Quick carrot soup

Grab organic carrots and small onion from organic veg box. Wash or peel carrots; top, tail and skin onion.

Carrots take longer to cook than onions. Cut the onions as usual but cut carrots thinly – the smaller the bits, the quicker they cook.

Simmer veg in butter or (olive) oil. Enough to comfortably coat the veg. (suggest half ounce of butter/1.5 tablespoon oil).

If you have this spice, add a teaspoon of ground coriander or coriander seeds, crushed. Then a mugful and a half of milk or plant milk. Bring to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes or until the carrots are soft.  Season with black pepper, generously, and salt, carefully – start with a quarter of a teaspoon, then taste-test.

My favourite kitchen implement is a hand blender which is about £20 new or can be found in charity shops as my current one was.

So I whizzed the carrot soup and that is why it has that bubbly look in the photo.

It tasted sweet and creamy.

As I cooked, I thought of a blog I had just read.

Alberto Gonzalez, the founder of GustOrganics, New York’s 100% organic restaurant, writes on Maria Rodale’s Maria’s Farm Country Kitchen:

“We live in the most powerful country in the world.  However, America’s food system is probably one of the weakest on earth….About 98% of the food grown in America comes from factory farming.”

Recently, BBC TV’s Panorama investigated the power of supermarkets – four control 80% of the UK’s food.

Supermarkets and factory farming are intrinsically linked.

The soulless rows of biscuits brands, cabinets of ready meals, chemically sprayed salads and trays of birds that never saw the light of day are all the product of factory farming.

The land, animals and farmers bear the true cost to make the price seem cheap – but the profits real. Supermarkets make 55 p for every pound we spend, according to Panorama.

It’s a gloomy January day, the sky thick-grey again.

But humans tend towards balance, not extremes, and I see hopeful signs with this Guardian news report:

Ethical consumer spending bucks recession with 18% growth.