Cold weather means soup time!

Since I moved to London, I've turned into an old woman in more ways than one – but the most apparent is my new love of soup. I think I've tortured my roommate with at least four pots of soup over the last four weeks. But making soup in England is – well – odd. The biggest hindrance is that you can't buy pre-made stock. No broth in cans, no stock in cardboard liter containers - the only option a budding chef has is bouillon. I tried some weird chicken goop in a packet, and I gotta tell you its kind of really gross. It is a high viscosity brown stuff that you're supposed to mix into boiling water. It tastes okay, but it is so weird that I think I'll just stay with OXO cubes, thankyouverymuch. Also, I will say right here that metric is SO much easier to use than the English system - but how weird is it that in England, they don't use the English system. Um, hello? It's really frustrating when most of my recipes are American, but I have other ingredients that come in Metric measurements. For instance: said Oxo cubes make 700 450 mL of broth. But my recipe calls for 5 cups of broth. So how many mL is in a cup? Um? Help? I feel like I did these conversions in 6th grade, but fuck if I know how to do them now. I've mentioned conversions.com before, and that website is really helpful, but it is slightly odd to be cooking and have your laptop next to you on the counter. But despite these hindrances, I'm currently enjoying a lovely bowl of White Bean and Vegetable soup, courtesy of the Simply Recipes blog. Yum.