cheat’s minestrone

The Guinness World Record for most balls juggled is eleven.   It was achieved by Alex Barron, an eighteen year old British fellow, who managed 23 consecutive catches in a “qualifying” juggling run on 3 April 2012.

On the twenty-fourth catch, he dropped the ball.

The moral of the story is even the best juggler in the world cannot continue catching balls.  There’s a finite number of things that humans can keep suspended in the air before something comes crashing to the ground.

The person who is most in need of this lesson is, of course, me.  I keep taking on more things, only to discover there are so many hours in the day.  Last week, things were looking shaky and I feared it was all about to come crashing down.  So I made myself put the less important balls down for a while.

Do I need to lose that last four kilos right this minute?  No.
The farm website has  functioned fine for several years, does it need to be fixed this week?  Probably not.

I was surprised at how quickly I started to feel better (of course that could also have been my blood sugar level rising).  

Cheat’s Minestrone

Ingredients:
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium brown onion, diced
2 carrots, diced
handful green beans, chopped
2 chorizo sausages, sliced
1 ham hock
250g soup mix (grains, lentils etc), rinsed
140g tomato paste
400g diced tomatoes (I used fresh, but tinned would be faster)
4 tbs rice
150g curly fettucine
2 cups cabbage
parsley
salt and pepper to taste

Method:
In a large, heavy-based saucepan, cover the ham hock and soup mix in cold water.  Bring to the boil and simmer until cooked (about forty minutes, depending on your soup mix).  If you’re in a hurry, you can do this step in a pressure cooker and have this step done in twenty minutes.
Remove the ham hock; once cool enough to handle, chop the meat into pieces and return to the soup, still simmering on the stove.
Heat a splash of olive oil in a fry pan and sauté the onion, garlic and carrot.  Add the sautéed onion mix to the soup pot, along with the tomato paste, diced tomatoes and cabbage.  Using the same frying pan, brown the chorizo slices and add it to the soup mix.
Twenty minutes before serving add the rice, fettucine, chopped green beans and parsley (reserving a little for garnish).

Ecco!  All the flavour of minestrone with minimum fuss.  One of the things I love about this recipe, is you can turn it off at a few points during the process and check sight words, supervise arguments and put on another load of washing, then bring it back to the simmer and continue on.

Recipes like this one are a busy mum’s best friend, because sometimes you even need to put the dinner ball down for a bit.

are you a juggler?
ever made a world record attempt?