
Gazpacho – a chilled Spanish tomato soup (Title Photo)
Dear Readers, now that winter is here, is there anything nicer than a big bowl of soup? It’s a great way of getting more vegetables into your diet, and also for using up produce that’s getting towards the end of its shelf life. Here in the UK we apparently threw away 9.5 million tonnes of food waste last year. My grandmother would have found that unfathomable. All over the world, people eat soup as a celebration, and as an everyday way of getting nutritious food into their stomachs. Plus, it’s a well-known fact ( by me at least) that if you eat soup, you’re likely to eat less of other things because it’s very filling.
So, for this week’s quiz, I’d like you to match the soup in each of the photos to its name, and where it originated. To help you, I am going to name the main ingredients under each photograph (though I do appreciate that there are many regional variations for some of these dishes, so bear with me!)
You will have until 5 p.m. UK time next Friday (21st January) to submit your answers in the comments. When I see your answers I will ‘disappear’ them, but as usual write your answers down first if you don’t want to be influenced by those who came before. Answers will be published on Saturday 22nd January.
So, if you think Photo One is Vichyssoise, and that it’s from Scotland, your answer is 1)A) i).
Onwards!

1) Bread, kale, beans, tomato

2) Leeks, potatoes, cream

3) Beetroot, dill, sour cream

4) Rice, lemon, egg

5) Smoked haddock, potatoes, cream

6) Dried fruit (apples in this case but could be cloudberries, lingonberries or other fruit)

7) Many variations, but always includes tamarind

8) Tomato, lentils and other beans, rice, small amounts of meat, spices such as saffron.

9) Kale, potato, chorizo

10) Shrimp, andouille sausage, often with okra, thickened with a dark roux
Soup Names
A) Vichyssoise
B) Caldo Verde
C) Harira
D) Avgolemeno
E) Rasam
F) Cullen Skink
G) Gumbo
H) Fruktsoppa
I) Borscht
J) Ribolita
Countries
i) Scotland
ii) India
iii) Southern United States
iv) North Africa
v) France
vi) Portugal and Brazil
vii) Northern Italy
viii) Scandinavia
ix) Greece
x) Eastern Europe
Before giving you my soup answers, I’d just like to thank you for all the fun, information and entertainment you gave me and mine during the course of last year! I am far from your most faithful responder, but I read all your blogs and always coming away having gained something from the experience. I was, as we say in the family, right chuffed to get a call out for quiz participation. Again, I do most of them, but frequently manage to forget to post them …. I am so very impressed at the amount of interests and activities you cram into your clearly well-organised life. You are quite an inspiration. In France, we can continue to wish a Happy New Year until the end of January, so: May I wish you a very Happy New Year, full of good things, but especially health!
The soups, this time aided by my son Robin – and no checking or investigating, which pleases Mark, who would regard that as cheating:
1) J vii
2) A v
3) I x
4) D ix
5) F i
6) H viii
7) C iv
8) E ii
9) B vi
10) G iii
Now you’ve made me hungry ….
Regards,
Rosalind