I recently signed up to Farmer’s Direct. (Well, to be totally accurate, they hooked Husband. I can’t leave him alone for a second. We were at Westfield the other day, I turn my back for two seconds and he buys all this stuff from the Dead Sea Salt stand.) Farmer’s Direct is freaking me out. Every Thursday a box of fruit and veg arrives on my doorstep. I never know what’s going to come, which some people might regard as a lovely surprise, but it does my head in. I write a precise shopping list every week for all the dishes I plan to make. It’s done with military precision. A surprise box just blows the whole thing apart. So, on Thursday, I got a bunch of silverbeet, a bunch of basil, a leek, some dirty potatoes (I hate dirty potatoes), some onions and some zucchinis. And I became all panicked about how I was going to use them before they wilted. So yesterday was spent in the kitchen making pesto, plus cream of spinach soup. Husband was disparaging about the spinach soup in theory, but ended up really enjoying it with some sourdough toast. We just had it again with the Sprogs for lunch. They tucked in, despite it being green. And it was even better on the second day, with an extra sprinkle of salt on top. Here’s the recipe, which is a modified version of an old Gourmet Traveller one, but I used silverbeet instead of spinach, chicken stock and water instead of vegetable stock, one less leek, and no green lentils, celery or creme fraiche as I was determined to cook with my existing pantry and fridge ingredients.
CREAM OF SPINACH SOUP
INGREDIENTS: olive oil; 1 onion, diced; 1 leek, sliced; 2 cloves garlic, crushed; 4 medium potatoes, peeled and diced; 750ml chicken stock; 750ml water; 1 bunch silverbeet, green parts only; 1/2 cup cream.
METHOD: Heat 2tbsps olive oil in a large, non-stick pot. Cook onion, leek and garlic until soft. Add potato and cook without colouring for 10 minutes. Add stock and water and a tsp salt. Bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Add silverbeet, simmer 5-10 minutes until soft. Add cream. Blend until smooth. Serve with bread and butter.
PS I also added 1/2 tsp of chipolte chilli powder to give it a bit of kick.
housegoeshome 
luv farmers direct… been gettin it for a few months now…
Do you get good quality stuff? Some of mine a bit manky.
ring them if u think its not up to standard… i had a leg of lamb that had less than a week til expiry & they just credited my account… theyr pretty good with it…
Have to say that I’m loving your soup recipes. We have a “soup night” every Tuesday and I was running out of Ideas.
Wow, thx for boosting my stats – you’re like a machine! I’m trying to make a soup a week too. The spinach one is better the next day, it lets the flavours develop. And it’s a wild green colour!!