Hot Pot...Chimney Pot

When it's cold and damp and bleak, like it  is today, and I want a something hot and savoury and quick for lunch and I want it NOW I make this soup - different every time but it always hits the spot.

Put a tablespoon of miso paste, a tablespoon of tahini, a teaspoon of vegetable bouillon powder in a pan, add boiling water, yesterday's left over veggies ( today it was brown rice, broccoli and shredded neroli cabbage) and a tablespoon of any curry paste you have in the fridge  - today it was Thai green curry paste and the end of a jar of chermoula that I made last week.

Fry or poach an egg and float it on top when the soup is piping hot... sprinkle with a fresh herb...today it was  Vietnamese basil because I have loads of it in the garden.

It definitely fills you up till tea time.

My last appointment of three today is the chimney sweep. He arrives,  smiling and cheerful out of the rain, dressed in black t-shirt and jeans, with some sooty smears on his face and very black hands, gold rings on his fingers and a gold chain round his neck. He's carrying a bucket of brushes and tools, a  zipped up bag of long rods, a white sheet which he lays down and tapes to the hearth and then tapes a black cloth bag across the opening of the fireplace.

He slots the rods together, one by one, with the flat brush attached to the end and feeds it through a hole in the black bag and up the chimney flue till it pokes out of the top  like a neat stork's nest.

All the soot comes falling down into the grate. He sweeps it up into a white plastic bin liner which he ties up and leaves for me to dispose of.

I make him a cup of tea.  No sugar he says, I'm keeping the weight down.

He tells me has lost two and a half stone in the last year cutting out carbs and sugar - following Tom Kerridge's Dopamine diet book.

Apart from some black sooty finger prints on the white front door handle you wouldn't know he'd been here.

Painting of Warbler by Angela Moulton, Chicago

I wanted the chimney to be swept because I could hear birds chirruping inside very close to the grate and I was afraid there was a nest as well.

But chimney sweep assures me there is no nest...there would be twigs falling down...and the sounds of the birds are being carried down and amplified from the top of the pot. And as there is an old radio aerial stretched across the chimney it's a good spot for them to perch.

 Well at least I have a clean chimney now and I don't need to be afraid of lighting a fire and roasting a poor little bird inside.