Hearty Kale Tomato Beans and Fennel Soup for the cold weather.
This is a copy cat Marks and Spencer's Kale Tomato Beans and Fennel Soup.

Soup.

How do you like your soup?
Do you like creamy soup?
or just a plain clear soup?
with some meat?
or just vegetables?

Eastern/ Asian kind of soup?
or soup from the western world?

Seems like never ending soupy question from me :D.

Why soups are our comfort food

I think it's safe to say that all of us, regardless whether you are brought up in east or west, we will have some kind soups in our diet.

Soup for all occasions.
Soup when we feeling under the weather.
Soup taken as comfort food.
Soup as starter.
Soup with noodles
and many more variants of soups.

And for this post, I am sharing with you, Kale Tomato Beans and Fennel Soup.
I was inspired to re-create this Kale Tomato Beans and Fennel Soup, based on our trip to the UK.

Holidaying in Scotland and London 

For at least 2 years, we casually talk about making a trip to London as our family holiday destination.
I was looking forward to take my family down memory lane, taking them around streets of London, streets that were once so familiar to my younger self.

However, due to work commitment, 'the boys' were not able to join.
And not wanting to wait another year, it was decided that this would be 'girls' trip.
We started our journey in beautiful Edinburgh, then we drove around magnificent and majestic Scotland before we took British Rail down to London, where we spent 11 days in late September 2018.

It was good to be back in London, despite the aching feet at the end of each day!
The happiest person was my daughter!
Apart from the shopping frenzy, I am sure, one of her memorable experiences to take home from this trip, and I am again sure, she will remember forever,  was to be able to stand in the crowd, watching a live football match of Chelsea vs Liverpool game.

Only one slack, she is a Liverpool FC fan but my good old friend from uni, managed to get us season ticket sitting amongst Chelsea fans!! Our seats were 3 rows away from the goal post... we were that close :P.

It was funny watching her trying to conceal her excitement and disappointment towards Liverpool, while standing amongst the loudest, swearing, hard core Chelsea FC fan!
Well ... its better than nothing and its worth it.

The idea behind Kale Tomato Beans and Fennel Soup

Back to my food story :D

After much shopping and walking about, I was too tired to cook. All we want was a quick bite and put our feet up and ready for the next day.

Most of our food shopping was done in Marks and Spencer nearby.
We were blown away by its cheeses and its vegetarian friendly food selections in there.

We had cheese toasties or sandwiches and ready- made soup for dinners on most nights.


Among the tasty food from Marks and Spencer, is this Kale Tomato Beans and Fennel Soup.
Marks and Spencer's soup selections are superb.
I had a taste of this Kale Tomato Beans and Fennel Soup from big tub, and my daughter finished the rest of the soup. Its healthy and tasty.


Since 'the boys' missed out on our UK food journey, so I decided to re-create this Kale Tomato Beans and Fennel Soup, and with my daughter's help as the QA/QC (as she had the most of the soup, anyway!! LOL)

I made this Kale Tomato Beans and Fennel Soup many times in my kitchen, back in Perth.
Its easy to make and this Kale Tomato Beans and Fennel Soup has lots of fibres and I would say its healthy too.

One star ingredient in this Kale Tomato Beans and Fennel Soup, and it's worth mentioning, is the fennel seeds.

Fennel seeds has the least usage in my cooking.
I use it sparingly, to make syrup (for drink).

However, without fennel seeds, Kale Tomato Beans and Fennel Soup will be just an ordinary vegetable soup.

Kale, borlotti beans and cannellini beans have not much taste in them apart from texture.
Tomatoes are sweet and sourish.
Fennel seeds in Kale Tomato Beans and Fennel Soup gives the soup a different kind of sweet.

Try it both, with and without fennel seeds...
You will taste and know the difference straight away :P



I hope you enjoy my blurb of our trip to Uk and my take on Marks and Spencer's Kale Tomato Beans and Fennel Soup.
What I have in plan, is to re-make food that we had in UK.

So stay tune, more to come...

Video on How to Make Kale Tomato Beans and Fennel Soup

And hope you enjoy this Kale Tomato Beans and Fennel Soup video too.
What do you think of this ASMR video?
To view with sound, just watch in full in my Youtube playlist.