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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.

Comments I love reading your comments. Just add a name - any name - it needn't be yours, add an email, ditto, type in your comment and hit the Comment button. Done. Wix sends me an email to tell me what you said, so I can respond if needed. Mostly I just read and enjoy. If you would like to subscribe to this blog and get notifications of new posts then click here. It's free - just a way of knowing what I wrote about today.

enjoy

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Toblerone

" Finally, the recipe is quite simple, but paradoxically will never be equaled ... obvious ingredients, inimitable mixture" Eugénie Rousak/Now Village You may or may not remember, but quite a long time ago now, on one of my walks I decided to photograph everything with a link to food. I think so far I have tackled one, maybe two of those. Today I'm on to this one - Toblerone. A wrapper tossed away by a walker or from a car, on a semi busy road. I don't think that's a bit

Feb 11

Is anyone impervious to advertising?

"A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself." David Ogilvy I noticed that the Coles Magazine now has a new section - Coles Finds . No that's not strictly accurate. It has always - well for some time now - been there, but usually just a page, with a scattering of products. Now there is a whole three or four page section which is presented in the same way as any other of the sections in the magazine - and crucially - near the fr

Jan 21

With or without? - speculaas/speculoos

"Loos in old Dutch means without. Speculaas is with a lot of spices, speculoos is speculaas without most of those spices." reddit As I often do I started with a random, well a few, in this case, random recipes from somewhere, and you travel the world in time and space, learning a few fairly trivial and mildly interesting things along the way. Mind you I have sort of done this one before with my Biscoff for a rainy day post - and apologies for the missing pictures - I accid

Dec 8, 2025

Some party time recipes

I've spent the morning, no - most of yesterday afternoon as well, making marmalade from a gift of home-grown mandarins, from friends, and a whole lot of lemons that I had in the fridge - 12 assorted jars seen here being the result. It's very satisfying when you get to this point, although there's always the worry it won't set, although this time I think I marginally worry about the opposite - too set. Anyway it's left me feeling lazy, so I thought I would just provide a few

Nov 17, 2025

Green bean casserole

"The word “gloopy” comes to mind" Alison Roman This is in no way 'gloopy' looking but I'm starting with Ottolenghi's Blistered green bean casserole with parmesan and rosemary because this was my starting point - a recipe in Ottolenghi's newsletter, which was sort of about Thanksgiving, one American festival that I don't think will make it to our shores because it's specific to a historical American event. I also saw that this looked like a really good thing to try some day

Nov 16, 2025

Hawaij, spice mixes and marketing

The other day I bought this expensive jar of Ottolenghi hawaij paste. It was on a special, I was just filling in time waiting for David for some reason I cannot now remember, wandering around Woolworths when I spied it. I had noticed Hawaij a lot here and there, or so I thought, and I was feeling a bit down, and so I thought 'why not?' and put it in my trolley. I feel a tiny bit cross at myself, because there are lots of recipes online for a hawaij spice mix, and it's not

Oct 23, 2025

Krispy Kreme and doughnuts in general

"one of those deep, childish pleasures you never grow out of." Felicity Cloake You might have thought that I had forgotten those...

Sep 11, 2025

A supermarket label

A comment from my sister sort of inspired this post. Well I suppose it was barely a comment, just a statement that she hated shopping in...

Sep 7, 2025

Samples

"a small amount of something that shows you what the rest is or should be like" Cambridge Dictionary Samples is perhaps particularly...

Jul 19, 2025

What is it with kewpie mayonnaise?

"umami incarnate" Ian Knauer/Grub Street This post actually and somewhat indirectly comes from one of Nigel Slater's first recipes -...

Sep 16, 2024

The comfort of Heinz tomato soup

"I can still remember the taste of those Scottish rolls and butter and the warm, tangy tomato soup, a real childhood treat." Man Has a...

Sep 4, 2024

Hot wing rambles

"One cannot fix one's eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy." Jane Austen I do have the...

Jun 2, 2024

Beans, toast, an expanding world

"On toast, they are nothing short of sheer culinary genius. They are, I would argue, at their point of perfection when you can catch them...

Jun 1, 2024

The laughing cow has the last laugh

"The peeling of a Dairylea triangle and its taste transport me back to my childhood à la recherche du triangle perdu." Simon Majumdar...

Mar 25, 2024

Butter chicken cheats

Spurred on by that article about Cooking as a game I have decided that this month I shall look at Chicken butter cream, or Butter chicken...

Mar 8, 2024

Gubbins

"gubbins - various things that are not important" Oxford Dictionary "gubbins - another word for stuff" I Swear English Gubbins Yes...

Oct 23, 2023

Being clever doesn't necessarily mean being right

"It's not food if it's called by the same name in every language." Michael Pollan That statement is in Michael Pollan's book Food Rules:...

Apr 17, 2023

Spam - yes spam

"the ham that failed its physical" American troops WW2 The human animal is a creative soul is it not? Also very adaptive. It can make...

Apr 10, 2023

The wonderful world of ramen

"For all that Japan has invented in the 20th century, the digital clock, Walkman, Nintendo and Pokemon, the Japanese consider their...

Apr 4, 2023

Should we abhor stock cubes?

"I've had several friends with romantic notions of writing down their bubba's chicken soup recipes, only to discover that the 'secret...

Mar 11, 2023

ROSEMARY'S

RAMBLINGS

daily musings on food