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 about it. So here I go again, because I couldn't just let it go.

I'm not sure how many posts I have written since that time. Maybe getting to around 3,000 - it can't be as many as the 3,650 days that card tells us are in 10 years. For there have been many missed days, sometimes big blocks of time missed - such as 2017's June and July - our last holiday in France - well not July I think. Maybe I was exhausted after it all. I set out to write daily, but of course, there are days when you just haven't the time, days when you are not well and days when you just don't feel like it. And today I am much kinder to myself if I miss a day.

This is my fridge back then and it really doesn't look that much different today. Then and Now have always been much the same. The produce has changed with the seasons, and the jars of 'extras' have changed a bit, but fundamentally it's still the same. The basics are still there. But even so what I do with all of those same things is always different, because the actual precise combination of what is in there is never the same.

On that long ago day I talked about what I planned for dinner that day - the inevitable chicken - with fennel and capsicum to be served with rice. I even gave the recipe I concocted - a kind of braised dish which was vaguely Middle-Eastern in tone because of the turmeric, cumin and paprika, and the additional tomatoes and yoghurt that I decided upon.

And just to show how times have really not changed much since then, today, before I looked in the fridge, I had already taken out a chicken breast from the freezer. Like everybody else who eats meat, chicken is probably the most cooked - and also the most versatile it has to be said.

Today the dominating choices from the fridge are grapes, pumpkin and capsicum and some beginning to wilt parsley in a jar of water on the kitchen bench. What to do with this particular selection? Oh and let's not forget the bag of zucchini that needs using.

Well I fancy something with potatoes today. We haven't had potatoes for a while and I adore them. Fairly plain today I think. So a braised dish of chicken with a delicate parsley laden and creamy sauce, with that zucchini I think. Zucchini don't last long - not as long as capsicum so I think I'll discard the idea of capsicum today. Something delicate rather than robust like capsicum or pumpkin. But then again, if I roasted the capsicum - and/or the pumpkin and then puréed it, it might be a useful background flavour, but would it go with grapes? And I think I have other plans for the pumpkin on Friday in some kind of galette. But what liquid for the sauce? I have no open bottle of wine - well there is red but I don't really like red wine with chicken, although it would go with the grapes, but there is also Cinzano and marsala in the cupboard, maybe some leftover peach pickling liquid ... I can see that I shall still be making decisions when I am confronted with the need to start cooking. It could be fun. It could be delicious, it could be diastrous, or - most likely - it could be just OK. I shall report.

Ten years is a long time. Back then I think I felt I still didn't look too old - today I do indeed look old, although many are kind enough to act shocked when I tell them how really old I am.

Indeed my third post was called Oh to be skinny again! and featured the first two then and now photos of myself below when very young and just a couple of years before I started my diet. The last photograph was taken just a month or so before I wrote the post. It's actually a bit flattering - because of the tight jeans and the loose T-shirt, but is close enough I suppose to me now, and quite a lot better than when I started the diet. But no - I shall never be skinny again. You can diet so far, and then your body seems to say - that's it - we can't go any further - and you're going to have to watch it as well.

"The pictures do not lie, but neither do they tell the whole story. They are merely a record of time passing, the outward evidence." Paul Auster

I cannot find a recent photograph of myself, but am pleased to say that the size is similar to the last one above - just more wrinkles and flabby bits.

My second post was about purple food, and in terms of then and now I would say that purple food is still sort of a thing, but not as much as back then. Interestingly I included some passing reference to the chemistry of it all - not something I can be bothered with much these days. When I see all those chemical names, my brain sort of shuts down, so I generally ignore them - preferring to concentrate and just that what I am writing about is either good or bad, and not how it is good or bad. What those three posts do demonstrate however, is what I hope has been a good variety of topics through the years, even if there is a lot of repetition. Hopefully, because time has passed my brain has thought a few more thoughts about a particular topic, or somehow regarded them in a different way.

Retirement is wonderful - no more stress about your working life, which in many ways really didn't matter at all, other in that it provided you with a comfortable life, and occasional moments of quiet success. But after a while it can be a little difficult to find something meaningful with which to fill your time.

"Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save." Will Rogers

Tapping away at this blog almost every day has provided me with some purpose to each day, and has also probably made me think about a whole range of things in a more profound way. It's also taught me a lot - all the technological things that are involved with keeping up with new ways of doing things, all the facts and stories I have learnt along the way, in every aspect of human knowledge. I have been introduced to new and exciting cooks - Noor Murad, Ixta Belfrage, Alison Roman being the latest, and so much more.

I have learnt a whole range of things that I can do with ingredients that would otherwise not have been known about, or ingredients that have declined past their best., and I have discovered a few recipes that are now keepers - Yotam Ottolenghi's Curried cauliflower and cheese filo pie springs to mind. It's cauliflower season - try it tomorrow. Pretty easy - don't be alarmed by the filo pastry flopping around before you fill it. It will all work out.

And if put my mind to it I could think of several others as well.

So ten years. Should I give up? Is there anything more to say?

There's always something to say, even if somebody else has said it before and better than you ever will. Even if you've sort of said it before as well - like telling you to make Ottolenghi's cauliflower cheese. Every time you say or think something you have said or thought before, it's always a little bit different, because you are different.

"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself." Andy Warhol

Besides this blog has never been about creating a super successful blog read by millions and making me a fortune. It has just been a way to amuse myself, to give me a mild sense of achievement, and perhaps to keep in touch in a loose kind of way with good friends.

But:

"It's always fun to reminisce for a moment. You can only let that happen for a moment and then you have to move on and take care of the task at hand." Justin Tucker

So true because now I really have to think what to do with that chicken - and which of those few ingredients I use and which I do not. I could look for ideas. I'm sure somebody has confronted the same problem at some time. But today I'm just going to wing it. I ate so much last week I shall have to fast twice this week, so every meal I prepare this week has to be fun.

YEARS GONE BY - ten of them

July 15

2025 - Number nine

2024 - 8 today

2023 - Nothing - I got the date wrong that year!

2022 - Six years of blogging deserves bubbles

2021 - Missing

2020 - Missing

2019 - Paul Bocuse and celebrations

2018 - Happy birthday to my blog

2017 - On holiday

2016 - Inside my fridge