Feeding volunteers

Today we collected another volunteer from town to join the 3 already here. It is the most we have had at one time and will be a test for me to see if I can maintain my sanity.
These helpers (so far) work hard and need a good helping of food. It's the trade for work agreed upon when joining the various organisations who promote volunteering. It can put a serious dent in your wallet if you don't plan ahead and explain the way things work ahead of time. A bottle of jam or chutney can be polished off in 1 sitting if you aren't careful.

We make soup often and so always make extra and freeze it. This is our lunch every day with bread and sometimes some cheese or pickles. (For dinners, since we rarely eat meat, there are our usual fare of curries, stews, roasted veggies etc.)

My celery plants were almost completely eaten by birds so I bought celery today for a little different soup. And a bit of food recycling!
Granny cooked a gammon (ich!) given to us at christmas, for dinner and then sandwiches tomorrow. It gets boiled but the water wasn't wasted, it is in the soup!
And I made pickled onions with the last smalls from last years' crop. The salt used to draw the onion juice out, gets spread out on a plastic tray and dried into onion salt. Some of it also went in the soup.
Some broccoli stalks and leaves, some stinging nettles and a large bunch of herbs finish this into a delicious green soup packed with nutrients and bound to warm up the volunteers tomorrow.

May melt some parmesan crusts onto stale bread as croutons to float on top too.