Everyone stops for soup

Having filled up on baked potatoes last night - and stayed full - tonight I'm having another bulked-out wartime staple: soup. I made parsnip soup yesterday, but with bacon rinds, so I don't know how it tastes (I'll find out tonight when CJBS eats it at work).

With tomatoes now back in the shops after a week of shortages, I fancied tomato soup. Marguerite Patten gives the WVS's recipe, which contains bacon yet again; but as I almost always change her recipes, this one was freely adaptable to take that out.

I melted a large knob of butter in a pan, then added a finely sliced onion. When the onion was cooked, I used flour to make my roux, with a small tin of evaporated milk as the liquid. To this I added some of my vegetable stock from the on-going pot, then put in a diced carrot and a diced potato - the bulking agents that will turn a starter into a main course. Then I added more stock, and finally six tomatoes, halved.

Now, outside of wartime, I'd've scooped out the seeds and only cooked the flesh; and, if I could be bothered, deskinned the tomatoes as well. But the waste is terrible, since the skins and seeds really can't be used elsewhere and the WVS (now WRVS) recipe leaves them in. So there will likely be seeds still floating in the soup after I've run it through the blender. I'll cope, as will the tomato seeds.

Normally I'd bring the soup to the boil, then simmer. But the evap could easily "catch", so I'm back on the endless stirring until it gets close to boiling; then, as with the parsnip soup yesterday, I've taken it off the heat and left it covered for the potatoes and carrot to cook through in the hot liquid. This takes longer - literally "slow food" - but uses no gas, so it's worth the time taken. When the potato is done, I'll run the lot through the blender, return to the heat briefly and serve with croutons.

Meanwhile CJBS takes his parsnip soup to work, with some spam sandwiches to have on the side and some extra bread for toasting, whilst I think I've got the preposterous rubbish of "Survivors" to watch on the BBC iPlayer.