Root Vegetable and Barley Soup with Bacon

Another clean out the veggie bin soup (the recipe calls for red onions, turnips and potatoes and carrots -- but no reason not to throw in some parsnips or other root veggies if you have them). The soup gets its flavor from dried porcini mushrooms, caraway seeds, dried thyme (I'd use fresh if I made this again), and bay leaves. And of course bacon.

It's a good work-out for honing the knife skills, but the flavor was sort of "meh" -- maybe because my bacon was more fatty than meaty -- or because that dried thyme in the back of the spice drawer had to be three years old. I don't know. But then I remembered some grated Gruyere I had left over when I made a frittata or something a few weeks back -- tossed some into each bowl with a bit more salt, and that soup perked right up into a sort of veggie version of French onion soup.