We could not go to the camper van today.
Mark had got to go to the dentist to have his mouth scraped and polished.
I stayed at home to do domestic things.
I did cooking.
I set the robot hoover off upstairs to hoover by itself, and then I was perfectly at liberty to occupy myself in any way I liked.
I went to the butcher and bought some bacon and some lamb. I went to the library and got some books to read on the taxi rank.
Then I came back home and set about refilling the poor empty fridge and freezer with nice things.
I made mayonnaise with lemon and garlic and tomato-flavoured oil. I made this first because I hate washing up after mayonnaise, it is one of my nastiest jobs. Mayonnaise makes everything greasy and does not come off easily unless the water is absolutely boiling and very soapy, and even then it takes ages.
I did this first and was so impatient to get it over and done that I cut my finger on the sharp bit in the bottom of the blending jug. This didn’t really matter, because it stopped bleeding quite soon and the nastiest job was done, leaving me with a smugly satisfying sense of virtue and achievement. Of course from that point on the day stretched ahead rosily.
I had a little rest until my finger stopped bleeding, and then I made a tray of ginger shortbread and another of cherry shortbread.
Whilst they were in the oven I chopped up vegetables and onions and mixed them with couscous. I made a spicy sauce and smeared it underneath the skin of a chicken.
I do this because I don’t like to eat chicken skin. When I go out I always feel aggrieved that all of the nice sauces are on the bit that I am going to leave behind. I cut holes in the skin with scissors, separate the skin from the chicken with a spoon and put the sauce underneath. Then when it is cooked I can give the skin to the dogs and not feel as though I am missing out.
I put the sauce-filled chicken in a large dish with the vegetables and couscous, and put it in the oven on the slowest possible heat to cook for seven hours so that it falls apart when you stick your knife into it.
I made pumpkin seed bread. I had got to put it to rise in the shed, because there is a sunny windowsill there. To my enormous relief the sun stayed out until the dough had doubled in size, and I stuck that in the other oven to bake.
Then I made coffee chocolates, by melting a blend of dark and milk chocolate with salt and butter, boiling cream with lots of coffee in it, and mixing the whole lot together with cognac and pecan nuts and an egg yolk. This is so superlatively nice that there are no words for it.
After that I made chocolate biscuits, with more melted chocolate and fruit soaked in cognac. I had to spend ages chopping up fruit then, because my bucket of dried fruit was almost empty. I hacked up loads of cherries and apricots and dates to chuck in it, and refilled the bucket with two bottles of very cheap cognac that we bought during our French excursion.
In the end I made a lamb risotto and a bacon risotto. The secret to cooking these on a budget is not to put too much of the really expensive stuff in, which is the meat. Lots and lots of vegetables and almonds, tomatoes and cream in the bacon one, lemon and mint in the lamb one. They will last days and cost hardly anything.
I stuck another chicken in the other oven. We will eat this one cold, in salads, not as hot dinner. I filled that one with Moroccan sauce and put it on for another seven hours.
I will not need to worry about food for ages. We can eat sandwiches or hot dinners, biscuits or sweets, and I can spend my days painting at the farm whilst the hoover cleans the house and the dinner sits waiting on the stove. This is a recipe for a contented life.
The picture is my little seeds sprouting in the garden. There is rocket and spinach for salads, and coriander and parsley for cooking.
I can go back to my painting tomorrow.
