On Today's Menu

*Nigel Slater's Sausage and Potato Pie. A real humdinger of a recipe and really simple to make too. I make some short pastry, leave it to rest while I fry sliced pork and herb snorkers and red onions then layer the sausages and onions with par-boiled skin on sliced potato. Season well, add some parsley, place in pie tin and cover with pastry. Bake till brown and crispy. I'll probably serve baked beans with it, could spice them up but probably won't, feel plain beans will suffice.

*A Banana and Apricot Loaf. A Shirley Goode recipe which uses Hartley's Apricot jam instead of very expensive dried apricots. This yummy comforting cake always turns out moist and is delicious either on its own or spread with butter. Have even toasted it for breakfast.

* A multi-seeded loaf. Linseed. Sunflower. Sesame. Poppy.
The third loaf of this kind I've baked in three days. Utterly delicious especially when glazed with egg wash. Shines and crisps the crust to perfection. Makes gorgeous sandwiches and excellent toast, the many seeds add interest especially the poppy seeds which, looked at in the right light, could be mistaken for shredded ants.

Now I cook:)

Goode Works In Mysterious Ways

Poetry is icing sugar. Cooking is lard.
Poetry soars. Cooking goes for a stroll.
Poetry is an aspirin. Cooking, a nice cup of tea.

So what's all this about?
Another navel gazing episode?
Another bout of who's-the-real-me claptrap?
Correct on the first count and correct on the second count.

I've been composing verse since my first spots appeared and I've been making apple pies ever since penis's loomed large.
And poems and pies have coloured my existence ever since.

But who is the real me?
Am I a half-crazed-hiding-in-an Essex-bungalow poetess or a full-crazed-cycle-riding cleaner who cooks a decent roast?
Both.
But only one gives extreme comfort.

At a very early hour I was zombieing my way from room to room feeling incredibly sorry for myself when I suddenly felt a warm hand fall into mine.
It was the hand of Goode.

And as the birds sung and the sun showed up old stains I flicked.
Flicked through the pages of a twenty-two year old recipe book. In it were great recipes like Swedish Souffle, Orange and Banana Layer and Glazed Meatloaf. It was then I knew I was a cook and not a poet. For not one poem has ever pleasured me in quite the same way as making a knock-out dinner.

My feet were getting cold so I carried the paperback into the bedroom and got to know Miss Shirley Goode all over again.
Smidgens of smiles danced over my face as she sang about chicken carcasses, semolina and lamb breasts but it was her eloquent praising of left-over cabbage that saved my sanity. I imagined running around Aldi's looking at vegetable displays and then scooting back home to make ten litres of Minestrone. I lost my tiny self in visions of Somerset Casserole, Fatima's Fishcakes and Turkish Oranges it was all so good and all so me.


Never had that from a book of English verse.


On the menu today:
Glazed Meatloaf
Potato Salad
Strawberry Shortcake