Most of these bottles have been sitting on a shelf above our kitchen door since about three days after we moved in, in 2001. They looked good at the time and they’ve just never moved since. The limoncello bottle was added after we went to Rome in 2014, but I think that’s the only change. And yes, our plaster is artfully decaying.
Enmeshed in the first major bout of marking of the year, today was the first day for quite a while where I never left the house, so you weren’t getting anything unusual. Dinner wasn’t eaten until 8pm, so this was a definite slow cook, but this particular recipe needs time. And plenty of herbs.
It’s not just plums…. The apples are doing well this year, as are the leeks, and is that even a couple of beetroot poking up from the soil? Sure is. None of this makes a big dent in the food bill but it’s still satisfying.
A tasty pasta dish, being prepared by the good chefs of the Eagle pub on Farringdon Road, London. She’s allowed one bit of pasta to escape, but I’ll let that pass.
“I know I present as red. But inside there’s that little bit of green that’s always been on the verge of coming out.”
On 6th October last year I was hauling myself up Yewbarrow in the Lake District and about to go to Canada for a week, but no similar adventures are taking place at the moment: this is the sixth shot out of seven to be taken in Hebden Bridge and the fourth in a row indoors. But at least the garden is producing. The monster fruits to the right may or may not be a function of these being pictured in a silver bowl.
It’s three-quarters of an hour into the afternoon, he’s still in his dressing gown and wearing odd socks. Guess a first year at uni hasn’t changed Joe all that much.
Summer fruits and rosemary. All picked from the garden just before this picture was taken: and all eaten, one way or another, within an hour afterwards. Most enjoyable.
Life becomes increasingly homogenised, and every egg you buy from the shop now seems to be brown. But Clare gets eggs from someone she works with, who has a farm in Calderdale, one of those where you risk running over truly free-range chickens if you drive past, and she doesn’t add dye to their feed to get the desired level of brownness. I love the gentle blue colour of this one, and pure white is also often seen. (And brown too, as you see with the other one.)
No other veg is quite so purple as beetroot. Not this rich, vibrant purple that stains everything around it, anyway. And in such a grey, alien-looking container.
Being 42 