u/Affectionate_Fee3411

Made this after approximately zero coherent thoughts. I regret nothing.

What a beauty my boy is❤️🥹

Magnus has 7. Guess I’m better than Magnus now 💀

Right. Today’s Sunday soup is chicken soup. Believe me when I tell you this restorative broth is capable of curing despair.

INGREDIENTS:

1kg pack chicken thighs (skin on, bone in, all the flavour still attached)

4 sticks celery

3 large carrots

1 onion

1 ENTIRE bulb of garlic because cowardice has no place here

Big handful parsley (flat leaf or curly; doesn’t matter)

Olive oil

1 vegetable stock cube

1 chicken stock cube

Black pepper

Garlic Aromat

Salt

3 medium potatoes

METHOD:

You may notice a recurrent theme to my method for things going into a pot. First, dice your carrots, celery and onion into a mirepoix. Sounds fancy but just means “small chopped vegetables.” Keep the leafy tops from the celery though because we’re making real soup and will be using those in a bit.

Get a generous glug of olive oil into your biggest pot over a medium/low heat and throw in the celery, carrots, and onion. Sweat them off for about five minutes, stirring frequently so nothing catches and ruins your glorious base.

Then add your entire bulb of garlic, roughly minced. Yes, the whole thing because we are not here to make timid soup.

Turn the heat down slightly and let that sweat together for a few minutes. At this point I threw in some dried Italian herbs because soup obeys no laws and pretty much everything works. You can omit this part, change up herbs , do what your heart tells you.

Once all that’s smelling outrageously good put your chicken thighs in whole. No chopping, no messing about. Add one vegetable stock cube and one chicken stock cube.

Now for the peasant apothecary section. Take the leafy celery tops and shove them into the pot whole. Add a massive handful of parsley, stems and all, no chopping required. We’re fishing it out later anyway. Add plenty of black pepper, some Garlic Aromat, salt to taste, then cover the whole thing with boiling water.

IMPORTANT:
Simmer. Do not boil the absolute life out of it.

You want a gentle simmer for about an hour while your house slowly starts smelling really good.

After the hour(ish, you can go longer no worries, but don’t go shorter) is up, remove the chicken thighs and let them cool slightly. You can turn the heat off under the broth while you do this unless you enjoy unnecessary pressure.

Strip all the meat off the bones. Discard the skin, bones, mysterious gristle bits etc.

Shred or chop the chicken however you like. I personally just tear it apart with my hands and throw it back into the pot because it’s RUSTIC and I’m LAZY.

Now add your potatoes, chopped however chunky you fancy. Mine usually look like I lost patience halfway through because usually I did.

Back onto a gentle simmer for another hour until the potatoes are soft and the broth tastes rich and well developed.

Right at the end, take it off the heat and stir through a generous handful of finely chopped fresh parsley.

Taste. Adjust seasoning. Consume with bread you lazily threw into the bread maker earlier.

After all of this you should be standing over the pot eating “just one more spoonful” repeatedly. If not you’ve done something wrong. But you won’t because it is pretty impossible to mess this up.

Ideally I throw in a lot of fresh chopped parsley AND dill at the end of cooking which is my FAVOURITE but, as I don’t have any fresh dill, fresh parsley solo it is.

Don’t bother peeling anything either. Just give potatoes and carrots a good scrub and keep them unaltered for extra nutrition. It may look like watery parsley water in the final pic because the chunky goodness is all settled on the bottom. This is a well populated broth - chunks of tattie, big pieces of chicken, soft little pieces of carrot and celery - every spoon is packing something.

GO FORTH SOUP LEGION🫡

The conversation then went on to describe how this man was claiming a lost lurcher was his with no proof of ownership besides MY pics. He then showed me an other pic that this “owner” was using as “proof” of two totally different dogs. One looked like an old fashioned lurcher maybe, but very different to mine, and the other was a white and brindle greyhound/greyhound lurcher. That is someone else’s pic too.

Hope you can handle my insane 45-50mph on the backroads. 😂❤️

That hair 😭❤️

Apparently I think I have both time AND money to waste. (I have neither.)

All pure wool Aran. Was from the Tin Can Knits ebook!

I have decided, in my infinite wisdom, to build something that can only be described as legally ambiguous comfort food. If I disappear after this, tell the authorities it was the Branston.

Ingredients for the incident:

500g mince

2 nice big carrots

2 hefty sticks of celery

Half an extremely large onion

1 tablespoon garlic, minced

3 Oxo beef stock cubes

1 bay leaf (once again scrumped from neighbour’s tree)

1 heaped tablespoon of Branston pickle (yes, I am aware)

A scant quarter tin to half tin of tomatoes

Salt

Pepper

Pinch of sugar

Potatoes, diced

—

Method:

Heat a generous splash of sunflower oil in a heavy pot over medium/high heat.

Add diced carrots, celery, onion, and a bay leaf straight in from the start. Sweat them down for about 4–5 minutes, stirring constantly until they soften and sweat.

Add the tablespoon of garlic. Stir it through and let it cook out briefly so it doesn’t burn or turn bitter.

Next comes the 500g of minced beef, crumbled in. Fat content is your business. Keep the heat steady and break it up well. Brown it thoroughly until everything is properly combined.

Once the mince is browned, add:

3 crumbled Oxo beef stock cubes

A scant quarter to half tin of tomatoes

1 heaped tablespoon of Branston pickle

Enough boiling water to just cover everything

—

Now stir it all through. This is the point where it stops looking like individual ingredients and starts looking like a single stewy thing.

Then comes the most controversial move: add the diced potatoes straight in.

Three medium potatoes, diced to preference, dropped in with no apology. Throw in a generous tsp of sugar to take the acidity off the tomatoes, as much black pepper as you desire and the same for salt.

Bring everything to a boil with the lid off for about 5 minutes, stirring constantly so nothing sticks or catches.

After that, reduce to medium/low heat, half-cover with a lid, and let it simmer for about 40 minutes. Stir regularly. Hover. Watch it. Negotiate with it if necessary.

When the potatoes are soft and everything has thickened, taste and adjust seasoning as needed. I will often add another big tablespoon of Branston at this point. (TRUST ME.)

Serve in bowls. Optional chopped parsley on top if you want to pretend this is still polite food. And then eat it like you didn’t just commit a very confident act of Scottish heritage re-engineering.

Right, I’ve lit the fuse. I’ll see the entirety of Scotland in the comments shortly.

Rumour has it women weren’t his thing but give me one chance to convince you Vlad.

A proper Shetland Isles hap shawl was on my bucket list forever! Recently finished this one. The slight ridge you can see running across the main square is simply where it has been folded, hanging in my closet. I had planned to wear her proudly but like so many of my knits, they get archived because I am over invested in their laborious production and don’t want to “ruin” them. Yes it makes no sense and goes against the entire point of making them in the first place.

She could do with being blocked more aggressively. Fun knit. Beautiful soft, light warm Shetland undyed yarn.

I plan to make more in different colourways.

This has been on my needles for like two years at this point! Tell me sternly to get on with it. I need my butt kicked into gear.

I just doodle for fun really.