We've had an unusually cool summer here (something for which I am very thankful); this meant that all the vegetables and other crops were behind in their growth cycles, and so harvest time came later than usual.

About a mile northeast from our house is a vegetable farm offering U-Pick i.e. you can pick your own vegetables from their fields, take it to their stall and have it weighed to pay by weight. No hothouse vegetables, no ripening in artificial conditions, just fresh, ripe vegetables on your plate that were still growing this morning.

With the nip of autumn in the air early mornings and at night, we decided to try a hearty soup with our freshly harvested bounty, and this recipe from 1000 Vegetarian Recipes From Around the World seemed just the ticket; for one thing, it looked as if their ingredients-list was written while checking off the items we brought home from the farm!

Of course, we take most recipes as merely a suggestion - I might be more guilty of that than my chellelu, which is why she is a better baker than I - so we adjusted the proportions toward more tomatoes and onions, but fewer capsicum and less garlic.

The general principle is this: roast the vegetables, then roughly chop them. Add them to vegetable stock, season and simmer until the flavors are blended. The recipe calls for a quarter cup of cream to be stirred into the soup when it is removed from the heat; our household was split on that however, so we placed a creamer on the table and let each person add to taste - if at all. Also on the table, a block of parmesan and a grater, and chilli flakes.

Onions, tomatoes, zucchini, bell pepper and brinjal starting to take on color
spread out on the roasting pan, drizzled with olive oil and herbs The magic part comes from a familiar quarter to us, but a new one to this kind of cuisine. Who says that tempering can only be applied to Indian food?

I use olive oil for this dish (since it used olive oil throughout). After heating the oil, I added a few black peppercorns that I have crushed, a broken red chilli and a pinch of the herbs mentioned earlier. I use fresh rosemary, so a little goes a long way because the fresh flavor is a lot more intense than the dried one. Adding this to the soup just before bringing it to the table intensifies the wonderful flavors.

Some notes and hints:

Do not crowd the vegetables on the baking sheet while roasting it; leave space around each piece so it can brown all around.

If you have a barbecue grill outside, feel free to roast any or all the vegetables out there; they have if anything an even more intense flavor.

I felt in the mood for something with a Persian taste. A colleague of mine brings these wonderful stuffed vegetables - hollowed out potatoes and zucchini etc. - that his wife has made to potlucks at work, and I started looking for a recipe online. The only recipes I could find though were non-veg, stuffed with meat and egg, while my colleague's wife makes it with a pure veg stuffing.

Playing around on the Persian cooking sites, I did find a couple of other interesting recipes though. One of them was very appealing because I could almost taste the flavors on my tongue just from reading it. The problem was that it asked for something found only in Middle Eastern stores, and I had no idea where to start looking. So, I decided to adapt the recipe into its current form as something we can easily make at home.

I found it very difficult to make this soup; now don't misunderstand me - physically everything is supremely easy, but I needed to enter into a different mindset to make this. As I cooked, I kept wanting to add coriander or cumin, a chilli or two, some lemon juice. I had to keep fighting myself to stick only to the flavors in the recipe. Every time I would taste it, thinking that I might need to add something that I am more used to cooking with, and every time the taste would be so wonderful that I would leave it as it is. In the end, the only thing I did add was some more mint, and salt.

The recipe is quick, easy to make, delicious and full of protein; it is just the ticket for the evening when the family is asking for "something different."

Note: The recipe calls for dried mint. The flavor is more intense than that of fresh mint, and it has another intriguing fragrance in the dried form. If you only have fresh, you will need about a cup to replace the dried herb.

My husband has an eye for a bargain; at least that is his story.

He has been known in the past to buy things from these direct marketing TV ads; you know the type: "But that's not all. If you call in the next 17 minutes, we will give you another one, absolutely free - you just pay shipping and handling; that is a ****-dollar value for just three easy payments of $39.95!" When they arrive, he opens them once, and then store them away, never to be touched again.

Now when one of these ads come on the TV, I just change the channel very quickly!

A little while ago he came home lugging a 25 lb bag of onions. Twenty-fi-i-ive pounds! And since then we have been trying our best to find ways to use up these onions.

Everybody in the house have pretty hectic lives - there are some days when the only time we are all together under the same roof is when we are sleeping. On days like these, it is important to have an easy meal that is quick to prepare and filling. Now that the weather has turned colder, we often turn to thick and hearty soups to fit the bill.

This particular soup again comes from 1000 Vegetarian Recipes From Around the World - I have previously referred to it when I made the Roasted Vegetable Soup. The more I use this book, the more I like it; the recipes tend to be straightforward and well-illustrated, and more importantly, they work.

We've made a few minor changes, mainly in the spicing and the cheese biscuits. Yes, this meal includes a recipe for really quick and delicious cheese biscuits - totally delicious.

Note: The parmesan cheese can be replaced by sharp cheddar instead.