Emergency food

I'm running low and don't want to shop until I go to Inverness on Thursday. (I'll go to Tesco - they've kindly sent me a £4 voucher (if I spend over £40) and a 5p off per litre of fuel voucher too.

So here is my emergency food for tonight.

Smelly pink Potato and Spinach soup
INGREDIENTS
A bowl of boiled potatoes found hiding at the back of the fridge
4 or 5 spinach plants. Chopped very finely- the stalks are getting a bit woody.
Half a yellow pepper - be sure to discard the squidgy bits around the edge.
A tomato
A couple of onions - those two will do - it's only soup.
A bulb of garlic - if you've got it use it.
Stock cubes herbs and spices as the whim takes you.
Cheese
Oooh look there's some celery left as well

METHOD

1. Throw the tomato away - it's too far gone.
2. Do your best to chop the onion - but be careful soft slippery onions are dangerous. Chuck them in a large pan with butter/oil to fry off
3. Peel as much as the garlic as you can be bothered with and add to the onions
4. Chop the pepper and chuck it in along with the chopped celery - you can do this one handedly with a bit of practice.
   
5. Add to the pan the white bits of the potato - greeny blue or furry bits can go in the compost along with the tomato, the edge of the pepper and the blood stained onion skin.
6. Add a random selection of stock cubes, herbs and spices - but not too much of that one! Oh dear.
7. Add water.
8. Finely grate the cheese. Pay particular attention to the really hard bits - you've lost enough blood already - and they are surprisingly difficult to dissolve.
9. Add the spinach
10. Whizz up with a whizzer
11. Add the cheese and stir until you get bored of waiting for the hard bits to dissolve - a good tooth brush should get them off your teeth later
12. If, after all, you decide you have the courage to investigate the white fuzzy lump in the freezer and it turns out to be peas - add them and boil for a bit longer. If it turns out to be salt cod, think very, very carefully.
13. Best served in a clean bowl (the last one!)
    
14. Allow to cool while you have a good big dram of the cheapest whisky (which is all that's left). It'll cushion the blow.

I hope you laughed. In a few weeks I'll have perfected this recipe, maybe it'll help to recession proof me.

What an extraordinary recession! Surely we've never had a recession before that smashed into us with so little warning? Many of us have wondered for years how the credit card economy was going to end - I wonder if we're about to find out.