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Happy New Year to you all! How has your new year been to you so far? Mine has been not great, but we're only two weeks in so there's still all to play for.

Over Christmas and New Year I was trying out some migraine-preventative medication for some ongoing dizziness I've been having since autumn of 2021. It didn't work, but what it did do was lead to a recurrence of my panic attack disorder from over 10 years ago. That wasn't fun. The meds didn't cause the panic attacks (I don't think) but they might have caused the heart palpitations which I worried about a lot and which worry did lead to the panic attacks. Or maybe the heart palpitations were caused by my worry alone. Either way, it wasn't super pleasant, and the medication wasn't even working for my dizziness, so my doctor and I are working to take me off it now.

As a mental health segue, I mentioned in my last couple of posts that I was seeking therapy. I didn't mention that I was seeking therapy because I was diagnosed with a personality disorder. That was wild! My flavour of personality disorder is OCPD or Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. I had always wondered if a) I wasn't as neurotypical as I originally thought and b) if actually I had some other OCD-type traits outside of the full-blown OCD I had at the same time I had my panic attack disorder over 10 years ago. Turns out I was right on both counts! But it took until 2023 to find out what the name for it was.

OCPD is very common in the population but hardly anyone knows about it. One of the main reasons is that a symptom of the disorder is to not realise that you have a disorder. When I read the list of symptoms and recognised several in myself, my main thought was: yes I probably have that, but I'm fine though, I'm coping. It's only been through several months of introspection that I've realised that while I may have been coping, I wasn't really thriving. I wasn't really enjoying myself. I just thought everyone lived with this level of background anxiety and stress.

So I'm doing therapy, I'm on the road to recovery to banish the anxiety and the stress and recalibrate my work-fun balance away from work and towards fun. It's going to take a while (the thing with personality disorders is that they involve your whole personality). But I'll get there. So that's going to be my 2024, I reckon!

If you here, you, are reading this, do yourself a favour and look up OCPD, look at the list of symptoms and consider if it might be you. And if you think it's you and you think you are fine as you are? Go seek help anyway. Go on. Do it. You should do it. Everything could be so much more relaxing than it is right now. It could be so much better. Have questions? Ask me. I'm not an expert but there's so little info out there, especially first-person accounts of the disorder, that I want to help if I can.

Wow. So, I meant to write just a paragraph and I got a bit distracted. Dealing with this has been my life since August, so there were words ready to come out. I'll write more at some point. For now what I wanted to do was share my Christmas presents with you.

A whole slew of cards!

Food gifts. Not pictured: the homemade chocolate chip and seed flapjacks that I got from my cousin after I took this photo. Delicious! We have here: chocolate biscuits and the tiniest frying pan in the world from my parents (it makes one egg look big); delicious candy from Mariya, including some very very posh lollipops; and a Gudetama cookbook from Mariya! I received the cookbook on a day when my mental health wasn't great and it was so nice to see Gudetama telling me that it's ok if I feel tired and fed-up, I can eat delicious food anyway!

Clothing and homewares from my parents. Those are reed diffusers in winter scents, and there's only one torch in the pack because it was a joint gift and the other one went to my Mum. The picture of a suitcase came from my parents. I had asked for a new suitcase but we went and bought one after Christmas so this was an IOU.

Bathroom gifts. The very cute face masks and face wash came from Mariya, and the Jo Malone gift set is from Asia (I've never used Jo Malone scents before but they're very nice; I might be a convert). The towels are from my parents. I have realised that as I am about to enter middle age I need to up my guest towel game, so what better than nice white towels for guests to use (for up to two guests and no more).

Finally, books. Tolkien books! "The Fall of Númenor" was a complete surprise from my parents. I didn't even know this book existed! Watching "The Rings of Power" TV series has made me yearn for more of the Second Age so this book will be great. The Beowulf translation is a gift to myself. I went to the Fantasy exhibition at the British Library, which was really enjoyable. This book was in the giftshop and I couldn't pass it up. I have never read Beowulf and what better than a translation by Tolkien?

I hope you had a lovely Christmas. Here's to 2024 as a year of healing. (Healing and Beowulf.)

I'm having a week off work which is the perfect time to write about some food adventures.

As an update on my last post: My Dad is on treatment and doing well, which is great. The waiting time for my mental health treatment was much shorter than I thought it would be, so I'm making progress on that too. It's all moving in the right direction.

Giant rainbow rosti
This dish was lacklustre for me. The beetroot and carrot combination made the rosti too sweet for my liking. The addition of the cheese was nice, but the rosti weren't very flavourful. A bit of onion in the mix would have helped a lot. I had a mix-up with the size of baking tray I was meant to use, so my rosti were maybe slightly thicker than intended. Perhaps because of this, I found that it was quite a soggy rosti, rather than crispy. Pan-frying the rosti would probably have been better; I think the recipe choose to oven-bake the rosti to make them easier but, honestly, any recipe that involves grating a lot of vegetables, including beetroot, is not easy. I prefer my eggs over easy because I dislike the whites being uncooked and slimy, so even the eggs weren't to my liking. Overall, just don't bother with this one.

Almond butter and banana on toast (recipe from "Nosh for One: Unique Meals Just for You!" by Joy May)
This was so delicious. The banana and honey was a great mix, and they both went really well with the almond butter and sesame seeds. It's a snack that really feels like a treat.

Tuna and mayo cracker snacks (recipe from "Nosh for One: Unique Meals Just for You!" by Joy May)
The recipe says to use two crackers per serving. But the recipe is also for a snack. I wanted a meal, so I doubled the recipe. And boy is that a lot of tuna! The recipe says to use one tin of tuna for two crackers, so I used two tins. But the recipe says to use a 110g tin of tuna, and I couldn't for the life of me find one of those. I bought a 160g tin, which had a drained weight of 112g, and which I thought might be what the recipe was talking about. But, I'll say it again, boy is that a lot of tuna! It was ok to eat. A tasty topping on a crunchy cracker is a joy. I personally would have preferred to add some cracked black pepper to the mix instead of mustard, and I wouldn't have buttered the crackers either. So it wasn't perfect, but to be fair, after doubling the recipe and facing that much tuna, probably no combination of ingredients would have been perfect.

Egg and mayo cracker snacks (recipe from "Nosh for One: Unique Meals Just for You!" by Joy May)
I doubled the recipe once again. I find eggs quite rich, so putting egg mayo on a buttered cracker was a lot for me, but the added gherkins helped cut through that quite well (I used some homemade pickles from my Mum!) As before, soft toppings on crunchy crackers is a really good mix.

Smoked salmon cracker snacks (recipe from "Nosh for One: Unique Meals Just for You!" by Joy May)
Another doubled recipe. You're meant to use smoked salmon trimmings in this recipe, presumably to keep down the cost, but the supermarket was out of those so I used upmarket smoked salmon. The full slices of salmon were nice, but it was actually quite hard to bite through them without pulling the whole slice off the cracker in an ungainly mess. The cream cheese and cucumber was a really nice addition and particularly pleasant from a textural point of view.

Paté and chutney cracker snacks (recipe from "Nosh for One: Unique Meals Just for You!" by Joy May)
I was going to double this recipe too, but I saw how much paté that would be and had second thoughts. My worry was about getting too much vitamin A, which I know can be bad if you have too much of it, and I know there is a high concentration in liver, and I know I had taken a multivitamin that morning. My worry should however have been: vitamins aside, that is still too much paté! One serving, as seen here, already contains too much paté! This recipe calls for 85g of paté per serving. That's half a pack! Half a pack of paté on two crackers in a real mountain of paté. Paté has a rich and a strong flavour so less really is more. The mango chutney should have cut through the richness, but I found there was also too much chutney which made it too sweet. Lessen the amounts of everything and it would have been perfect, but as is, it's all wrong. This book is aimed at cooking for one person without having odd amounts of packets left over, so I can see why they're trying to use half a pack: so you only have half a pack left over. But that's still too much paté. Sometimes when making one portion you just have to accept that packet sizes won't be your friend. As an aside, this recipe calls for chicken liver paté, which I couldn't find, so I used pork liver paté instead. Maybe chicken liver paté is easier to eat? Maybe this was actually the perfect amount of paté for chicken liver paté? Maybe???

Hello. I've been looking through my food photos going, "I have no memory of this place". Hopefully reading through the recipes will jog my memory.

There's been a lot going on recently. Work is very busy and my Dad got diagnosed with prostate cancer a couple of weeks ago. It has left my mental health a bit shaky so I am being proactive about it and seeing a doctor. I'm not leaving it to get worse for two years like last time.

In more relevant news I finally watched "Julie and Julia". Meryl Streep was amazing. The rest of the film left me uninspired. I think I was expecting a film documenting all the things Julie learned as a cook and all the tasty things she ate. What I got instead was a focus on Julie's relationship troubles and how annoying this characterisation of her was. Note to the film-makers: more food, less drama please.

I should probably take that advice too. All I've given you so far in this post is drama, so I'd better get onto the food! (If I can remember what it was.)

Speedy salmon fish cakes
This recipe was marketed as being easy because it uses pre-made mashed potato. But I think that anything which involves breading can't be classed as easy. It's so messy! Plus, my heart sinks whenever I use tinned salmon. I know some people like to eat the bones but I can't bear the thought of that, and it takes so long to pick out all the many bones from the can. At least it's cheaper than fresh salmon. Still, while this might not be an easy recipe, it is an absolutely delicious recipe. Perhaps the tastiest fishcakes I've ever had? They were bliss with tartare sauce. The only thing to note is that you should not be fooled into thinking this is a full meal. I thought it might be, but after two small fishcakes and a tiny pile of salad I was very hungry afterwards. It needs some potatoes or something else filling with it.

Courgette, chickpea and feta pasta
I was staring at this photo trying to will myself into remembering what it was. Thank goodness I'd saved a link to the recipe. I think it was ok to make and ok to eat. It's clearly not one that stuck in the mind. Oh wait, I am remembering as I am typing. This recipe said to fry garlic for 15 minutes straight. I was cooking a smaller portion and so shortened my cooking time, but still the garlic came out burnt. The fried chickpeas were quite meaty in taste, and they were ok with the feta and courgette, but I wasn't wowed. Especially not with the bitterness of burnt garlic. If this recipe had had a little bit of sweetness in there too, it might have been better. But as it was I have clearly removed it from my memory.

Gunpowder potato and peppers with garlic aïoli
I couldn't find gunpowder potatoes, so instead I bought some baby potatoes and roasted them with what Google told me were gunpowder spices. I also couldn't find baby sweet peppers so I used Romano peppers. Even with the changes, this recipe was delicious. I would like to marry that aïoli, my god. And the mixture of aïoli and potatoes and peppers was to die for. My only complaint is that I thought this dish would work as a carbohydrate and vegetable side dish all in one. It did not. It's tiny! You get two little potatoes per portion, which is ridiculous in how small it is. Triple everything, or add at least two extra sides, and then you won't be left hungry.

Spicy salmon burgers with sour cream slaw
I learnt my lesson from the last recipe: I knew I tiny patch of salad wouldn't be enough for me, so I added some tomatoes instead. I was still hungry. If only that was my sole complaint. The main issue with this dish is that it is a lot less tasty than it promises to be. The pre-made salmon burgers taste lacklustre (although they are nice texturally, I will give them that). And sour cream and chive dip is absolutely not the accompaniment that's needed here. I found the burgers lacked zing and sweetness. I had one of the burgers with sweet chilli sauce next time and it was so much better.

Braised chicken with pickled cucumbers
This dish threatened to be a disaster but ended up super delicious. The recipe calls itself "braised chicken" but it's actually a take on chicken adobo (which I've never had before). Turns out chicken adobo is really really nice. The disaster was in the cooking method. I couldn't find whole chicken legs so just used drumsticks, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that you're meant to cook your large chunks of chicken in a sauce, without putting the lid on. I halved the recipe but even with the full amount of liquid I don't think you'd have enough sauce to fully cover the chicken. It means that there's a lot of chicken which isn't covered and so isn't cooking enough. As time went on my sauce reduced almost to a jam. Once the cooking time was up I knew my chicken needed longer because it had just started oozing red juices. Annoyed and panicking, I added some water to the sauce so it didn't disappear completely, then threw on the lid and cooked the chicken for another 20 minutes. That was probably too long, as my chicken ended up a little tough. However, the sauce with that extra dash of water was still nice and thick and very flavourful and went well with the chicken. Mixed with the pickled cucumber it was delightful. So yes, this was tasty, but maybe follow your cooking instincts instead of the recipe.

Full English frittata
This is a weird dish. I'm not sure you need to cook the frittata for as long as they tell you to, because mine was quite tough on the bottom when it was done (although I had halved the recipe). That aside, I am always very very wary of baked beans and eggs together because the sweetness of the beans mixed with the egg makes me feel a little sick. It was kinda the same here. The cheese helped, as did adding extra bacon by mistake, but not enough to make me want to eat this again.

I was going to write several posts about my summer adventures, but I ran out of time. So why don't I just roll them all into one mega summer post? *cue trumpets*

I had a birthday recently and received a nice selection of cards. (Including two from one aunt, because she forgot she'd already sent me one and so sent another.)

My parents gave me an "Our Flag Means Death" card. How cool is that? It's beautiful too!

Toiletries presents: a new toothbrush from my parents because my dentist recommended I get a new one; a couple of face masks from Mariya (one made from cauliflower extract, because that's what everyone clearly wants on their skin); and a Clinique set from Asia, which feels fancy.

Food and kitchen presents: a new potato masher from my parents, which should be much easier to clean than my old one, thank goodness; a yoghurt pot lid (!?) from my parents; and several packs of sweets from my parents and from Mariya (including yoghurt soda flavoured sweets which I am very curious about).

Clothing presents: a sun hat from my parents (chosen by myself because I desperately want to be the sort of person who wears a hat like this, even though I'm not); and some lovely scrunchies from Mariya.

Other presents: an amusing retelling of the Bible from my parents (I've never read the Bible, so I've no idea how much of this I'll understand); a very relatable notebook from Mariya; and a cat doorstop from my parents. The doorstop is called Dotty (short for Dorothy; Dorothy the doorstop) and she's hard at work right now.

Now onto my travels. Way back at the beginning of June I went to Porto in Portugal with Asia and Ulrike. I'd never been to Portugal before but I really liked it. The people all seemed really nice, the place was beautiful and so hilly, and we ate really well.

This is the flat we stayed in.

And my room. The artwork on the walls was all made by the host!

One of the most beautiful parts of Porto is down by the river. The Dom Luís I Bridge is stunning. We only saw it at night, because we weren't in town for long, but I'd love to go see it again in the daylight.

The churches in Porto are all so beautiful. Some of them had lovely tiles on the outside. In fact, a lot of the buildings were covered with tiles. It gave the place a lovely feel.

We went to the Livraria Lello bookshop which was really pretty but also really crowded, and you have to pay for entry. Not for the faint of heart!

A final shot showcasing the hilly streets. They looked lovely, but it is not a city for wearing high-heeled shoes. We learnt our lesson!

I came home with a souvenir haul: face masks as a gift from Ulrike; a book I got from the Livraria Lello bookshop (it came with the ticket); delicious caramelised almonds (pack already half-eaten); lacklustre tuna pâté; and a CD of fado music from one of the singers we saw (his voice was astounding).

Not content with that, I went on a trip to Ramsgate in Kent with Deborah and Claire in early July. We stayed in an little old cottage. It was modern on the inside, apart from the small, winding stairs which felt like a deathtrap!

My room was in the basement.

Joining us was Deborah's dog Pixie. She's such a well-behaved little dog!

To get from the beach up to our place involved stairs. These ones are called Jacob's Ladder.

One of the main parts of Ramsgate is the Royal Harbour, which is certainly impressive enough to deserve the term Royal.

At the end of the pier is this old working building, which is now a restaurant (closed when we went!)

Here is the same building from far away. One day we walked to Broadstairs along the beach. Sandy beaches too!

Lots of pretty chalk cliffs.

We were astounded on our walk when we stopped halfway and all our phones buzzed to tell us we were now all on French phone networks. Yes, that's right: we were so close to France that the French network overtook the British one. I took the below photo because we could faintly see the French coastline in the distance, but alas it didn't really show up in the photo.

And finally in adventures news, Theresa came to stay with me recently. We had a great time gallivanting around London. One of the things we did was go to a pug petting café! I've never been to an animal petting café before. It was great fun. The dogs were all really friendly and well-behaved, and you could tell that they loved their owners and loved having all these people come to fuss over them each day.

It's been really fun. But after all that, I need a lie down.

It's been (checks the date) three months since my last post. I have been cooking a lot, I just haven't been writing about it. Trying to find the time to sit down with my photos was somehow difficult, and the more I cooked, the more photos I had and the more daunting the task seemed!

One of my resolutions for this year was to start making more sweet things, and once spring rolled around I was invigorated enough to get going. It has been joyful.

Summer berry cupcakes (recipe from "Mother's Little Book of Home-Baked Treats")
I made these in the spring, so they might have been even more perfect for where we are now in July, when berries are abundant and delicious. But even with sub-par spring berries, these cupcakes were great. Look at them! I'm so proud of the way they turned out. And the taste was divine. The strawberry jam in the vanilla buttercream goes really well with the fruit, and the vanilla cupcakes were lovely and moist, which was probably due to the addition of buttermilk. Despite all that, there was the usual moment mid-bake where I thought everything had gone wrong and was disastrous. The buttercream here is meringue buttercream and I know from previous experience that it is difficult to make. This one is Swiss meringue buttercream, which I haven't made before. I found Swiss meringue slightly easier than Italian meringue, because you don't have to worry about pouring scalding sugar into a bowl of egg whites while whisking and attempting not to burn yourself. In Swiss meringue you heat the sugar and egg whites together and then remove from the heat to whisk, which seems much more civilised. Still, I found the whisking stage not easy. I think my egg whites got some water in by accident because they wouldn't whisk to stiff peaks no matter how hard I tried (and I whisked them for about 35 minutes, where the recipe said it would take 3 minutes!) In the end I gave up and added the butter anyway and thankfully the texture turned out fine. By this point I was too tired to put the buttercream on the cakes neatly and was beginning to hate the messy cake blobs I'd made. But, surprise! Like magic, adding the berries on top made everything look miles better. And once I'd tasted one of the cakes I didn't care how they looked anyway. All in all, I'm classing this one as a success.

Lamb filo swirl pie
I have never made anything like this before. I've never even cooked with filo pastry before! Trying to keep the unused filo under a damp tea towel while assembling the pie was a messy experience. However, despite the mess, making the pastry into a big spiral shape was surprisingly not difficult. The recipe took a while to make but it didn't fill me with horror. As for eating the pie, the filo goes nice and crunchy and the taste was ok: pleasant, if you will. The raisins (which I was scared of) weren't bad and actually added a nice sweetness. My issue is that there wasn't enough sharpness in the pie to cut through the greasiness of the lamb and the pastry. All it needed was a bit of lemon juice and this recipe would have gone from pleasant to amazing.

Dried fruit compote (recipe from "The London Cookbook" by Jenny Linford)
This recipe wasn't what I was expecting. When I've had compotes before they've been like slightly more chunky jam. Whereas the result of this recipe was more like stewed fruit in syrup. I had to do some frantic Googling to find out that, yes, dried fruit compote normally looks like this. The recipe calls for dried apple rings, prunes, apricots and pears. I couldn't find any dried apple rings so substituted those for dried peaches. The recipe also calls for dessert wine, which I left out. As for eating it, the resulting compote tasted old-fashioned. It feels rare nowadays to get sweet things that are strong with spices and with the tang of dried fruit. The taste actually worked nicely when mixed with plain yoghurt. An enjoyable, old-fashioned, spiced fruit treat.

Tinned beef massaman
This recipe is a bit odd, but that's partly my fault. The main flavouring of the recipe is a jar of massman curry paste; I couldn't find that and substituted with Thai green curry paste instead, so my flavours might have been unusual. However, I'm not entirely blaming myself. I have never ever cooked a curry using tinned steak in gravy before. I found that the tinned beef and the tinned potatoes added an odd metallic taste to the dish which took a while to get used to. The chilli-coated peanuts were a nice addition on top, but combining them with the tinned beef made the dish too salty for my tastes. And, wow, my curry paste was quite strong with chilli heat, so this was a hot one to eat! The other change I made was to add a bit of broccoli to my rice, because 38g of mangetout per person just doesn't feel like enough vegetables to me. In conclusion: it's fine, it's fine I guess, but I'm looking at this recipe and asking it if it's ok.

Vegan-ish chocolate cake with praline (recipe from "Baking with Kim-Joy: Cute and Creative Bakes to Make You Smile" by Kim-Joy)
Guys. Guys. Massive cake time! Massive cake! It's time for massive cake! The last time I made a massive cake from Kim-Joy's book, it was two weeks before the first lockdown in 2020, and so I really felt the weight of history on me when I cracked open the book again. This recipe is meant to be entirely vegan. I called my cake vegan-ish because the white chocolate in my drip had dairy in and some of my ingredients were made in factories that also handle milk and eggs. So it's mostly vegan, but not fully. I fed it to my colleagues without telling them it was mostly vegan until they'd tried some (I didn't want any vegan colleagues to eat it by accident) and none of them would have known it was vegan. Truly, you can't tell. The sponge is just a really nice sponge: moist and light. The only different between this and a cake containing eggs was that this one started to go dry slightly more quickly (but we're talking about day five when there wasn't much cake left anyway). Kim-Joy uses vinegar, soy milk, self-raising flour and lots of baking powder and baking soda to make her vegan cakes rise. It works nicely! The icing is a dark-chocolate ganache made with coconut milk, and the filling is the same ganache mixed with some praline which has been blitzed into a paste. The filling tasted just like ferrero rocher! I put extra praline shards on top for decoration and added a white chocolate drip, made with dairy white chocolate and coconut milk. It was my first time ever attempting a drip and it was half-successful. Kim-Joy says to add white food colouring to the drip to stop it looking kinda yellow. But I couldn't find any white food colouring so went without. And either coconut milk ganache isn't as thick as ganache made with cream, or there are issues with my dripping technique but the ganache was see-through enough that it looked unappetisingly mucousy. No-one who ate the cake seemed to care too much. Who's going to gripe about a drip when they're faced with a massive chocolate cake? I actually bought a cake turntable, an off-set spatula and a scraper for this so I could get my icing smoother than my previous Kim-Joy cake. It still wasn't perfect but it was a lot easier to do. And as for the taste? My God. MY GOD. The dark chocolate ganache isn't too sweet but it is deliciously sticky. You couldn't really taste the praline but that didn't matter. The taste was the same as an excellent dark chocolate brownie and the cacao nibs added a really nice texture. It was wondrous. Every vegan needs to make this cake. You can skip the praline if you like and just fill the cake with ganache. It's so delicious.

Gunpowder chicken wings
These are tasty! I used to think I didn't like wings, but each time I've made them so far they've been really enjoyable. The spices on the chicken are yummy, but the fresh chillies, spring onions, coriander and lime juice on top really make them sing. The chutney on the side is nice, but not fully necessary if you can't be bothered. Oh, but if you do make the chutney, eat it soon after it's made. I made extra for the next day, and after 24 hours, while it still tasted good, it had turned a disgusting brown colour.

Antipasti bruschetta
The only ingredient I wasn't able to find here were pitted Nocellara olives; the ones I found had stones in, and removing the stones was difficult, hence the pile of olive crumbles you see here. In taste, these were as delicious as you might expect. The toppings went really well with the base "sauces". My only issue (it's not really an issue) is that there was a lot of topping for the bread, meaning lots fell off when you tried to eat it. I'm considering the mess all part of the fun.

Crispy halloumi tabbouleh
I'd never had tabbouleh before. In the image here it looks like the halloumi to tabbouleh ratio is all wrong, but I find halloumi very salty to eat, so I enjoyed just having a small amount! It was a very pleasant dish; nice and fresh on a summer's day. I had mine with pitta bread on the side.

Instant chocolate-orange mousse (recipe from "Nigellissima: Instant Italian Inspiration" by Nigella Lawson)
This photo looks very unassuming. What it doesn't show you is that under that layer of soft cream and orange zest is a pot of dark chocolate-orange mousse. It was so so good. I started eating it while watching TV and had to pause the show just so I could savour the mousse. In fact, I had a particularly miserable day the day afterwards and I half wonder if that's because I used up my allocation of endorphins when eating the mousse. It was so tasty. Rich and orangey. Again, like the chocolate cake, not too sweet. And the cream on top cuts nicely through the strong chocolate flavour. I didn't add the orange liqueur like Nigella says and instead added extra orange juice; I don't think it affected my enjoyment any. And the mousse was pretty easy to make! I thought I had seized my chocolate when I added the whipped cream to it but the texture of the final mousse was smooth and lovely once I'd mixed it in. A real triumph. I'm still thinking about it.

Egg in a hole with spicy bacon and gaucamole
This felt very indulgent to eat. The ingredients aren't particularly indulgent, but when you bite into the bagel, the guacamole and egg yolk and chipotle maple bacon gets everywhere so that it feels decadently messy. The taste was nice, and the chipotle maple bacon was particularly tasty (I'm going to have to remember how to make that). I feel like the timings in the recipe were a little off for my kitchen. The bacon could have been cooked for longer or at a higher temperature to make it more crispy, and the bagel could have been cooked at a lower temperature to stop it from burning. If I mastered those tweaks I bet it would be even more delightful.

Happy end of March! It is finally beginning to feel like spring and it has improved my mood so much.

Since my last post I caught covid. For the first time! I am happy to report that I was fine. It felt like I had a bad cold, and even though my fever went on for quite a few days, I was never ill enough to have to stay in bed, and was able to work from home. When my fever was ending, my taste and smell went. I'm not sure if it was a proper covid loss of taste and smell because my sinuses felt very blocked and I could smell things faintly if I tried to breathe deliberately through my sinuses. Still, it made food taste pretty boring for a while. Thankfully I was lucky and my taste and smell have made a full recovery. I had to pause cooking recipes for a while, but now I'm back on track.

I don't remember too much about the recipes I made pre-covid. Either it was too long ago, or I have filed them away in a different corner of my brain, so bear with me.

Jamie's Mexican-inspired black bean bake
I was a bit uncertain before making these because I have been stung by Jamie recipes before. Things that sound promising end up being tasteless. However, I remember being pleasantly surprised by these. They were tasty! I couldn't find frozen peppers so I substituted in fresh, with no difficulty. To my mind, one tortilla doesn't make a meal, so I ate a plain tortilla on the side, to mop up all the sauce.

Crispy roast chicken thighs with beetroot and chickpea salad
It seems I had entirely blocked this meal from my memory, so seeing the picture of it was a journey. I think I had assumed it was some kind of fever dream? It wasn't bad it was just... a really unusual combination. The beetroot salad was nice enough, I think; I'm not the world's biggest fan of beetroot, but I don't remember any complaints. The chicken was just plain old chicken. I think the pitta crisps were the nicest part, because they were good and crunchy. The recipe seemed to assume that a few pitta pieces were enough carbs for me, but they weren't so I served it with rice.

Mackerel and red lentil fusilli with creamy pepper sauce
This was my first recipe post-covid and it was a triumph! I'm not sure if it was a very tasty recipe or if I was just really excited to taste food again. (To be honest, the excitement to taste food again hasn't left me yet, one month later.) Either way, the recipe was very enjoyable: an easy recipe that is surprisingly tasty for the few ingredients in it. I made this during the time when peppers and salad vegetables were hard to come by in the UK. I couldn't find a red pepper, but I felt very proud of myself for finding an orange pepper instead. My only complaint with this recipe is that this is yet another one from the Tesco website that refuses to feed me carbs. (To me, lentils are not carbs.) Please, I need carbs to live; why are you doing this to me? I had it with a pitta bread on the side and was still hungry afterwards. It was my first time trying lentil pasta and, if I ignored the lack of carbs, I was impressed. Lentil pasta is a bit harder than normal pasta and slightly lentilly in taste, but passes very well for normal pasta when it has a sauce on it. I can see how it could be a good option for people who can't eat gluten, but just, make sure you're getting enough carbs on the side.

Roast chicken Kyiv
This recipe is a bit mad. It is trying to turn a whole roast chicken into a chicken Kyiv. You cover the whole bird in garlic butter (and I am still inexperienced enough that spreading butter under the skin of a chicken feels weird and disgusting) and then roast it. Instead of gravy, you serve the chicken with the drippings, which are pretty much pure garlic butter, and top with breadcrumbs which have been toasted in more garlic butter. I am sure this is not going to be good for you if you eat that amount of butter all the time. But for a one-off it's delicious. I love a chicken Kyiv and this actually tasted like one! If you were to ask me if I wanted to eat chicken soaked in garlic butter, the answer will always be yes please.

Salmon, leek and dill tartlets
I am happy with the way these turned out! Making them was more of an experience than originally intended. I couldn't find pre-made tart cases like the recipe asked for, so I bought some pre-rolled pastry and some baking beans and decided to bake some myself. Alas, the pre-rolled pastry was thicker than that of pre-made tarts and I didn't think to roll it out further, so even though I had bought the right weight of pastry, I didn't have enough pastry to fill more than 5 holes in my muffin tin. I knew I would be making fewer tarts than the recipe says, because my muffin tin is probably bigger than pre-made tart cases would be. But 5 is so few! In the end, I decided to cut the pastry smaller than the holes on the muffin tin; this meant I got 12 tarts in total (score!) but they also ended up misshapen because they were so far down in the tin there was no easy way to trim the edges neatly. With 12 tarts I still had some salmon mixture leftover, so I baked that in a couple of ramekins. While baking the tarts and ramekins I had a very Bake Off moment, when I realised I had forgotten to add the dill to the mixture! I took the tarts out of the oven and tried to stir the dill into each one. Oddly enough, it actually worked. Special mention also goes to the tinned salmon. I knew that taking the bones out of the salmon would be long and tiring, and I wasn't wrong. But I had even more of a problem when my can opener broke while I tried to open the can. I did get the can open eventually by holding the can opener together and whispering please please please please please under my breath while salmon juice poured everywhere; it's not an experience I'd like to repeat. After that, I think forgetting the dill is excusable. As for the taste, these were nice but not spectacular. I don't know if it's possible to introduce lemon juice to an egg and cream mixture without curdling it, but that's what would have taken the taste of these to the next level.

It's time for the first food post of the new year! Most of these recipes are warming and good for winter. In fact, most of these recipes are soup.

Roasted carrot and apple soup with toasted seeds
The first mouthful of this soup is absolutely delicious. It's rich with cumin and nutty roasted seeds, with the slight warmth of chilli underneath and a punch of sweetness from the apples. Unfortunately, that's where the soup falls down. In successive mouthfuls you realise (or at least I realised) that this soup is too sweet. It might have been ok with just apples, but adding apple juice as well was a mistake. Without the apple juice, the soup would have been really good. With the apple juice, the soup just isn't for me (apart from the first mouthful, before the sweetness overpowers me). Additionally, this recipe seems to think you can roast carrots at 180°C for only 25 minutes and they'll come out soft. That wasn't my experience. The carrots were still kinda raw, making this soup oddly crunchy...

Fancy frozen peas
These peas are intended as an accompaniment to Christmas dinner. I made them a few days after Christmas because I was still feeling festive. The name of the recipe doesn't lie: these peas are fancy! I don't normally like peas (they're too sweet for me) but all the extra flavours in this recipe helped to tone down the pea-ness of the peas. With garlic, lemon, sage, shallots, and the peas all toasty from the frying pan, these peas were absolutely delicious. The butter content was ever so slightly too high for me, as I found the peas a bit too rich to eat comfortably, but then, this recipe is meant for Christmas after all.

Peppers, chickpeas and spinach with shakshuka-style eggs
I was uncertain before making this recipe because I'm not a fan of shakshuka. In my book tomatoes and eggs are enemies and should never mix. That said, this is the third time in my life eating shakshuka, and while the first time was bad, the second two times (including this one) were great. On balance, I might have to begin saying that I like shakshuka! For me, this recipe worked because it wasn't too tomato-heavy. There were more chickpeas and spinach than anything else, and they went really nicely with the eggs. And well done to the recipe because the eggs came out perfectly cooked too (so perfect, in fact, that a chickpea wanted to land right in the centre of the egg when I was serving it up).

Smoky black bean and tomato soup
I realise this photo doesn't look like soup. But often if I want to make a meal out of soup and I don't fancy having bread with it, I'll pretend it's stew and eat it over rice. This recipe was spectacularly delicious! So so good. The beans and the smoky chilli and the tomatoes make it wonderfully umami. As the recipe says, though, the toppings are what makes it. They up the flavour to max levels. You can never go wrong with lime and coriander, and then the little crunchy tortilla pinwheels were delightful! An absolute treat, and it goes great with rice too if that's your bag.

Roast squash and chilli soup with Gruyère toasts
I am happy to see a recipe that asks you to roast the vegetables for long enough that they're actually soft when you put them in the food processor (I don't have a blender). That's where my happiness ends. Well, not quite: the Gruyère toasts are very delicious and go great with the soup. The soup itself is eeeh. All the vegetables going into this soup are very sweet, making it too sweet for me. The sweetness is balanced by the toast, but when the toast runs out you're faced with too much sweetness. Still, I might have been able to bear the sweetness if the soup hadn't been so hot! This recipe calls for half a red chilli per portion, and I think my chillies were particularly hot ones. I normally remove the seeds before cooking with chillies, but this recipe said to keep the seeds in, which I did. I shouldn't have done. I am not a person who can take much chilli and so eating this soup was actively painful (on my mouth while eating, and on my stomach afterwards). One other minor gripe: this recipe claims it is easy, and then asks you to peel both a red pepper and a chilli. Peeling a chilli? Do you even realise how fiddly that is? Why are we even bothering? If the recipe wanted to be as full of fibre as it says it is, why not leave the skins on?

Hello and happy new year to you! I hope it's going well so far. I have learnt my lesson over the past few years. I won't expect this year to be reasonable in any way. It might be good (who knows) but it's gotta prove itself first. For now though, I'm focusing on having a "gentle January", which has been relaxing.

I went to visit my parents for Christmas. My uncle came over for Christmas day, and we also went to the pub for an hour to see some friends and relatives. It was a nice time, and not too busy.

This year's selection of Christmas cards.

And I got a lovely selection of presents too.

Food and kitchen gifts, including tasty cinnamon biscuits from Isla. Underneath the pile are some reusable bags for loose fruit and vegetables at the supermarket. I'm continuing my bid to reduce plastic in the kitchen, so these will go down well. The knife is from my parents. I hadn't requested a knife, my Mum had just noticed how I always compliment one of their knives when I use it in their kitchen, so she got me a similar one. (I even, unknowingly, made just the same compliment on Christmas day, before we got out the presents.) Using this new knife I have realised that I maybe haven't owned a sharp kitchen knife in my whole life. My current set of knives is about 20 years old, and even though I do sharpen them, they never get properly sharp. Whereas cutting things with this new knife is so easy it's blissful.

Toiletries, including some bath bomb eggs from Isla and a box spa set from Asia. The spa set is very strongly rose themed. The face mask from the set unfortunately didn't sit well with my skin, but the few other items I have tried so far have been good.

Other gifts from my parents, including two books, neither of which I have read before, a new top, and a tiny USB stick with a huge capacity. The socks I requested specifically. I got some last year and they quickly became my favourite socks (am I allowed to have favourite socks?) They're so soft and comfy, and the toes and heels are reinforced, meaning they don't get immediate holes, which is always a problem for me.

In early December my parents and I went to Hastings for a long weekend. The weather was very cold and grey, but I haven't been away with my parents since 2019 so it was really nice to spend time sightseeing with them again.

I hadn't been to Hastings before. It's a very hilly town, with an interesting mix of jaded Edwardian seafront and old winding medieval streets. Very pretty. We went on one of Hastings' two (two!) funicular railways, and we also went into the fisherman's museum. The tall black huts are a Hastings speciality and were historically used to dry the fishermans' nets. It's still an active fishing town today and there was plenty of fresh fish for sale.

All in all, it was a lovely trip away and I'm still thinking about it. Have some photos:

A month ago I took my first trip abroad since summer 2019! I was very nervous. What if I had forgotten how airports worked? What if new covid rules were introduced and I wasn't allowed in the country? What if? What if?

I needn't have worried. It was wonderful! Nick and Eva invited us to the Dutch countryside. James, Eppa, Linda, Tom, myself and all the kids came along. For me it involved a flight to Amsterdam and then a train (which was also nervewracking and also super easy).

We stayed in a big house in a tiny hamlet. It was so peaceful. We saw cars drive past our place only about four times per day. Most of the time we saw (and smelled) the cows in the field opposite. We went on some lovely walks to explore the surrounding area, and had some enjoyable local food (including, for me, a ham hock and a bacon pancake). There were also delicious home-cooked meals including a risotto (thanks James) and cheesy spätzle (thanks Nick). I'd never had spätzle before, it's a German type of pasta, and it's great.

One night we lit a campfire and sat around it to talk while the kids played on the trampoline in the garden.

A couple of people were ill on the trip but I wasn't one of them, so for me it was a lovely time! That feeling of spending time with friends when you haven't seen them for years. It was so nice.

Here are some photos. It was the beginning of autumn, but there was an odd heatwave meaning we only needed to wear light coats and jackets.

It's time for another food post!

Grilled lamb shoulder (recipe from "The Groundnut Cookbook" by Duval Timothy, Jacob Fodio Todd and Folayemi Brown)
Ok, so in the cookbook this recipe is called "grilled heart" and they advise you to use chicken hearts. But I am squeamish about offal and there was a suggestion to use lamb shoulder instead, so I took it. This recipe uses the red rub I mentioned in the previous food post; I had some left over so it seemed the perfect time to try it. (As I mentioned last time, there was no sumac in my red rub and I had added extra lemon juice to compensate.) This recipe suggests 4.5 tablespoons of the dry rub to 500g meat, and then says to marinate with lemon juice, olive oil and honey for half an hour. You sprinkle more red rub on over the meat once it has been cooked. But the method of cooking sounded a bit weird to me. You put the meat and the marinade in a dish (I used a roasting tray) and heat it under the grill for 20 minutes. I have never grilled anything containing so much liquid before! I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but it worked. What you end up with is meat that is still juicy but slightly charred and crunchy on top. It was very delicious. Maybe it would be delicious with chicken hearts too, but someone else will have to test that one out. Oh, one final thing to note: I couldn't find any pre-diced lamb shoulder (the shop had run out) so I bought a half-shoulder and butchered it myself. That was intense, but kinda fun.

Green salad with tangerine dressing (recipe from "The Groundnut Cookbook" by Duval Timothy, Jacob Fodio Todd and Folayemi Brown)
This is one of the rare recipes in this cookbook that isn't absolutely amazing. The salad dressing is made from caramelised onions, tangerine zest and juice, ginger, sugar and a couple of other things. It was too sweet for me. I can't handle sweet things in savoury food very well. I thought maybe the ingredients together would make it all work somehow, but not this time. It was flavourful, and not horrible by any means, but just not for me. Also, caramelising onions takes forever, so if I'm going to do it I want it to be worth the time.

Pilau (recipe from "The Groundnut Cookbook" by Duval Timothy, Jacob Fodio Todd and Folayemi Brown)
Thankfully "The Groundnut Cookbook" is back with the good stuff in this recipe. We're told that it's not a traditional pilau, but one that Folayemi Brown came up with, with added lemon juice among other changes. It is utterly utterly delicious. So so good. Oily, fresh and flavourful, and not too much harder than making plain steamed rice! The recipe calls for fresh turmeric which turned all my tea towels yellow and I'm not even mad about it. Oh, one substitution: the recipe asks for white peppercorns, which are then crushed. I couldn't find any so just used pre-ground white pepper, which I doubt will have made much difference. Man, my mouth is watering just thinking about how tasty this rice was.

Banana (recipe from "The Groundnut Cookbook" by Duval Timothy, Jacob Fodio Todd and Folayemi Brown)
Ok. Calling this a "recipe" is a bit of a stretch. This cookbook does this sometimes: it won't have a recipe but just a suggestion for how to eat certain things. This suggestion is: if you're eating flavoured rice, like pilau, try eating a chilled banana on the side instead of yoghurt. Apparently it's common to do this in Tanzania. I was sceptical; I've already mentioned how I struggle with sweet things in my savoury food. But do you know what? This actually works! It's ever so slightly too sweet for me, but the cool creaminess of the banana really offsets spiciness well, and I was quite happy to eat it with my biryani.

Golden carrot traybake (recipe from "The Great British Bake Off Big Book of Baking" by Linda Collister)
Who knew that carrot cake could be so disappointing? This recipe is a different take on a carrot cake. The only spice in the mixture is a little cinnamon. Instead the carrots are bulked out with fresh pineapple, dried apricots, sultanas, and orange zest and juice (from a navel orange, which I couldn't find, so I used a normal one). No lemon juice in the icing either, just mascarpone, orange zest and icing sugar. Far too much icing sugar. I didn't think it was possible for me to say this about a cake, but this cake is too sweet. I always worry that I am going to find carrot cake icing too sickly sweet and too rich, and it never is, until now. The punch of sweetness from all the fruit in the cake doesn't help either. It's ok (look, no cake is ever going to be truly bad) but it makes me a little nauseous to eat it. If we were going on flavour alone the cake would get the thumbs down from me but, oh man, there's more. The cake sunk in the middle when it came out of the oven. An online search suggested that this is because the cake may have been undercooked. But I am certain the cake was cooked fully. The recipe said to bake it for 30-35 minutes, but mine was still trying to slop out of the tin at that stage. I cooked it for another 15-20 minutes and while it was still worryingly jiggly, the skewer came out clean. The cake also took ages and ages to cool. Turns out (I realised, as I cut the cake into slices and tried to serve it) a cake can also sink in the middle if it contains too much moisture, and presumably the moisture will make it cool slowly too. The fruit, orange juice and carrots in this recipe all served to make this one of the wettest cakes I've ever made. It barely held together (the photo above shows the nicest looking slice, because boy were there some ugly ones). I suppose I could have cooked the cake for longer to remove more moisture, but it was already threatening to burn on top, and the edges were getting dry. So flavour-wise and texture-wise, this cake was wrong, just wrong. I thought I liked carrot cake, but I think the trauma of this one is going to make me rethink my choices.

In my last food post I wrote about baking a pie for the Queen's Jubilee. Today, in a strange turn of coincidence, I write this on the day of the Queen's funeral. (I haven't, however, made a funeral pie.)

In the intervening time I have amassed quite a few recipes to talk about. As I mentioned last time I've been travelling a lot, then after my period of travelling I've had a period of doing lots of overtime at work, so it's taken me a while to sit down and write.

You'll see that a lot of these recipes come from "The Groundnut Cookbook" by Duval Timothy, Jacob Fodio Todd and Folayemi Brown. I am seriously impressed with this cookbook. Most of the recipes I've tried from it have been absolutely delicious. The chefs who wrote it know their stuff, my goodness.

Groundnut soup (recipe from "The Groundnut Cookbook" by Duval Timothy, Jacob Fodio Todd and Folayemi Brown)
The introduction to this recipe says that the name "groundnut soup" traditionally refers to the groundnut stew with chicken (I made it a while back and it was amazing). But in this recipe they've turned it into a liquid soup without meat. It is still absolutely delicious. It's lighter than the stew with a creamy vegetable flavour. You almost think the taste is too light, but then you get a mouthful with the salt flakes and black pepper on top and the taste rounds out to something perfect. The recipe says to blend the soup with a hand blender. I don't have one of those but my food processor worked just fine.

Pan-fried okra (recipe from "The Groundnut Cookbook" by Duval Timothy, Jacob Fodio Todd and Folayemi Brown)
I'd never eaten okra before! I was a bit scared because I had heard a lot of people don't like the slimy texture. For me, the texture was unusual and the mouthfeel took some getting used to, but the strong green bean flavour of okra really makes it worth it. This recipe adds a little sweetness with lime juice and honey, and it's just the right amount. Really really tasty.

Roasted aubergine and tomato with peanut sauce (recipe from "The Groundnut Cookbook" by Duval Timothy, Jacob Fodio Todd and Folayemi Brown)
This is a very savoury dish, an umami punch in the face dish. I had never eaten aubergine with peanut butter before but the combination works really well, particularly with the added cumin. The sauce is very punchy as I say, but it works great when mellowed by the wateriness of the aubergine.

White cabbage and courgette (recipe from "The Groundnut Cookbook" by Duval Timothy, Jacob Fodio Todd and Folayemi Brown)
I'll put my hand up and say I was a bit worried going into this dish. A raw cabbage and raw courgette salad sounds unendingly boring and very woody. I was imagining lots of fibre and not much else, so I was surprised to find it was actually really tasty! The tomatoes, herbs and dressing add a lot of flavour and the avocado makes it nice and creamy. I'd never eaten raw courgette before (I hadn't even known it was possible) but it's actually pleasantly soft and pillowy.

Beef suya (recipe from "The Groundnut Cookbook" by Duval Timothy, Jacob Fodio Todd and Folayemi Brown)
Suya is a very popular street food in Nigeria and other parts of West Africa. It seems like there are many ways to make the spice mix you coat the grilled meat with, but if they are all as tasty as this version I can see why the dish is as popular as it is. The recipe says that ideally you should add Selim pepper to the spice mix but as I couldn't find that I used the recipe's suggested substitution of black pepper and a pinch of nutmeg. I also couldn't find roasted peanuts to add to the spice mix (my supermarket had run out) so I bought blanched peanuts and toasted them in a pan. The recipe said to grind the peanuts and spices together in a blender; I don't have a blender and didn't feel like getting out a food processor so I just ground mine in a pestle and mortar instead. Something about the spice mix with the peanuts is so moreish and goes really well with the beef. It's traditional to serve the meat with tomatoes and raw onion, which the recipe does, but to be honest I would prefer it without. I don't really like raw onion anyway, and I found the taste of the onion and tomatoes strong enough that I couldn't taste the delicious spiced beef as much as I wanted to (and I wanted to taste it very much; it was so good).

Chorizo sausage rolls
This is the only recipe this time not to come from "The Groundnut Cookbook"! I have made chorizo sausage rolls before from a different recipe (Waitrose website) and wanted to see how the two recipes compared. This Tesco recipe is certainly easier than the previous one because you don't have to make your own puff pastry. They are tasty and crispy too. However, I think I preferred the Waitrose recipe slightly more because that contained chipotle paste and so the sausage rolls were more flavoursome. With the Waitrose recipe I can remember blanking out when I had to do the maths to work out how to slice up the pastry. This time I didn't blank out but my sausage rolls came out very thin. The recipe says to make the pastry 35cm long, then slice it into 15-17 pieces, each about 3cm wide. Dear recipe, that's physically impossible. 3cm multiplied by 15 is 45cm! So I made 15 thin ones instead. You were given a choice of making large or small sausage rolls; both were the same width but the large ones had more filling. I'm glad I went with small because the large ones would have been so big and thin they would have looked like weird meat cookies.

Red rub (recipe from "The Groundnut Cookbook" by Duval Timothy, Jacob Fodio Todd and Folayemi Brown)
This recipe is for a dry rub. It doesn't say how to use the dry rub at all, which left me a bit confused because I've not really used one before. I decided to put mine on chicken thighs because chicken thighs were on offer that week. The recipe doesn't mention how much rub to put on how much meat. In the end I put half the rub (they say the whole amount of rub you make is about 140g) on 1kg chicken thighs. I was worried that half wouldn't be enough but actually it came out just right. The chicken doesn't look very coated but the flavours were still nice and punchy. Actually the flavours were really good: salty and savoury and super tasty. Alas, the only problem was that my supermarket had run out of sumac, which is a key ingredient. I substituted lemon juice instead. Hopefully the substitution didn't affect the flavour too much but it certainly made my rub less dry and not red at all. So if you ignore the fact that my version wasn't red and wasn't really a rub, it was still a great success. I'm looking forward to using the other half that I've set aside.

It has been a busy old summer. For two whole years I have socialised very little because of the pandemic, and apparently some risk assessment switch in my brain has now tripped over into "I feel good about meeting people", so I spent the last few months visiting many people and doing many things. Shows! Theatre! Exhibitions! Trains! Restaurants! I am feeling very exhausted after it all, but it was good to get out and about and finally see people again.

I will end this post with some photos I have taken on my travels, including trips to visit Isla in York and Jane in Lancashire. For now though, I need to share the traditional photos of presents from my recent birthday.

A good selection of birthday cards!

Look at the card my parents got me! I had no idea you could get "What We Do in the Shadows" cards! I am delighted.

Also a highlight is this cute little birthday dog drawn by Rene.

I asked my parents to buy me a new storage container and I got this one, which turned up filled with biscuits. They're the ginger oaty biscuits my Mum always used to make when I was a child, and they are full of nostalgia and delicious to boot.

Other food and kitchen gifts. I am trying to wean myself off of clingfilm, so my parents got me some clips and silicone lids which should come in very handy. Mariya sent me lots of Japanese sweets, including delicious pistachio chocolate, delicious mandarin mochi, and some kind of "beauty" sweets (which I haven't tried yet but which I am hoping are also delicious).

Toiletries and things, including a Yatterman sheet mask from Mariya, a lens cleaning cloth from my parents and a huge box of bath bombs from Asia. I have used one bath bomb so far. It was in the shape of a cupcake, turned the bath water lime green and has stained the bottom of the bathtub blue; it was so much fun, I have zero regrets.

Other presents, including a cute cat cactus (catctus?) bag from Mariya. She also got me the most gorgeous notebook. I want to use the notebook but I am scared that anything I write in there will turn into a magic wish which will haunt me. The blue pens write beautifully, though, so, yes, I might end up cursed but the process of writing out said curse for myself will be fun.

Finally, on request my parents got me a new DVD player to replace my old one, which was about 20 years old and beginning to complain about playing DVDs. DVD players are so small nowadays! I am impressed with all the extra space I have on my TV stand.

It was a lovely birthday and a lovely summer (if, on occasion, too hot; please, why are we going over 40C?) As promised, here are some photos from my adventures.

I did some big bakes last weekend and I'm still buzzing from it. The sort of thing where you spend so long cooking and then cleaning in the kitchen that you tell yourself "Never again". Predictably, a week later I'm all "I want to do another one".

Guys, here's the thing. I have now been making these food posts for 10 whole years. I'm astounded! What happened with a one-off, "hay, maybe I should try baking a cake for the 2012 Queen's Jubilee," has turned into trying out new recipes regularly and sharing the results with you all. (I'm so glad I could make a 2022 Jubilee bake to continue the trend.) And, tell you what, I have loved every minute of it. Even the disasters. (Especially the disasters?)

10 years ago, before I got into this, I used to cook very regularly, but they were mostly staple meals that had been in my repertoire for a while. I was always intrigued by bakes and recipes, and had flights of fancy that I might one day make something exciting, but I never took that step. And, honestly, I'm surprised it took me so long before I did. I come from an entire family of foodies; everyone loves cooking delicious things, and I had always loved loved watching food shows and reading recipe books and trying new foods at restaurants. But, like, following new recipes at home is a faff; you have to buy special ingredients and it takes time and thought, so I had never done it often.

It turns out that all I needed to really get going was some initial inspiration (thank you 2012 Jubilee cake) followed by a good routine. I love a routine, so incorporating new recipes into my daily life really was the way to go. And once I started, I couldn't stop. It's so addictive! There have been times where I've been busy and not able to try cooking new things and I find that I really yearn for it after a while. I love the whole process of cooking and how it can distract me from whatever else might be going on. And I love that it comes with this huge payoff; I will happily put in lots of effort if it gives me something to eat afterwards. The eating is maybe the best part. Getting to try new dishes regularly is so delightful. Yes, some end up disgusting, but more often than not it's really tasty. I knew I was onto a winner when restaurant food started to occasionally be boring for me. When you bite into a dish you have paid for and think "man, I've made stuff better than this at home"; that's a feeling, let me tell you.

To be fair, there are still many many many restaurant dishes that are better than anything I could make, but it's so exciting to know that the next dish I make has the potential to be super tasty.

I am rambling. I have no point other to say that this 10 years has gone by so fast. I'm so glad to have picked up such an enjoyable and fulfilling hobby. Long may it continue!

Indian rice salad with onion bhajis
This is very much an anglicised dish. Recipe, are you going to tell me which part of Indian cuisine it comes from? Of course not. Still, I can't complain. As someone with an English palate, the flavours work for me. Anything topped with three onion bhajis is going to be delicious. I'm not normally a huge fan of microwave rice, but it makes this dish so easy. And making a salad dressing out of mango chutney is inspired. Delicious, easy and filling! My only complaint is: why are we seeding the cucumbers? What's the point? The seeds are not really going to make the salad more soggy, so why waste them?

Lamb, mint and spring veg traybake
This dish sounds nice but it was very disappointing. Something went wrong with the recipe somewhere. I normally like my lamb well done, but I understand that most people prefer it pink in the middle. So, when the recipe said to sear the lamb then put it in the oven for 10 minutes only, I was sceptical but willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. The 10 minutes would have been fine for the lamb if the oven had been hot. But it was not! Halfway through cooking, you chuck a load of frozen beans in the oven, which lower the temperature considerably. You need to add an extra 10 minutes to the cooking time to allow the beans to defrost and get the oven back up to temperature again. Basically, I cooked this dish for the time stated and I ended up with lamb which was even more pink than most people enjoy, hard potatoes and beans which were still cold in the middle. Not pleasant.

Pea and potato stew with crispy salami
This is one of those dishes that sounds to me like it is going to be completely boring, then I make it and am surprised by how nice it is. I love when that happens, and it's entirely the reason I am willing to try dishes that don't sound good on paper. Now, I don't like peas and I find stewed potatoes to be pretty boring, so I did not have high hopes here. But I was wrong! All the ingredients in the stock really work (I should add that I chose a beef stock cube to make my stock); you end up with a stock that is nice and savoury with an excellent zing from the lemon juice, which lifts the dish. The peas are sweet but not too sweet, and the salty crispy salami on top brings everything together. It looks great and tastes great.

Yorkshire pudding with mango curd (recipe from "The Groundnut Cookbook" by Duval Timothy, Jacob Fodio Todd and Folayemi Brown)
This sounds deceptively simple and kinda weird. I know that sweet Yorkshire puddings are a thing some people have, but I'd never tried them myself. And even though some people eat them sweet, I don't think mango curd is a normal accompaniment. As for the recipe being simple: Yorkshire puddings are easy to make, right? I've made them several times before. What can go wrong? Guys, I was not factoring in the mango curd. Making that was an experience. I've never made a curd before, so I didn't have anything to go on. But before I even got to the curd-making step, the recipe says to make some mango purée. To make mango purée, you put fresh mango in a blender (I don't have one of those, so used a food processor) then you strain it through a sieve and throw away the fibrous parts left behind. This would probably be easy enough, if you didn't accidentally buy THE LEAST RIPE MANGO KNOWN TO MAN. My God. This mango crunched like an apple! It was so wrong. But I wanted to make this dish on the same day I bought the ingredients, so there wasn't time to let the mango ripen. I persevered, blending the bits of mango that crunched the least and then spending about an hour or more trying to strain them through a sieve. What resulted was more of a juice than a purée (although there was a little pulp in it) but it tasted of mango, while being slightly sharp (which, to be honest, I liked). Then to make the curd, you add lime juice, sugar and an egg yolk and heat it in a bain marie. The recipe says merely to cook the curd for 12 minutes and says nothing about what kind of consistency you should expect when those 12 minutes are up. So I dutifully cooked my curd and after 12 minutes still found it very liquid. I was assuming the egg yolk would thicken it, like when making a custard. So I kept cooking for another 8 minutes and still the consistency was the same. Remembering how I had madly over-cooked my crème pâtissière a few months ago, I decided not to be overzealous here and took it off the heat. I also figured that maybe if my mango purée was pretty liquid, that might affect the consistency. So, after taking it off the heat you whisk in butter and leave it to cool. I am happy to say that my curd did thicken in the fridge! I think the butter was doing the heavy lifting when it comes to the thickening, rather than the egg yolk. It wasn't a super-thick curd, but looked similar to the picture on the recipe, which makes me think that maybe the curd was never meant to thicken in the bain marie and that's why the recipe didn't mention anything about waiting for it to thicken in that step. But if the recipe had added a little line like "don't worry; it's not meant to thicken at this stage" that would have saved me a lot of worry. To be honest, from previous recipes in this book, I can tell that the book hasn't been tested or edited that much. See also: the Yorkshire puddings which absolutely were not cooked after the 18 minutes I was told to cook them for; they were all pale and sad. My oven does get a bit inaccurate at higher temperatures, but I think the recipe could be altered to give a time span instead of just "18 minutes". I ended up cooking my Yorkshire puddings for about 10 minutes longer than stated. They didn't rise much, and I don't know if that's due to the sugar in the batter or the fact that I kept having to open the oven door to check on them but, again, they looked kinda like the picture in the book. When I complain here, though, I complain with love: these little Yorkshire puddings, with their mango and lime curd and pistachio and cardamom crumb, were absolutely delicious! The curd was so sweet and punchy! It was the sort of thing that makes you say "wow" when you first try it. And the curd goes so well with the Yorkshires and the cardamom/pistachio flavours. In fact, flavour-wise, it tasted a lot like the mango, cardamom, pistachio cake I made a couple of years ago; it's a combination that works well. Eating those flavours in Yorkshire pudding format was definitely a weird experience, but one I'd be happy to recreate. Truly lovely! As a bonus, there was some curd left over, which was excellent spread on crumpets the next morning.

Coronation chicken pie
Here it is, my 10 year anniversary Jubilee bake! This pie was a beast, but I'm so happy with the way it turned out. Look at those layers! Making it was very much a marathon. You have to make three fillings: curry chicken, mango and lime, and spinach. Then you have to line a tin with pastry (shop-bought, so at least there wasn't the terror of making your own pastry), carefully layer in the fillings while packing them down, cover, decorate, bake, chill overnight(!) then slice. I also marinated the chicken overnight before making the curry chicken filling so, all told, the pie took me three days to make. That's a long time to live with mid-cooking anxiety. And every step comes with so much washing up! Still, everything went mostly smoothly. I accidentally didn't buy enough tinned mango, so the pie was ever so slightly lacking in that, and I couldn't buy pre-rolled pastry, so the pastry may have been thicker than intended (hence why there was still a little raw pastry inside the pie). Trying to fit all the filling in the pie wasn't easy (my loaf tin was overflowing) and then crimping the top is tricky when you don't have much experience of crimping. Oh, and taking the cooked and chilled pie out of the tin was a challenge. You are meant to line the tin with baking paper so you can use the paper to lift the pie out of the tin. My pie was so heavy that the baking paper broke in my hands! In the end, I was able to use what was left of the paper and a knife to ease the pie out of the tin. But no wonder it didn't want to come out; this pie weighed as much as a small dog! (Good lord.) Weight aside, I was so happy to see that after all that work I had something which looked like a pie and which retained its layers perfectly when cut. Taste-wise, the pie doesn't quite deliver as much as some of the other recipes in this post. It's nice but (as I probably should have expected with coronation chicken) the curry flavour is very mild. The mango and spinach went well with it though, and the nigella seeds on the top were a really nice addition. So, not quite worth the hype, but I'm still very proud of it.

Hello! It's been ages. I have been cooking, but just not writing about it, so I've built up a number of dishes to talk about today. Several of them have been surprisingly delicious! So let's get into it.

'No chicken' noodle soup
This dish was sadly lacklustre. I normally prefer a chunky soup, but this one was so watery! I've not eaten king oyster mushrooms before; turns out they don't have as much flavour as I was hoping and they are really chewy and hard to eat. A caveat though: I didn't buy any garlic and herb nooch seasoning. Instead I tried to make my own by mixing dried yeast with the dried herbs and spices listed for the seasoning online. Maybe if I'd actually bought the seasoning this dish would be better? Because as it was, it was bland, watery and very much lacking in umami. The sort of dish that gives vegan food a bad reputation.

Vegan stuffed aubergines
Unlike the last recipe, this one gives vegan food an excellent reputation. Utterly delicious! One of the best vegan dishes I've ever eaten. The reason it's so delicious could be that there is 25ml olive oil per person in the sauce, so it's not the healthiest of dishes. It's not the easiest to make either, because there are lots of components and you have to get out a food processor at one point. It might just be worth the effort for the taste though. It's meaty and rich, with so much umami from the tahini, the mince and the onions, and then sweetness and freshness too. I don't normally like raisins or tahini but they work perfectly here. And even though the recipe says the fried onion and pomegranate seeds are optional, they take the dish to the next level; it wouldn't be anywhere near as good without them.

Cheesy kale muffins
This recipe was another roaring success. The mixture of the cheese, kale and herbs is delicious and tastes, surprisingly, like a hearty roast dinner. The kale keeps the muffins nice and moist too! The only issue is that these are low fat muffins, meaning there isn't enough fat in them to make the cupcake liners peel away easily. It's quite disappointing to make something delicious but then find half of it stuck to the paper. Baking them directly in an oiled muffin tin would probably be better. I couldn't find fresh dill so I used dried, but it was still delicious. I was also lucky to end up with more muffins than the recipe said. There is a lot of mixture, but it didn't rise as much as I was worried it would do, so I could have filled the cases higher. A minor technical glitch. I don't care. These were lovely.

Chilli and lime salmon fried rice
This dish was nice, and very edible, but didn't quite have the wow factor of some of the other recipes here. The peanuts, salmon, sweet chilli sauce, lime juice and coriander all combined to make it tasty, but it was slightly one-note. Also, I foolishly thought that using tinned salmon would make it quicker to make than if the recipe had asked for fresh salmon. Wrong. Baking fresh salmon in the oven would probably have been quicker than dealing with the tinned stuff, although it would have been more expensive. You see, I had never used tinned salmon before and I was surprised to find skin and bones in the tin! Even though the tinned salmon was already cooked, it took ages to sift through everything to make sure I'd taken all the bones out. A right palaver, but I can see how it's good if you want salmon but don't want to spend your life-savings buying some.

Butter bean and tomato stew with garlic bread
This is another vegan recipe (if you use vegan bread, that is) that really blew me away with how delicious it is. On paper it sounds a bit boring. How can just tinned beans and tinned tomatoes be interesting in any way? I still don't quite know how they did it, but all the flavours are wonderfully balanced. There was lots of umami from the garlic and tomatoes, and with just enough sweetness and herbs too. The garlic bread is *chef's kiss* and really adds something to the stew when you eat them both together. I splurged on buying a slightly-pricey white sourdough and I cut it into very chunky slices. I have no regrets. Ladling juicy stew onto thick garlic bread and crunching it down was glorious. My God.

Roasted carrots with feta and chilli
This recipe was ok. Like the salmon stir-fry above, it was nice, but some of the other dishes in this post are so amazing it doesn't live up to them. It tastes exactly like you'd imagine carrots with lemon, mint, chilli and feta to taste: you can taste the individual ingredients, but they don't come together to make anything better than that. I chose to eat them with lamb chops and I'm glad I did; the fresh tanginess offset the richness of the lamb very well.

Odds and ends arrabiata al forno
I will admit I was scared going into this one. I have been stung one too many times in the past by Jamie Oliver recipes: dishes that look like they are going to be delicious but end up being oddly sweet and without enough umami. I am happy to say that with this recipe Jamie has bucked the trend! (Maybe it's because I could choose whatever cheese I liked, so I went for a mature cheddar to add more umami.) The butternut squash surprisingly doesn't make the dish too sweet. Instead it's rich with cheese and tomatoeyness, and with a nice hint of chilli too. My only issue is that the sauce was still very liquid when it was cooked, so the dish wasn't as oozy as it could have been. That may be down to the fact that I don't have a pan that will work on the hob and in the oven, so I had to transfer everything from my hob pan into a cold casserole dish to bake it (I have suffered from this cold casserole dish issue before). Still, I am quite happy to put up with a sauce that's too runny when it tastes nice, which this one does.

Ah. It's always nice to write the first food post of the new year! (Most of these dishes were actually made in 2021 but, shhh, I won't tell if you won't.)

Sausage and butter bean casserole
I made this in late November and I honestly don't remember much about it now! The recipe is actually called "Sausage and cannellini bean casserole" but the supermarket was out of cannellini beans so I substituted butter beans. I seem to recall that this dish was pleasant to eat but not amazing. Did it need more salt? Who knows? It was a stew. It had sausages in. The rest clearly left no lasting impression on me.

Mini Mexican sweetcorn fritters
After the astoundingly-delicious sweetcorn fritters in the last food post, I had high hopes for this recipe. It was, however, a disappointment. That's not to say they were bad, but they just weren't up to the level of the others. These Mexican fritters had more of a flat taste than the other ones. There was no zing to them, which was surprising, given the lime juice in there. Something about browning the corn first and adding smoked paprika and fajita spice mix gave these a more savoury taste, whereas it was the sweetness of the sweet chilli sauce that made the previous ones sing. The other ones benefited from bacon too, which these didn't have, leaving them not quite salty enough. In conclusion: they're ok, but don't make them immediately after an amazing sweetcorn fritter recipe.

Perfect roast potatoes
Well. Going by the name, this recipe has a lot to live up to! Alas, I can't call them perfect roast potatoes. They were ok, but not perfect. The thing is, they're not very golden and crispy. I like a roast potato with crunch! I like them brown! I made this recipe again a few weeks later and kept them in the oven for another half an hour, and they were so much better. Still not perfect in my eyes, but that's because I've realised I prefer the taste of roast potatoes cooked in vegetable oil instead of the greasy lard taste of duck fat. However, I had no idea that, as per this recipe, you can cook a roast potato without turning them once! I thought roast potatoes had to be turned regularly in the oven to brown them all over. Not so! And if you don't move them, the bottom gets extra crispy. I have learned things and am wiser.

Frankie's 'late night' breakfast
I have realised why all the recipes for shakshouka and similar dishes have photos of the dish still in the pan and not on the plate: once you put it on the plate it looks like a mess! I think mine was particularly messy, because I only cooked one portion and there weren't enough tomatoes to keep the eggs contained and stop them from spreading everywhere. So, I failed on presentation, but as to taste, well... I was scared before trying this. Eggs and tomatoes are one of those flavour combinations that I just can't stomach together (unless, for some unknown reason, it's tomatoes in an omelette). The mixture of the rich eggs and sweet tomatoes makes me feel kind of sick. I had had shakshouka once before, many years ago, and I remember it making me feel nauseous. However, new year new me, so I decided to give this one a go. I was surprised to find that that this version didn't make me feel ill at all! The cumin, spinach and lemon juice really helped to cut down on the pure tomato sweetness that I normally struggle with when it comes to eggs, and that was with the added sugar in the recipe too! The fact that there aren't actually that many tomatoes in the recipe may help as well. That said, I was not an out-and-out fan of the dish. There was too much lemon juice in the yoghurt sauce, making the sauce very runny and super sharp; it overpowered everything. Tone down on the lemon juice, and you'd have a nice dish that I would stomach quite easily.