Mushroom soup, originally uploaded by ibeepix.

With the weather slowly getting colder and colder and winter just around the corner , my craving for soup has returned. There really is nothing better than to warm yourself with a nice bowl of fresh veggie soup.

Today I made mushroom soup. I adapted this recipe from ‘Simply recipes’ to make it vegan.

ingredients (Serves 4)
500gr regular white mushrooms, cleaned, quartered or sliced
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp unsalted butter
2 Tbsp minced shallots
1 Tbsp chopped fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 bay leaf
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
470 ml cups Oatly, which is a cream made out of oats, in stead of the heavy cream
350 ml vegetable stock
1 teaspoon cornstarch dissolved in 1 Tbsp water
Minced parsley for garnish

Chop mushrooms fine in a blender of foodprocessor and add lemon juice, but keep a few mushrooms aside to bake separately.
Melt butter in a big sauce pan and lightly sauté shallots on medium heat. Add mushrooms, thyme and bay leaf, sauté over moderate heat for 10-15 minutes, or until the liquid that is released from the mushrooms disappears.
Add salt, pepper, oatly and vegetable stock and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
Add cornstarch and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Correct seasoning and add more lemon juice to taste.
Bake theleftover mushrooms in a little butter, and season with salt and pepper.
Serve sprinkled with a little parsley and baked mushrooms.

Lille by Night, originally uploaded by ibeepix.

Exhausted by stress at work I decided to take a little weekend break in Lille, France last weekend. I had already heard some positive things about Lille and since it’s not too far away and very easy to reach by train it was the perfect last-minute city trip.
And what can I say, Lille is great! It’s a lovely little town, beautiful old buildings, lots of little cobblestone streets filled with shops and loads of nice restaurants. It’s very close to the Belgian border and seems to have the best of France and Belgium.

Friday night I met a friend from Lille. He invited me to have dinner at a cheese restaurant called Le broc. It was a very nice experience. The restaurant smelled of cheese, and we had a very tasty cheese fondue and some local beer.

On saturday I ventured out getting lost while walking the small streets of the old quarter, called Vieux Lille, doing some window shopping. I discovered they have some incredibly yummy looking bakeries and pastry shops, especially Meert and L’abbaye de saveurs. And there is a wonderful tea salon called ‘Tous les jours Dimanche’, they have a big selection of teas and a long list of delicious home made pies. I had the pistachio nut raspberry pie and it was finger-licking good.
In the evening I took my tripod and camera and went out to take some nice shots of Lille by night. I discovered that there are hundreds of very cosy looking restaurants in the Rue de Gand, only after I had already had dinner

Sunday morning I took the metro to Wazemme to have a look at the famous Marché du Wazemme, a market that is supposed to be quite exotic and big, but I was a little bit disappointed. I arrived there by 10 o’clock and it seemed like they were still setting up their stalls, maybe because it had rained before. It was also not as exotic as I expected, most stalls just sold a lot of junk. Compared to the Marché du Midi in Brussels, this market was a big waste of time. Maybe this market is better in summer…

I returned to the centre of Lille where I a had a great lunch with a friend from Bratislava before we both headed to the train station for our trip back home…