Category: Food
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Handed my four year old a slice of ham for his lunch.
“Yay! Pink chicken!”
Now we know what he meant yesterday when he turned his nose up at spicy chicken and said “I like pink chicken!”
Spuds Up!
We harvested the last three of eleven potato bags at the weekend. A decent crop, and very tasty.
Highlights were regular watering and earthing up (using homegrown compost) with my kids, and big kid’s tenth birthday party where his friends got to (among other fun activities) harvest the first three bags and take home a potato bag each.
Fond memories of going potato picking with my mum in the Lincolnshire Wolds in the early 1970s.
Unusually productive morning.
- taught big kid how to convert fractions into decimals and percentages and vice versa
- voted for Mayor of London, constituency London Assembly Member and London-wide member
- bought some fruit and brown baps
- collected big kid’s prescriptions and recycled his expired epipens
- got six freshly baked garlic naans from my local naan shop
- got some decent exercise
Nine year old said he wanted to grow some potatoes, so we planted chitted seed potatoes in bags tonight.
He said he didn’t know it was so much work!
Dishing It Out
Following on from the pots and pans incident, my wife has decreed that the bamboo plates and bowls I bought as child-safe alternatives to our regular crockery are in fact likely coated with melamine and, therefore, toxic.
She’s probably right, although only for hot food. I had noticed that my hot food tasted a bit funny using these, but I think they’re fine for sandwiches and such.
She claims her eggs taste better (“like childhood”) cooked in our new stainless steel frying pan. I used it to cook an omelette for the first time yesterday, and it was undoubtedly the best omelette I’ve ever tasted. Is that possible?
Too Much Pressure
Inevitably, as I sit here in the cafe next to my son’s swimming lesson, unable to drink coffee because the cafe is permanently closed, my mind wanders and starts thinking about coffee.
For most of my adult life, I’ve started the day with a cup of tea. Regular English breakfast tea. PG Tips, Tetley. Milk and sugar.
Tea was always my preferred drink, but I did like a cup of instant coffee or two later in the morning, but only if it was one I liked. I wasn’t fond of Nescafe or the other regular blends.
A few years ago, I switched to Rooibos (redbush) tea, and never went back. I also started appreciating real coffee made in a French press, and later got my own Aeropress. What really sealed the coffee deal, was discovering fresh coffee beans that aren’t burnt (Pact Coffee).
About three years ago, I backed a Kickstarter campaign to build an affordable, portable espresso maker, CoffeeJack.
Now, I’m not one of those people who backs a lot of these types of things, although it wasn’t my first or last. I understand that it’s not like ordering from Amazon or anywhere else. You’re backing a project with money in the hope that it’s successful and that you end up with a product that works as described. There’s no guarantee.
Now, CoffeeJack delivered about three years after they got my money. Which is a long time! They had lots of problems along the way, including, of course, the covid pandemic. So fair play to them for getting their project finished at all. And it was worth the wait, in my opinion. They produced exactly what they promised, and for six months I had two cups a day of the best coffee I’ve ever tasted.
Sadly, just when I thought I’d cracked it, I cracked the bayonet on my CoffeeJack. Too much pressure, to quote The Selector.
Bolognese!
Last week, we had a new front door fitted.
That morning, I took it upon myself to prepare a bolognese before the doormen arrived so that we didn’t need to get in each other’s way, and so that we had something to eat for lunch for the next few days.
I make my bolognese in a 12" frying pan and cover it with a grease splatter fine mesh to let it cook slowly for a few hours. When the doormen arrived, that’s exactly what my bolognese was doing.
What I didn’t realise, until it was too late, is that the dust from their drilling and general doormen work was settling on the stove top in front of my bolognese on the back of the stove.
This was brought to my attention by my wife, who was already in a state of being very upset by the new door hanging to the right and not the left like her old door.
I inspected the bolognese and the splatter mesh cover carefully for signs of white paint dust similar the to very evident white paint dust sitting on top of the stove.
I honestly couldn’t see anything, although the bolognese did have quite a sheen (although this was after I’d just added some milk to it).
Anyway, my wife refused to eat it, so I had no choice, really, but to eat all of it over the next four days.
If anything, it tasted a bit spicier than normal, not in a bad way, and I have not grown any extra fingers, yet.
Baked bread with my little kid using my pizza dough recipe (substituted wholemeal flour for white flour).
Turned out nice enough that we both ate it.
