Hot Food for Cold Days

Many of you have been experiencing very wintry weather over the last weeks, and my small part of the globe was no exception. We've had nights as cold as -12 Celsius (around 10 F) and days not getting above freezing point. Icy gusts of wind were biting your face whenever you dared to (or had to) venture outdoors. There were beautiful sunny days, too, but still bitterly cold. I have not been running for ages as I tend to get nose bleeds when the air is very cold, and I am one of those "just for fun" runners who really do it just for fun and so I won't torture myself by running when it is too wet, too cold or too windy for my liking.

What to do to keep warm? I usually opt for the dual approach: Warm from the outside and the inside! That means of course warm clothes and making good use of hot showers and central heating for the outside part, and drinking copious amounts of hot drinks (tea and coffee, with the occasional mug of vegetable broth spiced with ginger) and eating hot food for the inside part.

A few weeks ago, I took all the remaining spuds and carrots from another meal and turned them into a thick soup, generously adding ground ginger, nutmeg and pepper for a bit of extra heat, and served it with home-made croutons and freshly chopped chives from the windowsill. O.K. and I had this soup for our evening meal when he arrived at my place for the weekend one Friday night.

The "recipe", if you can call it that, goes like this:

Take whatever you find in terms of potatoes and carrots. Oh, and I added an apple. It does not give off a noticeable apple aroma later on, but it complements the other ingredients well.

Start with the spuds, as they take the longest. Peel and chop them, then put them in a pot of water to boil.

In the meantime, peel and chop the carrots. Do the same with the apple.

Add to the boiling potatoes and close the lid. Now go away and do something else for about half an hour. You may want to stir the vegetables occasionally. 

Once the vegetables have been simmering away long enough to be soft-ish, mash them up with your spuds masher.

Add salt, pepper, ground ginger and nutmeg (careful there - too much nutmeg can easily result in a slightly musty taste) and butter. 
Serve with croutons and freshly chopped chives on top. Fried bacon bits or sausages would also make nice additions.

On the Sunday, I made another warm-up meal by using a ready-made Thai red curry paste for a sort of stir-fry with bits of turkey and vegetables fried in the wok. We ate that with mie noodles. It was very welcome after a nice long walk in winter wonderland - more about that in my next post.

We did not neglect the intake of fresh food for vitamins, having fresh fruit with our mueslis and a big bowl of salad with the soup. So far, our immune systems have been successfully fighting all the flu viruses around us. Let's hope it stays that way.

The forecast here is for milder temperatures this weekend. We'll see. For now, keep warm and well, wherever you are!