Chunky soup

Today's soup is minestrone, or at least my version of it. Or at least I think it's soup.

I love my slow cooker (crockpot, I think they call it in the States) but I don't make as much use of it as I always think I'm going to. Perhaps because I work from home, I don't need to slow cook as much as I thought I would. Or perhaps peeling and chopping vegetables at 0730 doesn't appeal to me as much as I thought it would (and it didn't appeal to me at all).

But for this soup, I wanted to try it in the slow cooker, mainly in order to give me a Bank Holiday devoted entirely to the internet and the TV. So yesterday, whilst making bubble and squeak, I also baked half a dozen tomatoes. A quick blast in the blender, a glass of wine in the resulting mix and into the slow cooker. Two diced potatoes, some dried peppers, some "soup mix" (dried beans, lentils and barley) and a little bit of macaroni.

A little bit? I'll come to that. This morning, I switched the slow cooker on to medium and walked away. Slow or not, the cooking smells filled the house quickly, so it all seems to be going well. Then I glanced at the bag of pasta. Hmmm, a little bit of pasta? No, quite a lot, actually. Still, the soup looked fine and I'm mindful of the instructions to never remove the lid during cooking. But I never listen to instructions anyway. A brief stir revealed minestrone-flavoured pasta bake.

This wasn't thick soup, this was pasta and potatoes with a thin covering of tomato water. The pasta and potatoes had sucked all the moisture out of the sauce. This is easily solvable, I just added a couple of pints of stock - yes, pints - and gave it a good stir. Back on to medium until we eat it tonight. I'm assuming the macaroni - since each tube is now the size of a finger - can't soak any more water up, so all will now be fine.

So now I can get back to that whole internet-and-TV thing I've got going: more so, now that I've connected the internet to the new TV and can watch the BBC iPlayer or SeeSaw from the comfort of my own living room. I may never emerge from there again.