Frieda's vegetable soup and silverware

The big treat for us when we hit fresh young vegetables is Marilyn's mother's special spring vegetable soup. Everything has to be young and fresh - don't try this from the crap in the supermarket. You need little carrots that still have the dirt on them, baby beans with their tops and tails still on, peas that you have to peel yourself and potatoes with that tissue paper skin that they get fresh out of the ground when they are still young. I had to scrape the potatoes last night because they were organic crap - in this land of the granola crunchers that's about all we can find so they had a lot of scab on them because the eco-freaks don't know about disease management. Other than cleaning the scab off the spuds you want to leave everything as natural as possible to get all that sweet spring flavour.

• cube the potatoes into about 3/4 or 5/8 inch cubes and start them boiling but just barely cover them with water
• start sauteeing some chopped green onions but be careful not to burn them - they should be just barely showing some brown when you add them
• add the carrots next in about 5/8 or 3/4 inch pieces
• top and tail the beans and cut them into the soup, you should have the peas shelled already so you can add them at the same time
• add water as necessary but don't get carried away because you are going to add cream at the end
• chuck the sauteed onions in whenever they are ready
• use as much chopped dill as you want for flavour. This is a Marilyn addition and we like a lot of dill with new potatoes - Frieda's original recipe didn't include dill so suit yourself.
• when the potatoes are cooked mix a flour paste to thicken the broth slightly
• when you are ready to serve add creammilk
• obviously salt and pepper to taste - I like a lot of fresh ground pepper on it

Here's a recipe you won't find in your average cookbook.

• you'll need an aluminum foil pan or just a piece of aluminum foil
• mix equal parts salt & baking soda - roughly 3 tbsp of each to do the pile of silver in the photo - dissolve in some water.
• put the foil in the bottom of the sink with the silver on top of it or put the silver in the foil pan and put the whole works in the sink.
• cover the silver with hot water from the tap
• mix the dissolved salt and baking soda into the water with the silverware
• pour a kettle of boiling water over the whole works and watch the tarnish disappear before your eyes.

If the silverware is really bad you may need to wash it first to clean it up so the salt and soda can get at the tarnish. We use our silver every day so all Marilyn does is pull it out of the drawer and let the chemistry go to work. For those of you who are worried that some mysterious chemical reaction is going to destroy your silverware consider this: would you rather abrade the tarnish off along with some of the underlying silver using a conventional silver cleaner or would you rather use chemistry to remove only the tarnish?