A multitude of wonderfully crunchy carrots are still to be found among the weeds that have prospered in my vegetable garden this year. The onions were puny and malformed, the tomatoes underwhelming but for some reason the carrots and beets thrived. (My guess is that cool, rainy summers are good for both carrots and weeds, but someone who knows about these things can correct me.)

I still haven’t figured out what to do with the beets (I am the only one who eats them) so they are sitting in the raised beds squeezed together (why thin?) among the stinging nettles and countless other unwanted plants I intended to weed out all summer. But the beets can wait; this is carrot week at our house and we’re putting them in everything from muffins (L’s doing) to soup and eating them steamed and braised with a carrot-friendly mixture of my home-made curried raisin jelly and chicken (this week it’s all turkey) stock (which is reduced to a wonderfully sweet glaze and poured over the steaming carrots just before serving.

The carrot hit of the week, however, has been a really simple soup with cauliflower and carrots made with the three or four litres of turkey stock a sautéed onion, a couple of cloves of garlic and a nice hit of hot curry. I purreed it all with an immersion blended and threw in a cup or so of left-over whipping cream for richness. Topped off with some toasted baguette and pine nuts (toasted with the baguette slices in a little olive oil), it was a satisfying dinner all by itself.

Now, on to the beets.