The Farmstead

One of the many things I spend my life forgetting until I'm reminded of it is that nice food perks up my mood like nothing else. Having treated myself to Real Vegetables today (I'm sure the novelty will wear off when they go weird before I can use them, but currently they're very pretty and green in my fridge) I made a maaaaaaaajor variation on jewelled couscous. Half a stock cube's worth of stock, generous pouring of couscous to sit in a bowl under a teatowel; then all my left over bacon, an onion, chestnut mushrooms and some green beans in a frying pan with some cumin, turmeric and ground coriander (♥) from the nice person on my floor who said I could use her spices (must replace them for her if any run low). Somehow I managed to get the onions to go all sweet and caramelised and the mushrooms were all nutty and the beans were all crunchy and the couscous was nice and chicken-stocky... It was almost like eating at home again, only out of a pyrex bowl.

(In case you cannot tell, dear readers, my attempts at cooking for myself tend to come out as a variation on sludge, usually with bacon and onions in but with little other colour. Sometimes there's pesto and very sloppy pasta. Possibly peas.)

Next up: making a pseudo-madras the way the curry paste jar actually suggests, only with mince instead of diced beef. And possibly some sugar-snap peas as extra...

...I fully intend to be like my grandpa (apart from the having grandchildren bit) and take people out to meals - starting them with champagne - and not resist when the pudding menu has a Chocolate Martini and an Espresso Martini on it. Because they need to be tried. And then, when the Espresso Martini turns out to be a bit like pondwater, I shall simply congratulate whoever picked the chocolate one and be very pleased with myself and my sticky toffee pudding anyway.

(My mum and I were taken out for dinner with champagne and amusing not-Martinis served in Martini glasses - we made the people at the next table jealous, apparently! It was great.)

Unfortunately (or possibly fortunately, which is quite sad) I shall not have stories to tell about World War II and my friend who was in the 'Camel Corps'. Nor about how I used to write into the Financial Times because they got the figures for BP wrong.