People don’t eat enough soup, as a friend of mine once said. He meant in good restaurants where they make a really good stock. And vegetable soups have got it all – cheap, healthy, filling and warming now the weather’s turned cold. You can also freeze soup in portions, and eat it during the week ahead, or month ahead. Defrost in the microwave as you get in from work. Or, for a dinner party, dress it up with finely chopped parsley and a swirl of cream - I’ve had very good reactions from guests. Parsnips can be woody, so just cut the cores out if they are. If you cut a lot out, re-weigh them, to check the weight hasn’t gone down too much. I often use an eating apple in this recipe too, which works fine – perhaps a Cox or a Braeburn. It goes without saying that you shouldn’t be getting the French Golden Delicious-type variety - they just taste of nothing.

Parsnips, apple and curry work well together. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But you can also experiment with other veg. I would say the only thing you really need for soup is onion (or leek). And stock (a cube is fine).  

Parsnip and Apple Soup

Serves 6                       Per serving: 90cals, fat: 5g

Ingredients;

2 tbsp olive oil

1 large onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

2 tsp curry powder

500g parsnips, peeled & chopped

850ml water

3 veg (or chicken) stock cubes

salt & pepper

1 cooking apple

100ml single cream (or soya)

Finely chopped parsley (optional)

Method:

Sauté the onion in oil for 5 minutes. Add garlic and curry powder. Cook a few minutes more, then add parsnips, crumbled stock cubes and water. Cover and simmer 10 minutes. Peel, core and chop the apple. Add and simmer 5-7 minutes more. Using a slotted spoon, fish out the solids from the hot stock and puree in a food processor, adding a little of the liquid to loosen. Pour it all back into the saucepan and stir together. Then either reheat to serve, with a swirl of cream and a scattering of parsley, or freeze in portions.

I have grown very long arms lately (ie a stepladder) for nicking my neighbour's apples. To be fair, SOME of them are growing over the pavement, so I feel justified in taking them. However, I have told my kids that they are wild and therefore OK to take - just so they don't think their mother is a thief.
So, now I am flush with windfalls, and I have been mostly making apple pies, apple crumbles and apple sauces. Speaking of pies, 1kg store-bought shortcrust pastry costs £2.48 in Tesco/Waitrose. If you make it yourself with 600g flour (64p), 300g butter (£1.38) and a bit of salt (5p) it'll cost you £2.07. Not a huge saving, but it's all money. And it is easy in a food processor. Incidentally 1kg pastry is a lot. So cut it in half and freeze half for another day. Also, you may have to cut a few bad bits out of the apples but you shouldn't expect perfection for free!

Windfall Apple Tart (serves 6-8)
Ingredients:
300g plain flour
150g butter
1 tsp salt
Water
6 eating apples or 3 Bramley cooking apples (peeled and cored)
50g sugar
50g sultanas
1 tsp cinnamon or mixed spice
100g crème fraiche
milk

Method;
Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Blitz the cold butter with flour and salt in a food processor. Add a little cold water till it clags together into a dry ball (you don't want it wet). Roll out on a floured surface (or if, like me, you use non-wheat flour, just press it into the pie dish as it's too crumbly to roll). Scatter the sultanas over the pastry (you don't want them on the top or they'll burn), then the apples mixed with spice. Sprinkle over sugar, and drizzle over the crème fraiche. If you have a few scraps of pastry left then make some twisty lattice things or star shapes for the top. Glaze with a little milk. Bake 30 minutes, or more, until the pastry is golden brown.

Pick Your Own (PYO) farms can be great value for money, very satisfying, and provide a great, cheap day out for the family. Why not get your kids doing a bit of child labour in the fields, harvesting berries, tomatoes - whatever's available?! Mine LOVED their session picking strawberries and mange tout, pottering about with their little punnets, comparing what they’d picked etc. Obviously it won't be economical if you have to drive miles to get to one of these PYO farms. But I happened to be going past one on my way to visit Granny. See what’s in your area www.pickyourown.org/unitedkingdom.htm and look at their websites for prices of seasonal produce. I went to Secretts Farm in Milford in Surrey www.secretts.co.uk. Here’s a snapshot of their prices in mid-August compared to Tesco’s/Sainsbury’s. In some cases I’ve picked the organic or premium range as that would be about the same quality.

Secrett’s Farm Price                              Supermarket Price

Strawberries - £3.75/kg                        £10.93/kg     Tesco Finest

Raspberries - £5.95/kg                         £23.92/kg     Tesco

Rhubarb - £1.65/kg                              £4.98/kg      Sainsbury’s

Redcurrants -£3.75/kg                          not available

Blackcurrants - £3.75/kg                       not available

Blackberries - £3.75/kg                         £5.96/kg      Tesco

Cherry Tomatoes - £3.25/kg                 £3.92/kg      Tesco (organic)

Peas - £1.95/kg                                   £3.98/kg      Tesco

French Beans - £2.95/kg                       £4.30/kg      Tesco

Broad Beans - £1.75/kg                        £4.98/kg      Sainsbury’s  

Runner Beans - £2.75/kg                      £4.40/kg      Tesco

Courgettes - £2.25/kg                          £1.98/kg      Tesco CHEAPER!

Sugar Snaps - £3.95/kg                        £6.13/kg      Tesco

Mange Tout - £3.95/kg                         £5.83/kg      Tesco

Recipe: Homemade Strawberry Jam

Makes – 2kg (4 lbs)

1 kg strawberries

1 kg jam sugar (has added pectin)

Juice of 1 lemon

4x1lb (454g) jam jars or 2x 1kg kilner jars

Method:

Put 2 saucers in the freezer. Wash and hull the strawberries. Put in a large heavy-based (not aluminium) saucepan with the lemon juice and heat to soften the fruit and get the juices running. Add the sugar, stir and bring to the boil. Wash the jars and lids (and rubber seals if using Kilner jars) and put in a sink full of very hot water (boil the kettle) to sterilise. Stir the jam so the hot sugar doesn’t burn on the bottom. Boil for 10 minutes, then test a teaspoon on the freezing saucer. After a few minutes, when it’s cooled, run your finger into the jam and if it wrinkles nicely, with a dry skin, it’s ready. Otherwise boil for 10 minutes more and repeat the test with the other cold saucer.

Drain the hot jars on kitchen paper then ladle in the hot jam carefully. If you put boiling hot jam in cold jars YOU WILL CRACK THEM. Put the lids on tightly while hot, to seal. When cool, I like to store in the fridge if I have room. 

Uses: 

1. Stir a dessert spoonful into chilled 0% fat Greek yoghurt.

2. Mix with 50:50 whipped cream and Crème Fraiche and freeze = delicious strawberry ice cream.

3. On bread and scones, obviously

4. Mix with FREE hedgerow blackberries and top with crumble mix. Bake at 180 degrees C for 30 minutes until bubbling and golden.

Shop-bought birthday cakes are expensive for what they are - sugar/fat/white flour and - I'm betting - vanilla essence, not extract.

For example, in Sainsbury's, a Nestlé Smarties Celebration cake (feeds 16 with tiny slices) is £7.99. Disney Cars Occasion Cake (serves 16) is on offer at £7.99. And the supermarket's own brand Football Cake is £5.69 for 8 servings. They all have a list of ingredients as long as your arm (Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Flavouring, Colouring (Curcumin, Annatto, Ponceau 4R, Brilliant Blue FCF) anyone?

I haven't done an exhaustive price comparison, calculating the cost of a teaspoon of baking powder etc, but common sense says it'll be cheaper. If you're doing the work, rather than Sainsbury's/McVities/whoever, it'll WILL be cheaper, won't it? I knew that economics degree would come in handy someday.

So I made my own for my daughter's recent 5th birthday party and, in the process, roped in 2 kids for a cheap afternoon's entertainment - helping me mix, bake and ice it. This is also a key consideration when the summer holidays are upon us, remember.

A tip is to use ground almonds to keep the cake moist, provided you don't have any kids coming with nut allergies, which is increasingly common now.

Recipe: Chocolate Birthday Cake

Ingredients: (serves 8)
125g butter
125g sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
75g ground almonds
75g plain flour
1 rounded tsp baking powder
2 rounded tbsp cocoa
Milk (about 100ml)
Icing:
75g butter
100g icing sugar
2 rounded tbsp cocoa

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Lightly oil an 8" (20cm) springform cake tin (with a removable bottom) and line the bottom with a disc of greaseproof paper (if you, like me, haven't come into the 21st century and embraced silicone bendy cake moulds). Cream the room-temperature butter and sugar, then add the eggs one at a time and mix in. Add the flour, almonds, baking powder, vanilla extract and cocoa and mix further. Add enough milk to make a soft dropping consistency. Or use the "Stork all-in-one method" invented by margarine manufacturer Stork in the 70s, and bung everything in together and mix. It works just as well. Bake about 30 minutes until a knife inserted into the bottom comes out almost clean (the almonds mean it's meant to be moist).

Let the cake cool in the tin then turn out onto a fancy plate.

For the icing, mix the room-temperature butter and icing sugar with the cocoa. Slather over the COOLED cake (otherwise it'll just melt and run off - I've been there). Decorate with sprinkles, jelly babies etc, or leave plain for an adults' cake.

I have been scouring the pavements lately and spotted some lovely morsels for my tea. No, I haven’t started eating dog poo, discarded coke cans and condoms (you can tell I live in London, can’t you?). No, instead I’ve been mostly picking and eating – dandelions. They are lovely in a salad, but don’t get the old, tough ones, and don’t pick them right next to a road where they’re all covered in pollution, exhaust fumes and yuk (technical botanical term).

Another thing I have discovered is that if you buy a supermarket pot of growing basil (£1.79 at Tesco for a large pot), and you don’t pick off the top shoots, then it will just keep growing and cropping and give you loads of basil for months. Just pick off the leaves from further down the stalks (if only I’d read these instructions on the packaging years ago). I’ve just repotted my plant too, so hopefully it’ll last on until next year – any budding gardeners please advise me otherwise. So, we’ll also use basil in this recipe. It’s quite a tart salad, what with the raw onion, so have it with some creamy mash or blandish potato gratin, as well as grilled chicken/fish or (my favourite) grilled halloumi cheese.

Dandelion Salad

Ingredients: (serves 4)

225 g torn dandelion leaves

½ red onion, chopped

2 tomatoes, chopped

1 tbsp fresh dried basil

Olive oil

Balsamic or other vinegar

salt and pepper

Method:

In a medium bowl, toss together dandelions, red onion, and tomatoes. Add basil, salt, and pepper, and a slosh of oil, and a smaller slosh of vinegar. If you can’t face all dandelions then go half-and-half with ordinary salad leaves.

My country upbringing comes to the fore now (well, Surrey). Wherever you find nettles growing, you'll find dock leaves - large, flat, green and slightly maroon leaves growing close to the ground in clumps. If you get stung by the nettles then rub the juice from a dock leaf in and it takes away the pain. What an old countrywoman I am! Anyway, nettles are in season now so gather a bagful (wear gloves) and get cooking.
My Swedish in-laws do a lovely nettle soup with a boiled egg in (which I think I've given a recipe for before, but my memory may be failing me), and that is a nice lunch dish, but here's something a bit different. If you can make rocket pesto, which is quite a bitter salad leaf, why not nettle pesto? And it tastes lovely. A fusion recipe - a bit of Bologna and a bit of my Backyard.

Recipe: Nettle Pesto

Ingredients: (serves 4)

125g nettles, blanched in boiling water, drained and roughly chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

50g pine nuts

60g grated parmesan

80ml extra virgin olive oil

salt and black pepper

Method:

Put the nettles, pine nuts, parmesan, garlic and a grinding of salt and pepper into a food processor. Blend until smooth, then pour in the oil with the motor running. Use immediately with hot pasta or put in a clean jar in the fridge with a little more olive oil over the top. Pesto will keep for up to a month in the fridge.

I was at a dinner party the other night and a professional caterer was telling me how much food prices have risen in the past few months. Rice has tripled in the last year. Dairy products, soya beans, wheat and sugar have also shot up. Food-price inflation has raised a typical family’s weekly shop by 15 per cent in the last 12 months. Butter has gone up by 62 per cent in the same period. I have to say that, although I write this blog, I don't really look at the price of food too carefully. The caterer at the dinner party daid, "Haven't you noticed your bills getting bigger?" And I thought, "Well yes, but I assumed that was because I was buying more, or more expensive stuff."

I came across as a right Marie Antoinette, famously saying (on being told the poor French peasants couldn't afford bread), "Well, let them eat cake."

Still, this is a relatively cheap recipe - I made a lovely tabouleh at the weekend - like couscous with knobs on. 500g couscous costs 82p and then there are a few herbs and veg, so it's a cheap and filling side dish. You will want a protein with it though, i.e. grilled chicken or fried halloumi (Middle Eastern cheese).

Tabouleh (serves 4-6)

Ingredients:

250g couscous

2 lemons

20g pack mint, de-stalked and chopped

20g pack flat leaf parsley, de-stalked and chopped

2 tomatoes

15cm length cucumber

small onion, chopped finely (red onion is nice too)

good slosh olive oil

salt and pepper 

Method:

Juice the lemons into a mixing bowl and fish out the pips. Put the tomatoes in a measuring jug or small bowl and cover with boiling water for 2 minutes. De-skin, de-core, and chop. Pour the couscous into a measuring jug or bowl and cover with boiling water. Stir, leave for a minute then scrape/fork the top layer into the lemon juice bowl, fluffing up the couscous and forking as you go (if can clump into claggy lumps towards the bottom if you don't work quickly, and I can't be fagged to steam it, which is more authentic). Peel and chop the cucumber. Add all the other ingredients and mix, with the olive oil and seasoning. Spoon into a serving bowl and eat!