29th November

Here's a conundrum based on a true story.
You want to cook a supper for a group of friends who are expected at different times over the course of an evening - something warming and simple.  Chilli con carne  might seem like a good idea; here's the catch, among your 8 friends are 2 veggies (chille sin carne?), one of whom doesn't eat mushrooms and of the omnivores, one doesn't like beans.  So you cook a pot of meat, a pot of veggie chilli without mushrooms and a pot of veggie chilli without beans; everyone can mix as they desire.  Then friend number 7 turns up and you remember she doesn't like peppers....
But thanks so much J, it was great - as was the whole weekend.
Maybe the moral of the story is that although vegetarians eat vegetables and carnivores eat meat, omnivores don't really eat everything!

22nd November, Monday

For the last 3 days have had extremely healthy and virtuous breakfasts.  Grated pears (I think they were windfalls, but do not seem too bruised), oats, spelt muesli, dried cranberries, sesame seeds and raisins, wetted with fruit juice.  This is one of the better things to do with the oh-so-adundant pears as the taste and texture are effectively hidden.  I tried a morsel of grated pear alone and it was unpleasant; acidic and flavourless.  We followed this with a Waitrose richly fruited hot-cross bun each.

On Saturday we went shopping and had lunch at Bills in Reading.  We both chose the burgers, which were on the whole nice, slightly tough, but a good char-grilled flavour with nice salad accompaniments.  The chips were excellent, hot, crispy, salty and served in a metal cup and wrapped with red tissue paper.  Even though I gave some away to the ID, I have not dared to weigh myself since.

Sunday was a dull, grey day that we spent at home.  I put the small chiilies that had been strung along the utility room shelves to dry into a shiny glass jar, where they looked lovely.  The big chillis from the previous summer I scattered into some pot-pourri; quite pretty and this delays throwing them out for a few weeks.  I have not yet found a way of successfully drying the big chillies; whilst looking good, they seem to become mildewey inside – maybe best used for non-edible decoration anyway.  Canted (is this the opposite of decanted?), dried thyme and mint from this summer’s garden into jars; until now the herbs had been drying in brown paper bags (reused from the farm shop) on the shelves near the boiler.  Also found some lavender that the Id must have put there many moons ago, was starting to put this into bags as moth-deterrents in our wardrobes, when noticed that there were dozens of tiny mites crawling on the worktop.  Burned the bag with the lavender on the Id’s bonfire, where it blazed very satisfactorily; and I can only feel pleased about the death of the insects.

That evening we ate confit of duck.  When planning the meal, thought I would cook this with frozen peas; the concept of combining the best of French and English convenience food was strangely pleasing; sufficiently so in fact to make the concept more important than any culinary considerations.  However, I later rediscovered half a red cabbage lingering in the bottom of the fridge, so cooked this with vinegar and juniper berries; this was probably a better result for the meal than peas.  I used some of the duck fat to roast potatoes in their skins with garlic and rosemary. We also had chucks of spiced pickled pear that I had made a few weeks ago.  For dessert, damson crumble, using the damsons from our tree that had been frozen whole.  Quite pleasing to touch when they first come out of the freezer as they were like marbles.  Not sure if they had as much flavour as when fresh, but they had certainly lost none of their tartness.  This was all so enjoyable, we opened a second bottle of wine, which from today’s perspective, seems like a mistake.

19th November, Friday

We were both at home today and I wanted make soup for lunch, ideally using up some lardons that were on date and possible using a butternut squash that had been in the cupboard for a couple of weeks.  As so often happens, Nigel Slater came to the rescue with a pumpkin and bacon soup recipe. Perfect.  Frying onions and garlic, in the sunny kitchen, practising zumba-esque moves, singing out loud to an old Texas record, whilst gently heating coriander and cumin seeds; multi-tasking doesn’t get much easier.  This soup also used up the chicken stock we had made earlier this week, some crème fraiche that was on date and 2 chillies from our abundant supply drying against the utility room shelves.

The soup when done was a rich yellow colour, quite hot (our home-grown chillies pack a punch) and much enlivened by the crisply fried lardons.