A couple of Avoca soups.

I've had these two Avoca cookbooks for quite some time. I got the most recent one last year off Chris ( http://www.tootiredtodrivehome.blogspot.com/ ) and I've only used it once before but I used one of the soup recipes yesterday. The book is divided into seasons. Within each seasons there are soups that can mostly made vegan! There is also a vegetarian section too which is great.

I made a roast pepper and tomato soup from the first cookbook. This tasted really good. I added some ingredients like basil, chilli and garlic!

2 red peppers roasted until soft

2 onions chopped

1 litre of veg stock

2 cloved of garlic

1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon

some tomato puree

1 tin of tomatoes

thyme

basil

salt and pepper

About half a chilli.

So I roasted off the peppers and meanwhile, I fried off the onions until clear, added the garlic and sauteed for about a minute. I then added the tinned tomatoes, veg stock, cinnamon, tomato puree, thyme, basil, chilli and roasted peppers when they were done. Cooked for about 2o mins and then pureed. However, this only made about 3 bowls, so if you are cooking for more, double the recipe!

I also made the root vegetable and squash soup from the newest book. I wasn't to into this as the parsnip really took over.Not a big fan of parsnip in soup.

Avoca-Powerscourt noms

Out in the extremely lovely Enniskerry is Powerscourt House and gardens. The views and house alone are worth going for. What makes it even more attractive is that there's an avoca restaurant there :). The restaurant runs nearly the whole length of the back of the house. Several huge bay windows run the whole way down the restaurant. I wasn't lucky enough to get one of those tables. There's also a very large patio out the back with unreal views.

Blue skies make me happy.

I got a vegetarian Pastie which was AMAZING!