide to Lovemaking Secrets of the East an West" which is a beautiful book about learning to love (yourself as well as the other person)

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