Soup and Nettles

We have been having soup most days for lunch. I love soup! I have always made soup, but in the last year, leading a life that was just a little bit too busy meant that I did not always get around to making soup. So for Christmas, two of our kids clubbed together and bought me a soup maker. I have used it so much since then. All you have to do is empty some roughly chopped veg in the soupmaker, add some herbs and maybe some garlic, fill with water or last night's vegetable cooking water, turn it on - and 21 minutes later, there is soup.

The last two times, I have made nettle soup. Lovely! As a child, I remember being told that nettle soup was really good for you and in the spring, it cleansed the system after the winter. I can also remember sitting at the table for hours looking at my first bowl of nettle soup. I was told that I would be sitting at the table until such times as I finished it. The trouble is that nobody had told me that I would not get stung in the mouth by eating nettle soup. After all, every other time any part of me had touched a nettle, I had suffered afterwards. I don't remember how that incident ended but I do know that I love nettle soup now : )

Nettle soup - my way:

I used a large potato, gave it a scrub and chopped it roughly into the soupmaker. I didn't bother peeling it. I peeled an onion and chopped it into quarters and added that. I took my 2 litre measuring jug and some scissors and went into the garden and snipped off the top shoots of nettles until my measuring jug was full. Then I washed them (carefully! because I did not want my skin to touch them) and added them to the soupmaker. Then I added a half teaspoon of garlic granules, a good shake of mixed dried herbs, two vegetable stock cubes and filled the jug of the soupmaker up to the marked line with water. I turned it on and 21 minutes later, there was soup ready to eat for lunch. I did enjoy it and I hoped it was doing me some good as a bonus : )

I have several nettles growing in the garden and won't let my husband dig them up as he wants to because they are such useful plants. I take an empty and washed out milk bottle, don some gloves and take it up the garden with my kitchen scissors. I cut off the stems of nettle leaves and stuff as many as I can into the milk bottle. I use the scissors as tongs to fit the stems into the bottle. When it is as full as I can get it, I fill it with water, put the lid on and leave it in the shade around the back of the shed for a month or six weeks - and I have a nasty smelling liquid feed for my veg in pots. Free for 5-10 minutes work. It does a good job too.