So what have you eaten?

One of those lists that spread meme like through the "desperate for something to blog about" blogging community. It's a bit American in emphasis and I've had to look up some of the things 'cos I'd not heard of them before.

We've been busy, but nothing particularly note worthy, I've got a new camera, the weather has been shocking, finally had a viewing on my flat and possibly there will be an offer but probably not an acceptable one, still we can always let it out for the duration, people still need to live in places.

Anyways back to the meme - in bold is what I've eaten, in italics what I would never consider passing across my lips

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush Aubergine dip
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. Peanut Butter and Jelly (jam) sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses - very smelly french cheese probably wouldn't consider eating but you never know
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns - Dim Sum
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda - not yet but it sounds delish
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat - not yet but something else I want to try but goat is quite hard to get round these parts
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk

45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martin - haven't tried it but only because I never knew you could do such a thing
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse - not sure I think I may have done so in France one time
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa - need to try this
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

- I have also eaten jellyfish tenticles, kangaroo, mutton and green bagels for St Patricks Day

And the big shout going out is for Cosmic Varience where I saw this first

Week

I find composing blog entries directly in the Blogger create post form, saps the inspiration from me. I've had a few blog ideas this week but once I've not been able to get much further than opening up the web page before the ideas desert me. To avoid this happening again I am trying to write this blog while watching the telly not the laptop. Fortunately I can touch type, unfortunately I'm not the best typist out there so I've had to go back to correct the errors.

So this week, On Wednesday I took advantage of the new flexi scheme at work and left at 2:30 pm to go into town to see the solicitors about the information they needed from me for the HIP and other stuff, then my bank to tell them that I've changed my name and that I had moved (no need to rush these things) and then finally on to the estate agents to correct all the information that they had put in the particulars - phantom doors and missing radiators were the most glaring.

Friday saw another colleague of mine leaving for pastures new, she won't be replaced here because all our posts are relocated to the South West at some point in the future and no one wants a job with that level of insecurity. The office I work in used to have 16 people in it now there will only be 7 and most times it's emptier than that. We went to the pub to see her off there were plenty there but this is where my ears hinder me, they started to hurt and I couldn't hear people clearly enough to carry on a conversation so I ducked out early as there is no fun in not hearing peoples drunken conversations when you are sober.

Today we went into town, Simon got a new wallet and we looked at the small continental market. These markets are getting to be much of a muchness and they bear no resemblance to markets on the continent that I've seen.



We had my version of Jambalaya, no sausages or prawns, mushrooms and saffron instead and and emergency substitution of basmati rice for american long grain but it was very nice with white wine and watching Giles Coren and Sue Perkins dice with heart disease as they eat their way through the seventies some of it was very wrong but other seventies favourites are probably still favourites today, like prawn cocktail, steak diane and black forest gateaux.

Mmmmm black forest gateaux.

Brockly

Brockly, originally uploaded by Jane Goth.

When I first saw this I was stood there asking my friends "have you heard of brockly? Is it like a methi?" Turns out this is the phonetic spelling of broccoli. We were at the Spiceland restaurant off the A1(M) near Sawtry, it's an easy drive from work and at £5.95 per head for all you can eat, it's hard to go wrong. Throw in a wide variety of different curries, bhajis, rices and something and chips for those who can't stomach Indian food, it gets better. Then take into account that it almost all tastes delicious then it's a major bargain. They don't have a licence so they operate on a BYOB for booze. They do an aubergine bhaji that is crisp, light and melts in the mouth. None of the flavours in the food were bludgeoned by heat from chili you can taste the bay leaves, the cardamom, coriander and cumin. They even do all you can eat puddings though at lunch time this means fresh fruit salads, which is no bad thing. It's worth coming off the A1 for, after all what's the choice, good food here or dubious rubbish at the "Xtra" near Peterborough.

Cooking With Teh Internets

We had a curry tonight, Rogan Josh with Sag Aloo, healthy style which meant I cut down on the oil. Although I have many cook books they are mostly written by people who have many assistants and forgotten what it is like to cook a full meal without someone to do the chopping and washing up for you. This is where teh internets comes in. Google on any type of food and a plethora of recipes will come up, catering for all whims and requirements: vegan meat loaf - bloody pages of recipes I tell you!

I hit gold for my Rogan Josh with Route 79's recipe, it was delicious and very simple to do if you are not allergic to a bit of chopping of herbs and vegetables, I will be going back to try more of his recipes as they look lovely. Sag Aloo is thanks to a recipe website I found, I just looked of a version that I liked the look of and more importantly I had the ingredients too!

The Sausage Division

Britain is starting to split into two nations: the ingredient obsessives versus the food ghetto - Kathryn Hughes discusses the differing attitudes to food in the UK.

Seeing as Si and I have just both started to loose weight the slimming world way (it's worked for me when I've stuck to it before, it's just that pie and chips have an attraction that is hard to over come) I found this the article interesting. The medja been very full of this survey that found that British children don't know where their porridge, bacon and eggs come from. It's a bit of a non story in that it comes from a survey done by an organisation "Linking Environment And Farming (LEAF)" who's aim is make us all aware of this, what better way of getting into the news by showing that we don't, allegedly.

I think the real issue isn't not knowing that bacon comes from a pig and beef from a cow it's that many people don't know what to do with it when they have the ingredients when they have them and also people not being able to make healthy choices when it comes to food because they do not have the knowledge to let them do that. To put that right will require education but where from? I've heard it said that's because they don't teach home economics in schools any more but, based on my own experience of HE classes and what I witnessed in school at the time, mid 1980s; when they did do home economics it wasn't much cop. I did it for three years and I don't think we were once asked to made a healthy meal, In my third year they taught us how to prepare ready meals. My mother had a running battle with my brother's HE teacher as the recipes were so poor. A friend who did the course up to O level complained that there was more emphasis on presentation than there was on taste, quality or healthiness. Now I'm a good cook and Simon's a good cook, (our problem is that we both like food a lot and we cook really nice tasting food which we then eat.) We both have mothers who are excellent cooks so we've known what to aim for in terms of excellence and we've also learn about health and quality from them. But my mum says that she because a good cook because her mother was such an awful one. My maternal grandmother was not interested in food at all, it was something you put on the plate to fuel the body, it may have been edible in the strict sense of the word but it didn't taste very nice. I don't think that it's not always true that it's the mother that teaches, actually I'm self taught when comes to cooking I refused to learn at home because I knew that one day I would have to learn to cook so why bother until then, I didn't learn until I went to university which is why I don't do white sauces, didn't get taught, can't be bothered to find out.

But I also think that lack of food knowledge is only part of the problem we also seem to have a very poor attitude to food in this country, we don't appreciate taste, flavours or even presentation it seems that quantity is king we are greedy and we like bulk. We use the excuse of time not to cook, or to prepare something healthy. It is just an excuse and it is a beast that should be slayed. In the length of time it takes to zap your average TV Dinner say 7 minutes, noodles could have been cooked and a minute steak flash fried it doesn't take that long to do, I've never met one of these busy working mothers with not time to cook, I work with busy working mothers and they all do, the only people I have heard say they have no time to cook have been sad sack singles with plenty of time and appalling diets.

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Could Snow

I rang my Mum today, just to see how she was and because I usually ring her on a Sunday after the Archers if I'm about. She said that it was threatening to snow in darkest Cambridgeshire. I did not ring her because it was Mother's day, you see my Mum doesn't believe in it. She says that if you need a day in the year to remember your mother on and treat her properly because you've ignored her for the rest of they year then please don't bother at all. This was my paternal Grandmother's view as well, so there has never been a tradition of bothering with Mother's day as far as I remember. I suppose I will have to carry on the tradition myself too.

I personally think Valentine's day is a load of crock too, there's nowt wrong with a card but leave it at that the rest is over priced tat. It is far nicer to receive a bunch of flowers just because "it's a Wednesday and they looked nice and the sun was shining and I was thinking of you..." than because all the supermarkets and florist shops are telling you this is how you must show your love.

Anyways that was not what I was intending to blog about. Yesterday as well as going for a tramp in the woods (we had a good time I'm not sure whether the tramp enjoyed it though. Ah the old jokes they don't get much better than that! :D )We went out for dinner in Historic King's Lynn by the Quayside as the restaurant is a bit posher than your usual rubbish we decided to scrub up, this is me all scrubbed up and ready to go as taken with my new camera. I forgot to take a photo of Simon be assured that he looked very dapper too.

Today I Have Been...

Mostly driving about the Lynn area, which means I've managed to miss most of the two 6 Nations rugby matches on today. I caught the last 15 minutes of the England - Italy match, although England won the game they looked very pedestrian against the Italians. By all accounts they were not the same team that beat Scotland so well last week, a match I missed fortunately for my poor wee Scotland supporting nature. I'm watching the last few seconds of the Scotland Wales game as I type this we are gonna win but apparently this has been a poor game too. The weather looks miserable up at Murryfield which could explain the lack of flowing rugby. But at least we won! :D

Brmmm Brmmm

I've got to the point where I don't really need that many more refresher lessons for driving maybe one perhaps two more but I do need practice so I get a chance to do the stuff I've relearnt and to do the maneuvering that you don't learn in lessons. I did my first ever multi-story car park today, the thought of going round one had always been on of my stress bunnies but doing driving around one in reality was far less stressful than I had first thought.

Mmmmm

Simon is creating a culinary masterpiece in the kitchen as I type which is already beginning to smell very tempting, chilli just the thing for a dreak, dull wintry day, he's gonna serve it burrito style I think, he's just wizzed up the salsa in the blender it all smells gorgeous. I suppose I best offer to help him, although it's a bit too early for yardarm time.

Porridge

I'm currently enjoying a bowl of porridge, being no masochist, it's been sprinkled with cinnamon and a pinch of brown sugar rather than the more edgy alternative of salt. Porridge is another dish that reminds me of childhood, when we were little we often had it for breakfast, it was my brother's favourite meal. It reminds me of cold winds and kite flying and using the old sofa as a climbing frame and trampoline.



A lot of my childhood memories from Scotland are of the winter, darkness and cold outside, warmth indoors and the black and white tellies. I remember envying the bigger girls who had platforms and flares, now I'm deeply glad my mum said no. I think the cliché is "We were poor but 'appy", well we weren't actually dirt poor we lived in a biggish house, (probably where I got my love of high ceilings) but the mortgage was at the edge if not slightly beyond what could be afforded thanks to the oil crisis. But we were certainly happy and very loved.

I suppose everyone thinks that their childhood is "normal" until they talk to others, one of my old bosses used to cheerfully tell the office stories of her childhood that would leave the rest of us dumbfounded at the casual, thoughtless cruelty of her parents towards her and her sister. She didn't seem to realise that their behaviour as she described it was sometimes beyond the boundaries of what was acceptable even then, let alone now, she saw it as normal for her childhood.

It's only as an adult that I've begun to truly appreciate how great being loved and cherished is.

Bananas

I like bananas but bananas don't like me. I've known that I have an allergy to them for a while now and I've had to reluctantly avoid them.

Yesterday lunchtime I had my lunch in the canteen of one of the contractors I deal with. By mistake I took a pudding that had bananas in it, instead of leaving the pud when I discovered this I thought, "ack, it will probably be OK as they've been cooked or something" It wasn't I had the usual symptom a burning feeling in my mouth and my lips and tongue feeling funny which I've had before and it's dealable with. What was not dealable with was the stomach cramps and diarrhoea that hit that evening and I had cramps for the rest of the night and woke up with them today. So although it now seems to have passed, I was up to work today and I've been feeling more than a bit sorry for myself.

Eggshell Soup

I love seafood, there is not a fish, cephalopod, mollusc or marine crustacean that I haven't liked when presented on a plate with some buttered brown bread and a wedge of lemon. From cod, splendidly battered with chips, mushy peas, wedge of lemon, cup of tea and buttered brown bread to make chip butties with to oysters on ice with little dishes of chopped shallots, Tabasco sauce, wedge of lemon, glass of champagne and buttered brown bread. I've never had a complaint. I even have a special knife in my knife draw for shucking oysters on the off chance that Waitrose ever have them reduced.

But now, I have no one to eat oysters with. My nearest and dearest don't like them. Simon doesn't really do seafood and went pale when I once asked him if he like oysters. My mother doesn't like shellfish nor do my brother or sister in law. My niece might do but she will only be six tomorrow and would probably want them with chips.

I suppose it goes to show that people's taste in food are not hereditary I don't know where I got my liking for seafood from because I seem to be the only one in the family.

Where I am not the only one is celery. Now with celery both my brother and I like the stuff, but my father didn't like it and my mother loathes the stuff so much she was gobsmacked when she saw me happily chewing on a stick or six at my father's staff and families Christmas party when I was little. She tells me that she had thought that her dislike of celery was so strong that somehow I would have inherited it. She said that it taught her that children were not just chips off the old block and we did have our own quirks and tastes. That or I was a changeling, so she made me eggshell soup* until I pointed out that it wouldn't work as I had already learnt to talk.

*Eggshell Soup

I road tested this story on Simon and he had never heard of eggshell soup, so I googled on it and there seems to be no reference to the folklore on the net either. Now I'm sure I haven't made it up I even have images in my mind of illustrated pages of the story, so I'll recount the story to you, I was told it is Scottish folklore.

If you suspect that the fairies have swapped your baby for one of theirs, to prove your suspicion you must make eggshell soup making sure the baby is in the room watching you. The fairy bairn will be so curious about this that it will forget human babies can't talk and ask "Why are you making eggshell soup mother?" What you have then got to do is to stick the red hot poker, that you had prepared earlier just in case, down its throat. Miraculously the changeling will disappear and the human baby will reappear in the cot unharmed.

Alcoholic Marinade

We are having fajitas tonight, I've just made a marinade for the chicken strips. Rum, honey, lime juice, chilli flakes, coriander cumin and of course garlic, the whole lot is now in the fridge I'll give it an hour or so before cooking it. I would have made a salsa tonight to go it the fajitas but I forgot to get the tomatoes and Si wasn't feeling brilliant so we finished the shopping fastish in order to get home.

He is looking a lot perkier now, working out how to use Aperture 1.5 on his laptop, So hopefully he'll be strong enough to pour us both a drink come yardarm time, I've still got some of the rum left or there is some Pimms from summer and there is coke and lemonade cooling in the fridge. Si has a very sensible attitude to drink; he is most abstemious compared to past boyfriends and I like that. I've reached the point where the night before doesn't justify the hangover the next day. Thankfully I think I've found my groove where I can have a sociable drink or five but not get lairy or maudlin Si not being a huge drinker is nice because he encourages me in this sensibleness.

Having said all that though - Charm and Poise has the perfect book in her vintage collection.

Norfolk Crunchy Pudding

Simon "made" our pudding tonight, I stuck luck in Sainsburys getting a load of rump steak for £3 per kilo so most of that is in the freezer the rest is in Si and I. That was nice with a wine sauce, mushrooms and tomatoes. About an hour ago I heard Si rummaging about in the kitchen, when I checked he wasn't up to something I offered assistance I was told I wasn't allowed in. It's an old secret recipe he couldn't share with me he called it Norfolk Crunchy Pudding. And very nice it was too creamy yet crunchy, the colour of Norfolk sand but with fewer shells and bits of seaweed.

Food

To me one of the finest smells there is is that of onions and garlic being gently sautéd in good olive oil. When I smell them I am taken back to university days when I got my first cast iron casserole dish and the cooking I used to do there. Cheap cuts of beef stewed slowly with bay leaves, chilies and curries, the staples especially when entertaining.

I'm entertaining tomorrow, Simon and a couple of friends Dave and Anne. I'm going to do my poorman's version of coq au vin with rice. With olives as nibbles and something or other as pudding, not sure what yet, probably ice cream.

Fanny Craddock would not approve but who cares. For me the point of entertaining is talking to people and having fun not slaving over a hot stove cooking food that has to be served with military precision for it to be at its best. I know I am a good cook I'm just not interested in cooking very fancy food. Keep it simple and simple presentation works for me and I haven't had any complaints yet.