"Mum, what kind of soup are we having today?" Two small noses peek under the lid. "Oh no, another invention!" This moan of disappointment makes me drop my ladle, and I would like to sign my children up for weekend dinner at an eatery. Maybe if they had tomato soup followed by borscht and sausages and then crepes they would stop complaining at the table. Then comes the next reflection: I'm so naïve! Children always find a reason to complain, even if there is tomato soup in their bowls; it is tasty, known and popular but ... the noodles are not the right shape, and so the griping begins 

I see little sign of hope that in the future when the kids are adults and have their own family my efforts will be appreciated and they will remember my culinary inventions. Maybe even sometimes call me up for a recipe... Let's do a reality check and come back to our whiners at the table.

It took me a long time to get hold of the recipe for soup with tomatoes, chickpeas and pearl barley which I prepared recently. It turned out that the traditional way of passing on the recipe on paper was more efficient than e-mail. The electronic recipe reached me many days after the soup was only a memory.

Ingredients:
100g of dry pearl barley
1 tin of chickpeas
1 carrot
1 small celery root
white part of a leek
1 fresh red pepper
5 tablespoons of tomato sauce
1 tablespoon of mixed herbs
1 tablespoon of fresh rosemary
half a teaspoon of herbal pepper mix
1 teaspoon of sweet pepper powder
1 litre of vegetable stock
1 tablespoon of butter
salt and pepper

Wash the pearl barley and boil it in the vegetable stock for 10 minutes. Cut the carrot, celery root and leek into strips and lightly fry in butter. Add the veg to the pearl barely, then add the minced rosemary and boil for 10 minutes. Add the tomato sauce, strips of pepper and chickpeas. Spice it up with pepper powder, mixed herbs and salt and pepper. Boil for 3 minutes to make the vegetables firm and crispy.

Enjoy your meal!