nostalgia | Ramblingrose

Welcome to my blog/journal/whatever

This is the real guts of this website. The old website and its archived posts is still available at its old url. Newcomers might like to dip into it every now and then.

Welcome to you all. Amazingly I still don't seem to be running out of ideas on what to write - well occasionally - but I have my writer's block strategies to turn to - see the text on the right. Check this page for the latest posts and if something interests you just click on it. It's easy to leave a comment and I love to read them. And now you can subscribe to the blog and get emailed notifications of new posts. And sorry I just don't understand Facebook.

"We are not here for long. So let's at least make ourselves something good to eat."

Nigel Slater

"I was born hungry, not a cook."

Julia Child

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well"

Virginia Woolf

Writer's block

Every now and then I can't think of a suitable topic and so I have devised a few strategies to get around this.

Lucky dip

The first strategy I devised is to go to one of my three cook book bookshelves, close my eyes and pick a book. Close my eyes again and pick a page. It's really quite an enlightening method of getting over writer's block.

'A word from'

My second strategy is to devote a post to the thoughts of one of my favourite cooks. Hopefully it will introduce them to you

Or

I shall choose a picture I have come across and extemporise on that.

A second kind of lucky dip

I have been thinking about first recipes in cook books - so I shall choose a book not quite randomly and then look at the first recipe for inspiration.

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enjoy

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Herbs

"Herbs bypass our thinking, analytical minds and go straight to our hungry souls." Nikky Duffy Herbs have a special place in my heart - not just because they are virtually the only plants that I seem to be able to grow - something which Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall highlights in his introduction to this, my first recipe book for today: "Herbs can be the plants that make you into a gardener, even a very small-scale one, and the ingredients that turn you into a creative cook.

Jul 23

Then and now - 10 years of rambling

I don't know about being loved for ten years - in the blogging sense that is - but I suppose this is a red letter day and I should be jumping for joy or something. Maybe a glass of champagne - but no it's mid-week, so a non-wine day. Well it's a subject for a post isn't it? On this day 10 years ago I opened my fridge door to see what to cook for dinner and sat down to write my very first post - Inside my fridge and every year since I have probably said much the same things a

Jul 15

Reflections on a small piece of quiche

"When we eat, we travel." Mina Holland This was my lunch today. A small piece of leftover quiche, so being otherwise clueless - partly because I have not been writing of late - otherwise occupied - and partly because it's an interesting exercise to do every now and then I decided to consider in a more analytical way than usual what my lunchtime quiche. As you know by now I make quiche a lot. It usually begins with some kind of leftover which might well offend the purists,

Jun 10

A classic in so many ways

"Along the way I was reminded of a kind of cooking which, in the pursuit of the new, I had all but forgotten. And I fell in love with it all over again." Jay Rayner/The Guardian This is a lucky dip post. David picked out the large format revised copy of Robert Carrier's Great Dishes of the World and the page I randomly chose included a recipe for Coq au vin - accompanied by a short essay and this old-style arty photograph of the dish - well the ingredients. Although now th

May 15

Chasing culinary white whales

"It’s not until you come to make it yourself that you see what’s not written down.” Felicity Cloake This is my culinary white whale - and I apologise for it not being one of my mother's dishes. Which is not to say that I don't make things that my mother did, and that I don't remember those dishes with all those warm and cuddly feelings the cooking world would like us to have when we think of mum's cooking - or even better - grandma's cooking. And I will come to mum and gra

May 4

Memory rambles over lunch

"Nostalgia - the vice of the aged." Angela Carter Same old, same old. Another ramble about memory and nostalgia. I know, so apologies, but I couldn't really let our wonderful Friday lunch with our regular lunch friends go unacknowledged. I mean look at it - in spite of my awful photography. Not my cooking this time. In the last few years we have fallen into a pattern with two old friends, of entertaining each other - turn and turn about - with an invitation to lunch. Bo

May 3

Handwritten

"a small labour in these copy-and-photograph times." Rachel Roddy She means copy and paste surely? Yesterday I was a bit uninspired and so I started looking through the Ideas pages in my little notebook of various nudges into blog posts and there at the top of the page on the right is an idea from Rachel Roddy, which I wasn't really up for yesterday, although I did check out the article, which was, as always with her, an interesting one. So today, having survived the threa

Mar 2