Home affairs

Following the appearance of two Thames Water vans at the pond end of Manor Green Road yesterday. the road was closed this morning. No vans and no men but lots of cones and a rather deep hole in the middle of the road. No sign of recent flooding.

And a zoom. The white stuff looks like chalk to me, but would you get a thin smear of the stuff so close to the surface?

No change by the time I paid a second visit later on.

We had decided that it would be convenient to take a light meal in the middle of the day and a heavy meal at the end. And it occurred to me that this was an opportunity to see how other people did lentil soup. 

I eventually found tinned soup in M&S, but it was rather a sad display, I think mainly of own brand. So I moved over to Waitrose where I found the rather more attractive display rather more easily. And they could do a lentil and bacon soup from Baxter's.

The first point of interest was that, given the very Scottish branding, why was there a Polish address (middle panel) on the tin as well as a Scottish one? Gemini explained that Baxters is an international operation and that they do indeed have a factory in Poland, a factory which handles their pickling and preserved vegetable operations. Unlikely to be anything to do with the lentil soup which is made in Scotland - and for one reason or another Baxters include them in the corporate side of their retail packaging.

The second point was that the soup was made in two parts. One part was put through a blender the other part not. This made the soup generally smooth, but with a bit of texture. This worked rather well. Something that I might try.

The recipe was not that different to my own, but they add starch in the form of potato and corn flour. Plus small amounts of tomato, parsley, pepper and flavourings not further specified. The net result was quite acceptable, but a little highly flavoured for my taste.

But certainly convenient and at £1.50 or so a tin not expensive. With two tins plus some bread making a decent lunch for two.

PS: I was slightly surprised to find that the Audrey Baxter mentioned on the tin is not just invented for marketing purposes: she actually exists and is the boss at Baxters. Maybe she really does know something about soup. See references 1 and 2.

References

Reference 1: https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/opinion/columnists/5880556/audrey-baxter-keeping-things-fresh-key-to-success/. The source of the snap above.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baxters.