Home Grown

Fresh from the garden. This zucchini is bristling with life...when I cut it up, it will just burst with crispness. 

Soup for dinner tonight.  What could be more satisfying on a miserable damp day than soup and toast?
Besides, it's nice and quick and once more I can use up what little there is of the veggies in the bottom of the refrigerator.  Tomorrow is market day and I get to replenish our fresh fruit and vegetable supply with farm fresh produce.
In the meantime I have livened up the soup with a zucchini, freshly picked from the vegetable patch and a bouquet garni made with fresh herbs from the herb garden.
The bouquet is made with sage, rosemary, marjoram (just a touch), and oregano which is then all tied together with a few long stands of thyme.   This way I can lift the whole bunch out of the pot at the end of cooking. Mm mm, such a satisfying aroma is created from these herbs.
The zucchini might be the last of the season, as, it seems, the one remaining plant seems to have succumbed to the fungal disease off the one other plant that was growing.
Celtic sea salt is almost a staple in my kitchen.  If I use this and the bouquet garni in my soups, casseroles and stews, I have found that there is no need to use stock cubes, no matter how 'natural' they proclaim to be!
Unlike sodium chloride which is commonly labelled as table salt, Celtic sea salt is full of minerals and trace elements. It is also claimed to do all the opposite things that common table salt does.
Besides all these benefits; it tastes great too.