Food

[Rich.]

@Rich. North of Madrid... nice! How long are you living there? We considered/fantasized about buying an abandoned village (!) in Portugal for a while. The buildings were stone and ancient and the weather would have been, well, considerably better than here!! But we moved closer to my family instead and, in truth it has been an excellent move, especially for the children. But I often think about "my" Portuguese village (which had become fully restored and was now a thriving artists haven, boasting an organic, fully self-sufficient farm) (In my head) (I should stop reading John Seymour and Peter Mayle etc)

Yeah, to have family around is gold for the children, and for the parents if only for the practical help (all other support being a bonus ). We've been here for two years, but I've been in Spain for eleven. We started off bang-slap in the middle of Madrid, and then the suburbs... and then the mountains! We got it right in the end.

I should bring this back to food, shouldn't I? For lunch tomorrow I will be having cocido madrileño in a local home-cooking-type restaurant. It would be challenging to be vegetarian in this part of the world, but at least we know exactly where the meat has come from – you can see most of it from any decent hill around here.

 

[Webbwalker]

Mixed salad with a nut roast for lunch. Very colourful. Il Matrimonio groaned at the notion of a dingy nut roast, but has decided that ackshleee it was r-a-t-h-e-r delicioso, and I am duly allowed out of the dog-house, and indeed, am being made a coffee even as I type.

Snap! We had nut roast for lunch today too, I love it. We had with mashed potato and swede, broccoli and mushroom gravy.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

Well, you all have more interesting lunches than I do. It'll be a cheese and seitan sandwich (probably with lettuce from the garden if I think to go out and pick), pickles and olives (both home grown), and an apple. But I'm thinking dinner tonight is going to be a spinach-feta pie with oven fried artichoke slices on the side, and gooseberry crisp for dessert. Oh...and maybe broad beans on the side, too (they were almost ready to pick two days ago). Here's a past iteration of the pie:

 

[Marc Joan]

A place near Cambridge. In an old steam train carriage.

I think I may know the place...on the way to Sudbury? Track goes over a river valley?

 

[Barbara]

I think I may know the place...on the way to Sudbury? Track goes over a river valley?

Sounds like a different one. The one I went to was outside Fen Drayton. The owner bought a few carriages and did them up. They're on a track but I'm not sure if it's an old line. Theres a station house too. The whole place is old worldy. It's a fairly new business. Opened a few months ago. But I'll look out for the Sudbury place. Good reason to go out.

 

[Amber]

This is the view from my flat right now (no Photoshop, I promise)...

View attachment 2831

Pretty awesome. I'll return the favor.

This is a picture from the desk in my office. Birds often bounce around in that bush. I like watching them very much. Sometimes I feed them but other critters like to snatch their food from the bird feeder. I like those critters too, even when I'm not supposed to. But their appetites are somewhat larger than the birds' appetite. On the mantle you can see I have an interest in hourglasses. Also, the purple dinosaurs are something I snatched from my son's college art project. He painted dinosaur figures purple and posed them on things. It could be my proudest moment. Which isn't to say he hasn't done thing for me to be proud of. I'm just really fond of the idea of posing purple dinosaurs in a somewhat random fashion on ordinary household objects. Oh... then the light is my office lamp reflected in the window.

 

[Amber]

Well, goodness, I am quite touched as I don't often get foody requests, particularly since I cooked my famous 'Chicken Outrage' for the kids, but here is an old pic of a gin and tonic cheesecake I made for my other and far better half:
View attachment 2832

Interesting shiny dessert. Is that homemade crust?

 

[Amber]

Well, you all have more interesting lunches than I do. It'll be a cheese and seitan sandwich (probably with lettuce from the garden if I think to go out and pick), pickles and olives (both home grown), and an apple. But I'm thinking dinner tonight is going to be a spinach-feta pie with oven fried artichoke slices on the side, and gooseberry crisp for dessert. Oh...and maybe broad beans on the side, too (they were almost ready to pick two days ago). Here's a past iteration of the pie:
View attachment 2841

I like how this report of the culinary delights in your home starts off unassuming and then continues on to recount the same type of food you'd expect to find in an Eastern US farm to table establishment. It looks delicious.

 

[Amber]

Yeah, to have family around is gold for the children, and for the parents if only for the practical help (all other support being a bonus ). We've been here for two years, but I've been in Spain for eleven. We started off bang-slap in the middle of Madrid, and then the suburbs... and then the mountains! We got it right in the end.

I should bring this back to food, shouldn't I? For lunch tomorrow I will be having cocido madrileño in a local home-cooking-type restaurant. It would be challenging to be vegetarian in this part of the world, but at least we know exactly where the meat has come from – you can see most of it from any decent hill around here.

Looks like an interesting dish. I couldn't see what spices they use. Maybe ... all the usual ones.

 

[Marc Joan]

Interesting shiny dessert. Is that homemade crust?

It is all home-made, how dare you, and the shininess is simply an effulgence of delight. And you can't have any, so there.

 

[Amber]

It is all home-made, how dare you, and the shininess is simply an effulgence of delight. And you can't have any, so there.

Is it custard like? I don't like custardy things anyway. So there back atchya.

 

[Emily]

He painted dinosaur figures purple and posed them on things.

Did he make stop-motions with them? I have a son who did things like that, then made stop-motion shorts which got a little gory after a while when he needed a quick end (and got bored). Much ketchup was used until he figured out post-production editing...

Nice hourglasses... They don't heat up in the sun on the windowsill, do they?

 

[Emily]

@Kirsten , I made chocolate the other day... handcrafted, organic, delicately flavoured with orange, I-could-have-funded-a-nice-holiday-with-what-the-ingredients-cost, but delicious. I had this idealistic notion I would delight myself once a day with an injection of said chocolate, but found I, too, achieved a complete flow state while eating it and there is now very little left. Perhaps just a few expensive crumbs. But I suppose I best look on the bright side, considering that I didn't choke on it while in flow with The Universe and whatever galaxies that were spinning around like pistachio man... which was nice.

 

[Rich.]

I'm just really fond of the idea of posing purple dinosaurs in a somewhat random fashion on ordinary household objects.

Awe-frickin'-some. I am now fond of this idea as well.

[cocido madrileño] Looks like an interesting dish. I couldn't see what spices they use. Maybe ... all the usual ones.

Spices = none.

Garlic, olive oil, salt and parsley. Spanish food is all about the thing and its flavour (the meat, the fish, etc.) – not so much about the things you add to it.

I have a son who ... made stop-motion shorts which got a little gory after a while when he needed a quick end (and got bored).

I did this too! On Super 8 film a long time ago. I torched my entire Star Wars figure collection in the name of cinema, which is a pity because had I kept it it would now be worth a fortune. Ho hum.

 

[Emily]

I torched my entire Star Wars figure collection in the name of cinema

Yes. An original Millenium Falcon from the early eighties followed a similar fate under the same boy. My husband still bemoans the loss