Winter is well and truly here. I know this because of three things. I know it because I finally relented and hauled my down duvet out the cupboard. I also know it because my cat is WAY friendlier than normal. As in I will sleep on top of you all night long and make you seriously uncomfortable in my search [...]
Oxtail – it positively, definitely, decidedly has to be one of my ultimate cuts for a warming stew. My love of it goes way back, to my childhood spent in part on a dairy farm. A whole oxtail is a substantial thing – you get a lot from one bovine. But even back then I remember wishing cows came with [...]
So the Argus has come and gone. It may not have been much of an event this year, what with the South Easter howling at up to 100km an hour and the cycle race being cancelled about an hour in. Cancelled or not, for me the Argus is my line in the sand. My signal that the soul-destroyingly, pulse-slittingly endless [...]
Quite simply the ultimate red wine sauce for steak, that’s Bordelaise folks. Hailing from the Bordeaux region of France, Bordelaise sauce is one of those classical sauces every keen cook should have in their repertoire. Now you may serve Bordelaise on a great manly hunk of steak, but for me this sauce is essentially feminine. The Parisian woman of sauces [...]
I’d intended to do something utterly decadent and fabulous that somehow involved chocolate eggs with marshmallow filling for this post. Something tongue in cheek. Something irreverent. Because that, of course, is my default setting. Then I was invited to take part in the Fairtrade Fortnight Foodie Challenge that coincides with Fairtrade’s two-week The Power Of You campaign. And I said [...]
Cats are singular creatures indeed. It’s all about them. I know some people like that – it’s not pretty. But for some reason I not only tolerate this quality in cats, I find it rather endearing. I understand that when my four-legged child stops being snooty and starts snuggling up to me in the wee hours, it’s only because it’s [...]