Warming soup & Winter words

Colder days ask for warming soups, to warm our hands, body, to give comfort and nourish ourselves. Winter vegetables are great for nutritious soups. Pumpkin, carrots, together with ginger, vegetables broth, miso and herbs and spices. So easy to make! I never get enough of these simple soups.

For this soup

A bit of coconut or olive oil

4 cups of pumpkin (or mixed pumpkin/ carrots and other vegetables)

soaked lentils (optional)

1 tablespoon fresh ginger (grated)

1 bunch coriander (cilantro)

1 liter vegetable stock

400 milliliters coconut milk

Lots of sprouts as topping

1) Sautee the pumpkin/ carrots (and other vegetables if you like) in a bit of oil. Add ginger

2) Add stock and let simmer

3) Add coriander and coconut milk and blend

If you like to give it an Asian twist you could add some lemon grass. If you like it less creamy, leave out the coconut milk. Or add some soaked lentils to give it a change. So many different ways.

These past days I have enjoyed the winter writings of John O’Donohue. Like the warm soup, beautiful warm comforting words.

‘There is a quiet light that shines in every heart. It draws no attention to itself though it is always secretly there. It is what illuminates our minds to see beauty, our desire to seek possibility and our hearts to love life. Without this subtle quickening our days would be empty and wearisome, and no horizon would ever awaken our longing. Our passion for life is quietly sustained from somewhere in us that is wedded to the energy and excitement of life. This shy inner light is what enables us to recognize and receive our very presence here as blessing. We enter the world as strangers who all at once become heirs to a harvest of memory, spirit, and dream that has long preceded us and will now enfold, nourish, and sustain us’.

John O’Donohue/ TO BLESS THE SPACE BETWEEN US

‘All through your life, the most precious experiences seem to vanish. Transience turns everything to air. You look behind and see no sign even of a yesterday that was so intense. Yet in truth, nothing ever disappears, nothing is lost. Everything that happens to us in the world passes into us. It all becomes part of the inner temple of the soul and it can never be lost. This is the art of the soul: to harvest your deeper life from all the seasons of your experience. This is probably why the soul never surfaces fully. The intimacy and tenderness of its light would blind us. We continue in our days to wander between the shadowing and the brightening, while all the time a more subtle brightness sustains us. If we could but realize the sureness around us, we would be much more courageous in our lives. The frames of anxiety that keep us caged would dissolve. We would live the life we love and in that way, day by day, free our future from the weight of regret’.