It's a good few days into December now, so time to start thinking about what to make for Christmas dinner. I grew up in the 80s which meant that for our Christmas dinner starter we had to have Prawn Cocktail. Through the more sophisticated 90s this developed into Avocado and Prawns in Marie Rose Sauce and with the turn of the new millenium the menu became Smoked Salmon Salad served with dainty pieces of buttered wholemeal bread, sliced into neat little triangles with the crusts cut off, very posh. The rest of my family still have this. I however have brought trouble with my fussy ban on animal food stuffs. There is, however a good simple solution, which so far has been universally approved of by all it has been served to - soup. Quick and easy to prepare, not too filling and almost impossible to mess up. You can even make it the day before, so save yourself that little bit of stress on the big day if you're the kind of person who gets their knickers in a twist at just the thought of preparing what is really just a fancy Sunday dinner. Mind you, I suppose we ...

When we moved away form Manchester we put our compost bin plus all it's contents on freecycle and it was snapped up in seconds. In fact loads of people wanted it. The guy that we chose to give it to arrived with a big smile on his face, an estate car, 4 bins and a shovel. It was a smelly job, hard work too, but obviously the he knew it was worth it. An estimated 6.7 million tonnes of household food waste is thrown away each year to rot in landfill. This creates a toxic sludge and gives off greenhouse gases which contribute to climate change. As well as looking at how to avoid wasting food by your shopping behaviour and meal planning the harm caused by any unavoidable food waste (eg peelings, cores etc) could be reduced or even eliminated by composting. If you have a compost bin, or wormery your food scraps are converted into a valuable resource. The food breaks down and the nutrients they contained are put back into the soil as part of a natural cycle renewing the earth. It is a potent natural fertiliser that in large scale non-organic farming is replaced by polluting oil ...

Blimey I've been eating a lot of pumpkin! Since the Hallowe'en party last week which left me with about 10kg of pumpkin to use I've made it a bit of a mission to try use the pumpkin in as many different ways as possible and have come up with this list of ten things to do with your Hallowe'en pumpkin. I've tried to make them all quite different, so there should be something to suit everyone so you'll have no excuse to throw your pumpkin away to rot. If you got a bit giddy like I did and bought the biggest pumpkin you could find you should have enough to make all these things. You'd also probably need to be a little bit insane to want to make them all, well at least all within the space of a week, so you might want to freeze some. You can just peel and chop the pumpkin as normal and then bag the bits and pop them in the freezer. I did this last year and they were fine to chuck into soups and things. No reason they shouldn't be good for anything else too. I can't quite believe how much we managed to ...

This is my favourite soup of the year so far! It has a really particular flavour, definite Asian influence, a bit sweet and tangy. YUM! It got given a 9 out of 10 from Andy! Woop! You have HAVE to try it. Let me know what you think. Squash, carrot and cardamon soup 1 oz butter 1 large onion, finely chopped 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped 400g carrots peeled and chopped 400g squash peeled and chopped, I used a turban squash tabasco sauce 1 tbsp plain flour 1 1/4 pints of vegetable stock 1 tin of creamed coconut juice of one lime 8 cardamon pods Put the prepared squash into a roasting dish with a splash of olive oil to coat and shake over some tabasco to taste. Roast in the oven at 200C until you add to the soup later, but obviously if you're being a bit slow don't let it burn. You'll need to check about half way through and move it around a bit so it browns evenly. Melt the butter in a large soup pan, then add the onions. Cook gently for around 15 minutes or until the onions are soft, but not browned. Add the garlic and cook for a minute , then add the flour and cook for ...

I love this bright orange soup. A little bit of spice to keep you warm, good autumnal  chunky veg and a few lovely soft butter beans. Mmm, it's like a cosy duvet. This is the basic recipe, but if you have any other nice bright coloured autumn veg lying around spare, no harm throwing them in too. This recipe has tinned butter beans in. Generally I prefer dried beans. I find they usually have better texture than the canned ones. Butter beans are, I think, the exception to the rule though and I actually prefer them. I've been getting the Suma ones which have been really big and tasty. When I've used dried ones before they didn't end up with the nice soft texture that these have, plus it obviously takes more time and planning. But each to their own. When I made this soup I also intended to make some soda bread, but then realised we didn't have any wholemeal flour. I ended up using stone ground white flour and mixing in a bit of oatmeal. I turned out ok. Not as nice as real soda bread I've had before, maybe a little heavy, but definitely a good quick substitute if ...