Lynne Rees's Blog, page 18

Gifts: wood, ginger, orange

Hungry Writing Prompt 1Write a spontaneous list of the gifts you have received.
A doll's house, a silver locket, white tights, The Child's Illustrated Bible, pens, a leather jacket, a perfume the Queen was supposed to wear, chocolates in a silk covered chest with a dozen secret drawers, magnetic poetry, a maple tree, a Barbie birthday cake, a magic penguin, a blue pearl, a mug painted with a happy cat, a red heart-shaped balloon, love and kindness, laughter, chocolate buttons offered in the hot hand of a young man with Asperger's, so many thank yous, sunrises and sunsets, two rings, a home, words, running...
And the most recent gift I received? This.

A bowl that Tony made me from the branch of a tree. You can see the point on the left where it would have been attached to the trunk. I know. I'm lucky. And you'll be even more astonished when I tell you he created the basic shape with a chain saw. I know. He's clever! 
Hungry Writing Prompt 2Write a spontaneous list of the gifts you have given.
I found this list was harder to do. I'm going to go back to it when I'm in a quieter space. Perhaps we more easily remember the good things and kindnesses we receive than the ones we give to other people? But I did make Tony a gift this week. Candied ginger.

How far you believe in the efficacy of ginger depends on how much scientific proof you require. But you don't have to believe in anything to just enjoy these sweet chews. If you like ginger of course. But even if you don't you should still try one. You might be surprised. I was. And they do make my currently grid-locked throat feel better. And they are magnificently effective on a niggle of indigestion. And as far as 'candies' in general are concerned these have to be better than commercial ones made with gloop. (Science isn't my strong point.)
I should warn you this is rather a labour of love. But worth it.
what you need:
1/2 lb of ginger thinly sliced1/2 lb of golden granulated sugar
what you do:
All the smart advice for peeling ginger is to scrape at the papery skin with the edge of a teaspoon. That's fine if you're just peeling one or two fat knobs but a potato peeler is quicker and easier with a quantity.
Once peeled I use a hand-held mandolin to finely slice it. Then I cover the sliced ginger with water in a saucepan, bring it to the boil and simmer for about 45 mins until about a quarter of the water remains. 
Over a low heat add the sugar and stir until it melts. Bring back to the boil, then simmer and cook for about 20 to 25 mins. 
Drain the ginger (and keep any syrup for eating with vanilla ice-cream - oh yes) and toss it thoroughly in three quarters of the sugar. Then spread it out, as thinly as you can on a couple of non-stick baking trays, or trays lined with baking parchment, sprinkle with the remaining sugar and put them a very low oven (100 to 120 degrees) for about 90 minutes.  
I like to shake and shiggle all the ginger onto one tray at this point (see the photo above) and leave it to cool completely, for a few hours or even overnight, during which time it will get crisper, and then I tip it into a jar.
To be honest, as I'm typing this out I'm thinking, 'What a hack!' so if you live near me just pop in and try some! I quite enjoy making them and I might have a go at doing a similar thing with orange peel because I've just remembered that, years ago, someone gave me a gift of a china lidded dish in the shape of an orange which was filled with candied orange peel. 
It somehow managed to be a gift of opulence combined with everyday ordinariness: the exquisite china orange holding the skin of a fruit that we normally throw away. There's a metaphor in there somewhere. I just haven't worked out what it is yet.

Truth or lie?

Let's start with a food joke.
Four men take a week long hiking trip in the mountains and because none of them know how to cook, and none of them want to, they draw straws for who'll be responsible. The man who pulls the short straw tells the rest, 'Okay, but if any of you complain then I won't cook again.' 
That night they turn up for their first meal and he hands out bowls of a brown greasy gloop which they all taste hesitantly.
'This tastes like shit,' one of the men exclaims. 'But delicious!'
Now let's move on to this:


It's one of my easy apple desserts that I've written about before. I've been making it for nearly 30 years and I can't remember where the recipe originally came from. It's basically apples, cream, and cornflakes mixed with some melted butter and syrup to make a toffee topping. Yes, I suppose it's a bit 'nursery' which is probably why an ex-public school friend, now in his late 60s, had 'thirds' when I made it for a New Year's Eve dinner a couple of years back. I think it took him back to all those warm memories and feelings associated with nanny and nursery tea. But it is lovely. And light. And the contrast of flavours and textures really do work together. At least I thought they did.
Last Saturday I took it to a dinner party with friends. Tony'd volunteered a dessert and I wasn't sure of numbers so a bowl of 'Toffee Apple' seemed a like a good idea. 
'Is this Tony's contribution?' someone asked. 'Yes, but Lynne made it,' he said. 'It's apple puree, whipped cream, and a crunchy toffee topping,' I said.
'Oh, so basically sugar, sugar and sugar then?' came the reply. 
Sarcasm and injustice (it's NOT [foot-stamp] three layers of sugar!) although Tony said later that he didn't think it was meant as a criticism. As a writer I've (mostly) managed to separate myself, as writer, from my writing. You have to, in order to participate objectively in critical workshops. But it seems that the cook in me is still clutching her desserts to her like first born babies! 
Hungry Writing PromptWrite a scathing account of someone or something. Vent your spleen. And your liver and kidneys. 
The ego, being full of self-righteous air, is easily deflated. And re-inflates without too much of a problem. But I've also been trying to remember occasions when I might have been insensitive, or unintentionally mean, about other people's culinary efforts. Maybe there are people out there who will remind me. 
But the experience and the process of reflection have made up my mind that I will never refuse anything when I'm a guest in future. I'll take a small slice of the meat I'm not that fond of, or a spoonful of any uninspiring vegetables, and just a little portion of that bizarre looking dessert. I've decided it's just good manners to say 'yes' to every effort someone has gone to. 
Truth or lie? Sometimes you don't have to choose either.

My Granny's tarts, Michael Sheen, what a poet said, and other stories

Granny's oil lamp c.1930Story 1My Granny James lived in a house with no gas or electricity. The cottage was lit by oil-lamps. 'How did she cook?' I asked my mother when I was home in Wales last week. 'On a hotplate in front of the open coal fire, in saucepans,' she said. 'But we had an oil-fired oven too though I can't remember how it worked. But I do remember her baking Maids of Honour.'
Now I remember my mother's Maids of Honour from when I was a kid: a shortcrust pastry case filled with a dollop of jam, sponge mixture poured on top and baked. They were golden domes with sweet hearts and a perfect marriage of textures.
Story 2Last night I watched Michael Sheen's 'Valleys Rebellion' (BBC 2 Wales) on iPlayer which juxtaposes the 19th century account of South Wales Chartists and the Newport Rising, 19 of whom were killed in a single day in their fight to gain the vote with the apparent political disillusionment in Wales today. But it's not the presence of apathy, Sheen comes to recognise, that keeps so many people in the Valleys from voting these days, but the absence of hope in a landscape of post-industrial bleakness, unemployment and poverty. The absence of hope? How can that be happening in a first world country in the 21st century? Something is terribly broken.
Hungry writing promptWrite about what you think is broken.
What a poet saidIn his long poem, 'Advice to a Young Poet'* the late Welsh poet and politically engaged writer and editor, Nigel Jenkins speaks of the importance of knowing where we come from, where we live:
Know your place. What legends and mythshave had their shaping here?What stories, novels, histories?And who have been denied a voice?
The Chartist movement was born from voicelessness: an increasingly frustrated working class who had no right to vote, no say in their harsh working and living conditions within a feudal system run by industrial capitalists. Their petition to parliament in 1839 asking for the vote for all men over 21 and a fairer electoral system, for annual elections, the payment of MPs, and the introduction of a secret ballot sounds eminently reasonable today but the petition was rejected by 235 votes to 46. In November 1839 around 5,000 men from the valleys marched on Newport. Did they imagine the violence ahead of them? The death and transportation of friends? Would they have gone if they'd known their militant action would not achieve any political end in itself? 
Other stories  Nigel Jenkins at Tre'r Caeri on the
Lleyn peninsula, North Wales, 2012If it hadn't been for Nigel Jenkins' encouragement I doubt I would have written Real Port Talbot. He believed in my ability to tell the town's stories before I knew I could. Getting to know the town, to quote Nigel again, 'its rocks, its soils', 'maps and histories', and 'those who filled their lungs here' changed me as a person and a writer. I discovered that the stories that prop up our past make us who we are. The history of our family, our community, our country and its people make us so much more than one person walking through life alone. And writing that book has inspired me to write another that will tell the stories of the lives and times of my great and greater grandmothers from Carmarthenshire, women who lived between 1750 and 1950, who saw Wales change before their eyes but had very little, if any, voice in those changes, or even in their own lives. 
Can hope start there? With feeling richer for knowing the stories of our past? It's probably too simplistic, after all, food feeds people, not stories, and Sheen's visit to the Rhymney food-bank illustrates the need for the most basic of practical help in some of the communities he visited. 
But on another visit he met with the United Valleys Action Group, people from the Rhymney Valley who have come together with a single voice to fight for their community through democratic channels. This is the manifestation of hope. And belief too. 
We all have to act. Inform ourselves. Take part in something bigger than ourselves. Our past maybe. Or our future. 
* from Hotel Gwales (Gomer 2006)

Eat, live, write

It's the sub-title of my hungry writer book (life stories, recipes and a year's worth of writing prompts) that'll be published in November by Cultured Llama but it's also how this week is expressing itself. I'm home in Wales for a week and every event with family and friends has involved food. Feeling hungry? I'm not anymore...baked salmon with a garlic cheese crustcupcakesliquid salted caramel truffleshot cross bunspasta bolognesebacon bappaprika chickenslow roast pork bellypear tart made with the shortest sweetest pastry by angel hands in Sosban, Llanelli
And I've only been here since mid afternoon on Sunday! 
And I have found stories too, clutches of them, all waiting to be written. One of the main ones we have spoken about, reminisced over, is the story of my mother's oldest friend, Fay, who passed away 10 days ago, aged 82. Mam was with Fay when they met their future husbands, who were also best friends, on a Saturday night at the Ritz Ballroom in Llanelli. Mam was Fay's bridesmaid when she married Ken in July 1952; Dad was the best-man. 
There was 6 months between them and they had known each other for 80 years, from the time my grandparents took rooms, around 1934, with their two year old daughter, with Fay's mother in Hafod Road, Llanelli. 
Joyce James & Fay Griffiths
before they became
Joyce Rees and Fay DaviesFay's funeral today was at the new catholic church, built on the same site as the one she was married in and just across the road from the old Ritz that's now a snooker hall. So many stories within an echo of each other.
At the funeral buffet one of Fay's granddaughters asks Mam, 'What was she like?' The first word out of Mam's mouth is, 'Loveable'. And, for me, that's what this picture is all about: the loveableness of girl-friends. Forget about the difference in fashions or hair, those entwined arms are the same 'loveable arms' that sixteen year old girls wrap around each other today.
Hungry writing promptWrite about something you loved about a girlfriend.
Funerals are oddly contradictory events: grief and celebration, tears and smiles, goodbyes and the hellos to people you might not have seen in years, decades, or never even met before. They are ends and they are beginnings.
They can also be revelations about lives we thought we knew. Because no-one knows all there is to know about us: we show and share different parts of ourselves to different people, through the moods and emotions, hope and fears, the history we live through, the roles and identities we pick up and cast off through the years.
And now, in this moment, and in her absence, Fay is suddenly much more than a grandmother with the story my mother is telling to the young woman whose eyes are glassy with tears, of how on Tuesday afternoons, half-day closing in Llanelli town, she and Fay would take the bus to Swansea to look around the shops then catch a show at the Empire Theatre. And she sees them I'm sure, those two young girls, arm in arm, laughing together, a war behind them and, as yet unknown to them, their plans for next Saturday's dance already being re-written. 

Beware of the Cat(s) and other stories

Door plaque in Monticchiello, TuscanyMoglet, Tussie, Chloe, Styx and Cocoa. The cats I have lived with. But only one of them ever attacked a human, although that was less of an attack and more of a mistaken (by the cat) invitation. Cocoa, a chocolate brown Burmese, used to jump from the floor onto your shoulder if you patted just above your heart but, from a cat's point of view, there's no perceptible difference between a deliberate pat and unconsciously brushing some lint off the front of a shirt. And 12lbs of sleek, dark muscle (apparently) launching itself at your jugular is enough to make the biggest man flap and squeal. As you might imagine, the women in the room literally cried with laughter. Were still laughing the next morning. In fact I'm laughing now, years later, as I type this paragraph. 

But mock attacks aside it's true that you can't really depend on cats to behave in a predictable way. They can be fickle, independent, fussy and dismissive. But that's what I love about them. I know dog-lovers champion the loyalty and companionship of their mutty friends but the idea of something, or someone, being uber-dependent on me fills me with dread. You can probably understand now why I never had children!

When I moved into Tony's house in 1985 he had two semi-wild black and white cats, Tussie, a male, and Chloe, his sister. He allowed them to sleep in a basket in the kitchen during the day but at night they were put outside. Within three months they were using the newly installed cat-flap and sitting on my lap.

A couple of years earlier there'd been three cats; another female called Tabby. All three of them fell asleep on the back of a hay lorry parked at the house but when the driver pulled away at the end of the day Chloe woke up and jumped off the back before he reached the end of the drive. Tussie and Tabby must have been too frightened to move. The driver later told Tony that he saw two cats jump off the back when he stopped at a garage a couple of miles away, on the other side of of two major roads, the A20 and the M20, but Tony never found them when he walked around the area calling their names.


Hungry writing promptWrite about calling out someone's name.

Six months later, as Tony was leaving the house one morning, Tussie walked up the drive, crying for food. He was thin and his coat told a story of rough living but Chloe had no sympathy. It was a couple of weeks before she stopped hissing at him. Tabby never came back. 

I'm reminded of this story because I've just read Lost Cat, A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology, by Caroline Paul with beguiling illustrations by her partner, Wendy McNaughton. If you're not a cat lover I can categorically say (see what I did there?) that you won't be a fan. But if you're one of the world's cat-adoring people you will read it in one sitting (as I did) and want to leaf through the pages of illustrations again and again. 

The prose is dressed in that deceptive simplicity that all writers know is twistingly difficult to achieve. And it's beautiful too. And sad, funny, philosophical and pragmatic. 

The two cats in the book, Tibby and Fibby, reminded me of Tussie and Chloe: one outgoing, the other a shivering bag of fur and bones convinced the slathering jaws of the universe were waiting for her outside the back door. Tussie was the affectionate one as this drawing of Tony's from 1989 illustrates.


When I turn the drawing over I find what I'd forgotten about:


12th February, 1990. Almost 25 years to the day. I'd only recently started writing but I'm pleased I already understood that emotion is better expressed in a plain fashion.

After Tussie died, Chloe seemed to undergo an instant personality transplant: suddenly she was walking into a living room full of strangers and jumping onto the sofa next to one. Cats are complex, often un-knowable, creatures, as Caroline Paul discovers in Lost Cat.

And because I'm committed to some kind of food reference in every blog-post here's the current feline presence in our lives eyeing up the canard when we were still living in France. Chica drove back with us in November 2011, from Antibes to Calais, through the tunnel to Kent, from Folkestone to Offham. More than 12 hours and 750 miles. Stoic. Not a single mewl. She swapped palm trees and lizards for apple trees and voles. But she still likes the smell of red wine and positions herself as close to any cheese plate as she possibly can. And she takes her duck à point.

All the threes: The Poet at Matfield

The expectation around the number three did not escape us yesterday, along with the fact that we only had two of them: the date - 3rd February - and the three decades that Tony and I have been together since meeting at The Old Courthouse in Jersey on 3rd February 1985. All the threes - Dirty knees - All the feathers - Two little fleas. We needed three little fleas. Or at least I thought we did.
3rd February 2015
Remember we were talking about the mystical charm of the number 3 and I said 
our anniversary – the third day of February – plus the three decades since 
we met put us in possession of two and we needed one more for a trilogy? But I was wrong. 
We have always been in the company of three: me, you and the ‘we’ 
we have made and remade through these years, much greater than either of us alone. 
And we did spend three hours at The Poet at Matfield. And we did have three wonderful courses. But I only had one glass of wine because three glasses would have had me snoring face down in my Sticky Toffee Pudding. 
The Poet is named for Siegfried Sassoon (d.1967) who was born in Matfield in 1886, the second of three sons. There's that number again. And there's more.
Sassoon is generally thought of as a First World War poet, along with Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves, but he also wrote the acclaimed fictionalised autobiographies known as The Sherston Trilogy: - Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man (1928), Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930) and Sherston's Progress (1936). Although he later published three volumes of pure autobiography:The Old Century (1938), The Weald of Youth (1942) and Siegfried's Journey (1945). 
Sassoon had a series of love affairs with men, including the actor Ivor Novello, but in 1933 (Two Little Fleas) he married the young Hester Gatty with whom he had a son. And I'll stop there. 
There's something satisfying in making these patterns from the marginalia of lives, including our own. Picking and choosing the dates and ages that suit our aims and purposes. And maybe it's some kind of mathematical satisfaction that encourages us to make more of a fuss about those birthdays and anniversaries that fall at the close of decades. They feel substantial, complete, accomplished. 
Hungry writing promptWrite about the number 3: three children, three houses, three years, three people, three rings, three little ducks. Whatever the number three throws up in the air for you. Three juggling balls.
Although if we really want to get fancy-pants mathematical about things then maybe we should be celebrating events that fall on prime numbers. So things are looking good: Tony's 71 this year. We'll have our 31st anniversary next year. And... there's that urge to complete a trilogy again! 
Oh let's eat instead! Enjoy my three courses at The Poet. Then go there and enjoy your own. 
Red beetroot risotto with roasted carrots and a Gorgonzola mousse Cod fillet and brandade with sauteed and grilled leeks in a caper sauce Sticky toffee pudding with caramel ice cream

Food and the dead: pears poached in red wine

I can't remember exactly when I wrote these 'instructions' for my funeral but although it was more than a decade before I started the hungry writer blog you'll notice that food plays a pretty central part!
Given a choice

I'd like a sunny day, a party 
in the garden, a wooden table laid 
with a white cloth. A bowl of cherries 
for a stone spitting competition. Veuve Clicquot 
served in uncut glass, brandied sugar cubes 
and people dancing barefoot in the long grass. 

If it’s cold and rainy, rent an old manor house
surrounded by fields. Roast chickens and eat them 
with your hands, crusty bread. Ripe peaches. 
Drink Grand Marnier on ice in a wood-panelled lounge, 
a fierce fire in front of your feet. Fall asleep 
between fat feathered duvets and crisp white sheets. 

If it’s only you, my love, tip what remains of me 
into the sea, then cook our favourite meal – 
prawns in garlic, fillet steak, sweet chips. 
Open the wine with the Picasso label 
we’ve been meaning to drink. Talk 
to someone you love on the phone.

If I’m alone, I choose a mountain 
of slate and gorse and will slowly slip 
between the seams of stone, listening 
to the cries of sheep, the rain coming home. 

My memory boxI keep it with my will, inside an old wooden writing box with other memorabilia, and while I like to hope that the people who will find it will carry out, as far as possible, my wishes, it really won't matter to me by that time! After all, funerals are for the living: people need to do whatever helps them say goodbye and grieve.
Hungry writing promptWrite about grieving.
But in case anyone reading this is likely to be around at the time of my demise: the Veuve Clicquot (Brut) is not negotiable. 
I never went to the funeral of the woman who gave me the recipe for pears poached in red wine. She was the girlfriend, and then wife, of an entertainments agent who used to book Tony for gigs around the South East when he was a professional entertainer. I went to their wedding, had dinner at their house near Wadhurst, Sussex a few times. She collected old porcelain dolls and a whole tribe of them used to stare out of a glass fronted cupboard in the dining room while we ate. She kept a horse. She wore long clothes: skirts and cardigans that seemed to wrap her like blankets. She came to one of our fancy dress parties  as Charlie Chaplin and strutted like a penguin and twirled her cane all night with an exuberance I'd never seen when she was being herself. Once, when they came to lunch, Tony prepared her a flambéed peach for dessert in place of the bananas he was making for everyone else. Her husband peered into the frying pan and exclaimed in complete innocence, 'Oh, darling, your peach is wrinkled!' and Tony and I cried with school-yard laughter, hanging onto the edge of the kitchen cabinets like a couple of wet towels. 

She wasn't my friend. And I hadn't seen her for years when I heard she'd died. But I think of her every time I make these pears. I can see her, her long black hair, her pale skin and small mouth, her dark clothes, a little like the Victorian dolls she collected. And that's it. There's no emotional connection at all. Except perhaps a subliminal gratitude for the recipe because the pears are so damn good. Every time. And it makes me think about the idea that the dead are always with us in some way. And how stories keep on growing. 
Is someone who I've served these pears to thinking about me? If so, please put me in a pretty dress. Let me laugh. I have a black cat. And I once attended a fancy dress party dressed as a punk in a bin bag and a white string vest. 

And because even I can see there's a little confusing shorthand amongst those old scribblings...
Chianti isn't compulsory - you choose.5 ounces of sugar1/4 pint of red wine1/4 pint of water 1 inch of cinnamon stick6 dessert pears (I tend to use Conference)(2 teaspoons of arrowroot)
(Because I like loads of syrup I double the amounts of sugar, wine, water and cinnamon when I make it. Minimum-syrup people should stick to the original quantities.)
In a large pan, over a low heat, melt the sugar in the wine and water, with the cinnamon stick, then boil for 15 minutes.
In the meantime, peel the pears, leaving the stalks on for decoration, and cut a slice off the bottom of each one if you want to serve them standing up in a bowl like sweet fruity soldiers. But they look as nice lying down, like 6 in a bed. (Or 5 on this occasion.)
Reduce the syrup to a simmer and place the pears in and spoon the syrup over them. I turn them every 10 minutes for about 40 to 50 minutes to make sure they're cooked all the way through. You can always pierce them with a cocktail stick (somewhere unnoticeable) to check. But I'd go for 10 minutes more rather than take the chance on underdone. 

By this time the syrup is syrupy enough so I don't usually need to thicken it with the arrowroot. If you do then take the pears out first, mix the arrowroot into a little bit of cold water, add it to the bubbling syrup and stir well
I toast flaked almonds in a non stick frying pan: throw them in and keep stirring over a medium heat. Don't worry about getting them all brown. And don't walk away - they burn quickly. Trust me. 

Hearth food: heart food

Martin James 1905 - 1975My maternal grandfather, Dadcu in Welsh, or D'cu as we used to call him, Martin James, had two dietary practices that no one else in my life, then or since, has repeated. He used to swallow a raw egg in the mornings, the yolk bobbing about in its albumen as he tipped the glass towards his mouth. I imagined the yellow dome breaking in his throat as he swallowed. And he sliced cheddar cheese into a glass dish and placed it in front of the open coal fire to melt. Then he spooned it onto fresh, hand-cut white bread. I remember tasting the melted cheese. I remember the pull and slip of it against the spoon, like soft toffee. I kept a safe distance from any involvement with the raw egg.
It didn't occur to me that D'cu's melted cheese was a traditional Welsh dish. Caws pobi: roasted or baked cheese. And some people might wonder what the difference is between melted cheese spooned out of a dish and cheese melted on toast under the grill. But I think you'll have to make some to appreciate it. I suppose, primarily, cooking something at an open hearth pre-dates grilling by some considerable time, so there's an historical element that affects us when we cook this way. But there really is something about the taste and texture and contrast of temperatures that you just don't get with cheese on toast. And perhaps the idea of sitting in front of a real fire, and watching your food cook, taps into a primitive satisfaction and a time when the world rolled along at a slower pace. And, of course, for me, it connects me to my D'cu too, a slight man with a big heart who was old before his time, like so many men of his generation who lost their youth and health to Welsh tinplate works and coal mines.
In Bobby Freeman's First Catch Your Peacock, a cross between a cookery book and a history book about the food of Wales, from earliest times right up to the 20th century, she talks about the Welsh early passion for caws pobi, the forerunner of the internationally known Welsh Rarebit and traces references back to medieval and Tudor times. But, interestingly, the cheese best suited to 'roasting' was a hard cheese like Cheddar, and not the softer cheeses then being made in Wales, the result of the soil's acidity, although cheese made from ewe's milk, like the Spanish Manchego was, she assumes, a good alternative.
On my way home to pobi some caws I call for French bread at the tiny Spar attached to our local garage, whose lovely proprietors stock unusual local products and speciality ones from all over the British Isles. I spot a wheel of Ginger Spice, one of the gorgeous flavoured cheddars made by the Snowdonia Cheese Company. And Snowdon is about as Welsh as you can get! 
We've had our wood-burning stove roaring away 24/7 ever since we came back from Florida at the end of December and as soon as I put on a pan of sliced plain Cheddar and some Ginger Spice it all sizzled at such an alarming rate I was almost juggling the camera like a hot potato to try and get some shots. In less than a minute they had melted to within memories of themselves and started to burn. But clouds and silver linings and all that... once I'd spooned off what I could and slathered it onto hunks of fresh bread (pause here for some enjoyable chewing...) I was left with a cooling crispy cheese crust that lifted off the non-stick pan like a savoury veil. Parmesan crisps? Forget about them: creision (crisps) caws pobi are the future. 
D'cu melted his cheese more slowly, away from the fire's direct heat. Too slowly from a kid's perspective when having to wait for anything makes you twitch and fidget. But I'm also guessing his generation wouldn't have been anywhere near as impatient as we are today when we so easily rankle at a slow internet speed, traffic jams, queues at banks or supermarkets. 
I need to tackle caws pobi again: at a different pace. In a thicker oven-proof dish for a start. Or maybe I could prop it on a few logs in front of the wood-burner's open door where I can sit and watch the flames, their hypnotic flare and flicker. Food, like the memories of people we loved, still love, shouldn't be rushed.

Thanks, D'cu. Cysgu yn dawel*.

Hungry Writing PromptWrite about the heat from a fire. 
* Sleep peacefully. 

Please come in: welcome to my kitchen

HoneysThe door is wide and warm, the kettle's on. The honey pourer that arrived here via China and the USA sits upon my Granny's plate, its edges softly frilled like grandmothers are, but often aren't. And the woman framed above who looks as if she might have slipped off the tip of William Russell Flint's sable brush, hasn't. I know; it seems as if nothing's as it really is. But it is. The child's drawing on the fridge is nothing else but itself. The gouge mark in the knotted pine wood floor proof of something heavy dropped between us, even if we struggle to remember what. And fruit is always fruit even when its cut.
There's laughter here. In the photos of how we used to be and, I like to think, captured from family, friends and even strangers like yourself in the butter yellow doors and drawers, like invisible veins of music. And tears too. Our own. A daughter's pain. A friend's, in the instant she knew her man's betrayal and her shoulders dropped the way you'd watch a puppet fall when its strings are cut.

Taken in a vintage Kodak photo booth
Santa Barbara CA 1992Sometimes the oven's or the summer's heat envelops us. Sometimes a season's morning chill makes us tiptoe across the room past the cold slices of glass, looking out on a wall of rough cut stone, a meagre persistence of moss below glowing emerald in the winter sun.
A black cat stretches here. Goes out. Comes in and leaves her muddy paw prints on the hand-made table, though its size and weight bely that phrase, the slabs of pink beech and squarely jointed legs, body-made perhaps.
The pendulum of the electronic clock mimes a tick, a tock: its swing a measurement of time that metronomes our hearts, our breath, when we are calm. Falls silent when things are broken, cracked: a plate, a forgotten promise, a glass salt pot. Regains its voice when we dance around the room, the cellar's dark air beneath our feet where wine is stored and brought up and made to sing  in crystal and drunk. 
Garden bell from Villa les
Marronniers, Antibes.
When you come to leave take the back door, the one that opens to trees, past the photo of men who worked on this farm a hundred years ago. Their faces are inscrutable, obeying a call to pose, their real lives hidden like the faint traces of dreams. Which this life you've just walked through might seem to you: an mismatched congregation of effects. Like that iron bell, beside the carved bowl of knobbled gourds, engraved with a number 10.  But things are usually simpler than you think: the number on a street in France where we once lived and lost ourselves a while. When we ring the bell we find ourselves again. 
Stories breathe between these walls. This is where each day, over coffee sweet and strong, another one begins. 
Hungry Writer PromptWrite about getting lost. And getting found.
Fruit, Coffee by Tony Crosse 2002

The Year of Eating Everything. And cabbage with attitude.

'Bad news,' Tony said. 'The little freezer broke down while we were away. Everything is mush and mold.'
Yep, that just about described the four drawers in varying degrees of decomposition: sludge, spores and the striking blue and white of Penicillium. The only thing to escape the annihilation was a bag of plain white burger rolls, the only processed food item in there, which were surprisingly, and worryingly, fresh looking and, when I poked them, as bouncy as the day they were born. Makes you think, doesn't it?
I wasn't upset exactly. And bereft is far too strong a word too. But when I started to bag up all the ruin (including those rolls) I realised that all my late summer fruit was there. Bramleys, chopped and pureed, for pies and desserts and sauce. Victoria plums stoned and halved for puddings and jam. I swear I could hear the buzz of drunken wasps and feel the heat from the stove from the days spent picking and preparing it all. I felt the waste of it. The loss of those summer tastes from fruit grown on our land. The year turns though.
(N.B. The blog is so far devoid of accompanying photos for a good reason.)
So the 'everything' in the title of this post isn't quite the everything I imagined. But I have decided to try my best to eat everything I buy and put in my fridge and cupboards. Not that I throw out much food, but after reading Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal (see last week's post) and being so impressed with her inventive and graceful ways with what could easily be thrown away - stale bread, broccoli stalks and cheese rinds to name a few - I feel inspired to emulate her, as far as I can. 

Sassy SavoyAnd it makes good sense too: economic sense, environmental sense. And it's a challenge to be creative with sad cases in the salad drawer or sulks at the back of the fridge. 
Not that Savoy cabbage can ever be accused of being sad or sulky; those tightly pleated leaves seem eternally confident. But it was only a quarter of a cabbage on the cusp of its commercial death (not that I pay too much attention to use by/sell by dates) so it qualified as a user-upper.  A date with cabbage death.
So, some chopped sad carrots (with a lonely knob of chopped red onion and a chopped 'respectable' garlic clove) sauteed in olive oil later, I added a splash of white wine to make it sizzle and some chicken stock and simmered it until the carrots were soft. Then I added the shredded Savoy and let it cook for another 8 minutes until that began to surrender to the heat too.
My 'far from sad' soup
sprinkled with chopped chives.I could have been less heavy handed with the spicy blend of dried garlic and parsley, salt and chilli flakes I brought back from Italy in September as well as adding them at the beginning of the cooking time not  towards the end. But hey, baby, it's cold outside. The last scrapings from a tub of creme fraiche and blending half of the mixture before stirring it all together again gave me this lovely dish of far from sad soup. 
So that's my first 'waste not, want not' recipe of the year. This afternoon I was skulking around Tesco's reduced shelf and grabbed some fine stewing beef at less than half price. I'm thinking of experimenting with black olives in a stew - there's half a can of them open in the fridge - and maybe some dried fruit too. We'll see. 
Hungry Writing PromptWrite about all the things that shouldn't be wasted in life.