yes, but is it *enough* ?

Browsing through some photographs today, I found this one – taken on 20 January this year. I uploaded it to my Flickr account, and captioned it thus:

bigger version here.

alas, poor spoon

Some years ago, we had a lovely wooden spoon – it had a thin head and a long handle, and when I wanted that spoon, it was exactly the right spoon. One day the handle split; Pete mended it with sticky stuff, but it was never the same, and it broke again – with great sadness, we consigned it to the place where wooden spoons go to die.

I was stirring the soup this morning, and was yet again reminded of how much I miss that particular wooden spoon. I have 8 or 9 wooden spoons – some of them have long handles; some of them have thin heads. None of them has both.

Whenever we see a new kitchen shop, we rush in and rummage through their wooden spoons – thus far, we remain disappointed.

It’s all so sad.

note: the spoon in the illustration is nothing like the lost spoon.

last week’s meals

Somehow, there was a pleasing flow to last week’s menus, and I thought I’d note it as it happens so rarely.

We started off on Sunday with a lovely organic leg of lamb from the food market, roasted as per my recipe here.

Monday: Moroccan fish tagine, although I left out the tomato – I used monkfish and prawns. Lovely.

Tuesday: cold roast lamb, rather too much mashed potato, and spiced red cabbage.

Wednesday: more cooked lamb, stir fried with pak choi, spring onions, garlic, ginger, some wizened mushrooms which I soaked in boiling water for half an hour, oyster sauce, tamari, five spice – you know the sort of thing. Worked really well.

Thursday: venison sausages with some more of the red cabbage, and more mash.

Friday: a tub of goulash from the freezer, which went with the seemingly inexhaustible red cabbage (although we did manage to finish it then), and some rice

Saturday: a rather interesting use of potatoes, cream, gruyere and the last* of the lamb, which I shall write up later.

* Last? well almost; I boiled the bones up yesterday, and it will shortly be turned into this week’s soup.

the depths of the cupboard

I have a narrow cupboard on the wall next to the cooker, in which I keep various oils, vinegars, ketchups and so forth. In a mad fit I decided to go through it today, to make some space.

The record for something past its sell by date in this house is now held by a bottle of Waitrose teryaki sauce, which bore a label stating “best before Jan 1999″.

It still smells fine, mind you!

Bristol Slow Food market – 5 march 06

As I’ve said before, we only get a decent food market here in Bristol on the first Sunday of the month, so we tend to make the most of it. Here’s this month’s haul:

• 4 packs of organic mutton (mutton! rar!)
• 1 organic leg of lamb for today’s lunch
• um .. 6 packs of sausages. Pork, pork with juniper, toulouse, pork with cracked black pepper, venison and oatmeal (these are lovely), venison with marmite (the jury’s out)
• 1 potato sourdough loaf
• 2 raspberry and almond muffins
• 1 monkfish tail
• 1 undyed smoked haddock fillet
• 1 dried lime, a pack of saffron, a chai tea spice ball
• 1 camembert
• 2 duck breasts
• home cured Exmoor organic ham and bacon

That should keep us going till next month, I think.

and they call this cooking?

Spotted on a food blog I read, was this “recipe” for Lemon Pound Cake.

1 (18.25 ounce) package yellow cake mix
5 tablespoons instant lemon pudding mix
2 eggs
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/3 cup water
1/8 cup applesauce

Truly, American cooking is a wondrous thing.