A visit from Daniel, 11 years in Aberdeen, recipe for tomato soup

Daniel finally came home for the weekend this weekend, much to the delight of all of us. He said there were no events he particularly wanted to attend in St Andrews, so he came home instead. His halls of residence are very active socially, which has been wonderful for him as he’s made lots of new friends and is busy most evenings and weekends. It has been nice to have him back at home and to hear more about his happenings.

He’s thoroughly enjoying his courses. He’s taking four computer science modules and two maths modules this year. In one of the computer science modules he’s been learning Linux commands which he’s really enjoying. The programming is object oriented programming in Java which he’s already quite familiar with so I think he finds this fairly easy so far. In the evenings there are often games like pool and table tennis as well as board games and dungeons and dragons.

We went for lunch yesterday at Foodstory Café then for a walk in the park where we remembered it has been just over 11 years to the day that we moved to Aberdeen. Elizabeth and I recreated the photos yesterday in the same playground at Duthie Park which we visited on October 2nd 2014.

Elizabeth at 4, 2nd October 2014.

Elizabeth at 15, 4th October 2025.

Me at 39, 2nd October 2014.

Me at 50, 5th October 2025.

I hadn’t seen those old photos at the time of taking the new ones yesterday so it’s a total coincidence that we’re both doing the same thing 11 years later – Elizabeth with her mouth open and me with my arms out.

We walked through the winter gardens at Duthie Park.

We picked blackberries. I’ve been enjoying them on my porridge each morning.

Today I made tomato soup for lunch for Daniel before he heads back to St Andrews on the train, and Elizabeth made pancakes for breakfast. He’s lost a bit of weight since he moved away which is not good. I thought he would put on weight given the catering at his halls of residence but I think he often skips breakfast as he doesn’t wake up in time and on weekends they don’t do dinner so he must fend for himself. My tomato soup is superb as I use tomatoes from my greenhouse. It consists only of tomatoes, one carrot, 4 cloves of garlic, coconut cream (make sure you get 100% coconut to avoid ultra-processed food) and two teaspoons of basil.

I use 100g of a 100% coconut block ( but don’t add any water as tomatoes have sufficient water and this will make the soup creamy.

It is quite honestly the best tomato soup I have ever tasted and I’m not usually that complimentary of my own cooking. I don’t remove the green stems from the tomatoes – you can eat those and they add a freshness to it. It helps if you have fresh tomatoes you can use too, of course. I use coconut cream to make it vegan. I believe a traditional tomato soup contains cream from cows but I find the idea of forcibly impregnating cows every 18 months then taking their babies away from them just after birth a most abhorrent practice and totally unnecessary in a society of plenty like ours. It is the most gross exploitation of the female reproductive system and for the frivolous reason of satisfying human tastebuds as it is not at all necessary for our survival in the 21st century. Give my tomato soup with coconut cream instead a try.