I was really excited about this week’s challenge until I realized that all the recipes I wanted to try from books I read would require a trip WAY out of town for ingredients. Lamb stew with dried plums? No lamb. Treacle tart? No treacle or golden syrup. I went through so many internet searches I got tired of it and decided to make things easier on myself. In my days of buying paperback mysteries, I found a series by Diane Mott Davidson featuring a caterer who is also an amateur sleuth. I’ve only read one of these books (Dying for Chocolate) so I decided to go with two of the recipes in that book (one for cooking, one for baking). Then I couldn’t find the book. I still can’t find the book.

Luckily, another blogger has made some of the recipes from this book recently, so I was able to find the recipes online. This one is Goldilocks’ Gourmet Spinach Soup. I did modify the recipe slightly. For some reason, scallions give me headaches, so I substituted half a white onion for the scallion in the recipe and I didn’t add any extra onion at the end.

I also made a delicious loaf of bread!

Kind of looks like a dog bone, doesn’t it? Plus you can see flour and spinach sprinkling my cabinets, which is awesome. This is a bread called Everything Loaf that was absolutely delicious. It’s not book-inspired or anything; I just thought it would go well with the soup. And it did. So there. Despite the awful presentation (my bread braids need work) this was one of the tastiest homemade loaves I’ve ever made. I did not use caraway seed in the topping, and I added dried minced garlic.

My rating: 6 out of 10 for the soup. I don’t really like mushrooms, and I think some additional cream cheese wouldn’t be amiss.

Hubby’s rating: 8 out of 10. He would have liked more cheese as well.

Difficulty rating: 3 out of 10. You have to chop and cook the spinach yourself, but this recipe is pretty easy.