Vegan MoFo Day 8: Moroccan Tagine

I was working late this evening and coming home on a dark cold rainy night, I needed some hot soup to warm myself up again. With no time or energy to start cooking, this was the perfect time to try out the New Covent Garden Food Co soup I bought at the supermarket last week. When I was a vegetarian, I ate a lot of New Covent Garden soups - they were a quick tasty option. I haven't bought one for the last 4 years, preferring to make my own, but this Moroccan Tagine caught my eye as I'm really fond of North African flavours. The soup has a great list of ingredients including tomatoes, onions, green lentils, chickpeas, long grain rice and various spices. To be fair it does say on the container that it's mildly spiced, but I was unable to taste much spice at all and ended up adding my own harissa spices using the Ukuva iAfrica Moroccan Harissa Spice Mill sold in Oxfam and other fairtrade shops at this time of year (I love those spice mills and now buy them two at a time so that they last me from one festive season to the next.) Adding more spices did improve the flavour of the soup for me, but overall I was rather disappointed in it. I think it's great that companies like New Covent Garden are producing soups that are suitable for vegans. I wonder if the reason that I didn't particularly enjoy it is because I've lost my taste for chiller cabinet soups since I started making my own. I would be tempted to use the list of ingredients to concoct my own recipe, or else I shall go back to my favourite Robin Robertson slow cooker Moroccan-style Chickpea and Lentil Soup from Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker.