Sprout leaf, bacon and stilton soup

I created this recipe yesterday and almost made it up as I went along. The reason behind it is that I was given a bag of sprout leaves over the weekend to feed to the chickens. These weren't the outer leaves of sprouts but rather the large leaves that grow out of the stem and are normally thrown onto compost heaps when the sprouts are picked. Since my chickens then decided to turn their beaks up at the sight of a few of these leaves, I gave some thought as to whether or not to put them into the compost bin or turn them into a food source for ourselves. They were, after all, in good shape and are perfectly edible. So I came up with the idea of making them into soup.

I used water that had previously been used to boil vegetables. Most people throw this away. Don't do that! Many of the nutrients are boiled out so throwing away the water means you are throwing away some of the best parts of your cooked veg. Into the water I added some chopped potatoes, some tomatoes, a small garlic, chopped sprout leaves, some vegetable stock powder, a couple of rashers of chopped bacon and a large teaspoonful of marmite. This was then boiled until the potatoes were softened.

I then added about 100g of chopped stilton and reheated the soup for a few minutes. Finally, I blended it before serving it.