New relationships can be difficult...

Our kitchen is pretty Spartan.  *Long pause………………………………….*  

Sorry, went off into a reverie about the real Sparta then…just pretty beautiful really.  Right. Back to the kitchen. We have a cooker and a fridge and a kettle (my mother’s old one, bogstandard white, mind of its own, boils itself up every so often just for the hell of it) and that’s it.  No really, it really is.
‘But, but, but….don’t you have appliances…’ stuttered someone on Twitter.  And the answer is, simply, no.

We did have a toaster but it blew up.  Okay, it didn’t blow up (I must stop exaggerating) – it just sort of went sulky and wouldn’t play.  Alright, let’s cut to the chase, it turned all coy virgin on us and wouldn’t open up its flaps to allow the bread in (and that may well be the first and last sexual metaphor for a toaster you’ll come across in your lifetime – and thank feck for that, you’re probably thinking).  We also had a popcorn maker which lasted all of a month before making a nasty smell and dying.  Umm, no, let’s not go there eh?

Maybe, I pondered, this is why I don’t really like cooking.  I simply don’t have the *stuff*.  But nah. I just don’t like cooking because, fundamentally, I can’t be arsed. At the risk of shocking a fair few of you foodie types, food is fuel, pretty much (apart from anything coffee-flavoured for which I make a lip-smacking exception). But generally I’d rather gaze into space than baste and stir and get my knickers in a twist over timing all for something that vanishes in under five minutes. And recipes are so bossy, so regimented.  Anyhow, I keep a perfectly good cook in the house and you don’t keep a cook and baste yourself, do you? ;)  

Would I be any different if I had a KitchenAid mixer or a Dualit toaster?  Highly unlikely - but, hey, if anyone cares to send me them I’m more than willing to give 'em a go. And Adrian is mad keen to get a posh coffee machine (hmm, coffee)....*sigh*

Therefore, when the nice PR asked if I’d like a crock-pot, my first reaction was to laugh.  And my second reaction was to snort.  ‘Nooo; they’re great,’ he said (I made up the nooo bit cos it improves the flow of the speech and, if I'm being very honest, he didn’t use a semi-colon either). ‘You just shove everything in and let it do its thing.’  Hmm.  Freeform. Laissez-faire. This sounded more like my idea of cooking.  ‘Oh, go on then,’ I said. Or rather, typed.  ‘Send it on over.’

Well. A few days later, I undid the parcel (having totally forgotten it was coming) and got it out.  I looked at it and it looked at me and we both had to hide our disappointment in one another. Isn’t the dream so often better than the reality? 

‘Shit, I’ve got the crap cook,’ I could hear it thinking.
‘Shit, you’re one ugly bastard,’ I thought to myself (not wanting to hurt its feelings by saying it out loud). 
But, honestly, it was; it is.  Really.  White. Plastic. Functional. Reminiscent of the 70s.  This, I thought, is why I don’t like gadgets.  They are just soooo fecking ugly and take up soooo much space.  So it sat on the kitchen table for several days, looking both mournful and accusatory.  Yeah, I've got a passive aggressive crock-pot.  We ate and tapped on our laptops around it, ignoring it, collectively hoping someone would take responsibility and do something with it. 

Outside the temperature was diving and it crossed my mind that, if nothing else, it might make a good chamber pot.  I tell ya, if ever an inanimate white plastic object could look hurt, that one did. ‘Okay, I’m sorry, alright. It was a crap (sorry again) idea.’

Then Adrian went off again (Brussels this time: yes, the man is single-handedly drinking his way around the world) and I figured that – this time – my child really shouldn’t live off pizza and the chippy.  Aha, I thought, winking suggestively at the crockpot. You. Me. Kitchen. Now. Hot date.  It looked wistfully hopeful. 

‘Vegetable chilli,’ Sessha had said firmly on Twitter when I asked what a vegetarian could cook in an implement designed for simmering meaty stews.  And I had vegetables aplenty thanks to Sarah Diggle’s organic veg box.  I checked the recipe.  Okay, so basically chop everything up and toss it in.  Yeah, even I could manage that and not lose too much staring time.
So I chopped and tossed.  Added chocolate (the only cooking tip you'll ever get from me).  And then I went off and forgot all about it until, around four hours later, instead of going ‘OH SHIT!’ as the smell of thrice-burned carbon gagged me, went 'Eh what the hell?' as something fragrantly and - um – distinctly edible – wafted up the stairs.  Who’da thought?  There it sat, smug and proud as anything, simmering its little white plastic heart out. 

‘What’s this?’ said James, looking suspiciously into his bowl and prodding.

‘Chilli,’ said I. 

‘Did you cook it?’ he said, furrowing his brow.

I paused. Pondered the right answer.  And then decided it was only fair.  Credit where credit’s due and all that.

‘Nope. The crockpot did.’
‘Oh, that’s alright then.’  And he stuck in his spoon and tucked in.

I raised an eyebrow at the crockpot as if to say ‘Pax?’ 

In return it made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a triumphant fart. 

Okay, seriously now.  I think CP and I may have some kind of future, I really do. Like all relationships, we just need to work at it and appearances can be deceptive, can't they?  But you foodie types will fall blindly in love, you really will.   Check out the website here.

And, get this, if you can come up with a seriously good slow cooker recipe you could win up to £3,500 of prizes. All you do is load up your recipe (plus pic) onto the Crock-Pot Facebook page here (before October 21) – and hope people *like* your recipe.  Relax, I won’t enter CP’s chilli – it wouldn’t be fair on the rest of you. 

What?  You want recipes?  Is there no end to your needs?  Sigh.  These are the ones CP really wants to cook.  We’re at a stand-off right now.

Beef Bourguignon (serves 6-8)

3 tablespoons flour
Sea salt and pepper
3 pounds beef chuck (bleugh, sorry, that sounds disgusting) – cut into 1-inch cubes
3 large carrots (peeled and sliced)
1 medium onion (sliced)
6 strips of cooked bacon (cut into pieces)
284ml beef stock
475ml red wine
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 crushed garlic cloves
3 springs fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
450g mushrooms, sliced
2 large potatoes (cut into chunks)

Coat beef in flour seasoned with salt and pepper.  If you like, you can sear the beef on a skillet2.      Place meat in Crock-Pot® slow cooker and add remaining ingredients.
Cover and cook on Low for 8-10 hours or High for 5-7 hours, or until meat is tender.

Lemon Herb Roasted Chicken (serves 4-6)

1.8-2.7kg roasting chicken
1 onion
1-2 tablespoons butter
Juice of one lemon
½ teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons fresh parsley
½ teaspoon dried thyme (hmm why dried, when fresh is nicer?)
1 teaspoon paprika

Place the onion in the cavity of the chicken and rub the skin with butter. Place chicken in Crock-Pot® slow cooker.
Squeeze lemon juice over chicken and sprinkle with remaining seasonings. Cover and cook on Low 8-10 hours or High 4-5 hours.

Uniforms, twibes, vague meanderings

James phoned me from the school bus this morning.
‘It’s a non-uniform day,’ he said.
Oh shit.
‘I forgot,’ he said.
‘I didn’t even know.’

Damn. I really must get a grip. Start using a diary again. Maybe even get a battery for my watch. Did I mention that the batteries in both my watches packed up on the same day? I think I may be out of time.

Thankfully he didn’t sound too perturbed.

‘I suppose you could wear your tracksuit?’ I suggested, hopefully, uncertainly.  Knowing that, even if I drove in with some clothes, he wouldn't get them until lunchtime.
‘Yeah, I guess I could.’
Bless him.

Cheers!

But it worried me and it will bother me slightly all day long. I know how important it is when you’re his age to fit in, to be the same as the rest of the gang. Children desperately want to bond with the pack. Then, in the teenage years, comes the urge to differentiate (just a little); to identify with a ‘set’ – wearing another uniform (usually of the music you like), finding your tribe. All the time fighting vehemently for your right to be ‘different’; all the time yearning for people who feel the same as you do.  One of these days, if I ever get a scanner, I'll give you all a laugh and load up pics of some of my more, er, interesting, fashion incarnations (as a taster, I offer you the 'Haystack' phase - bleach blonde, backcombed to death, leather jackets and spiky heels).  I made those earrings, btw - hearts and demon baby faces.  Some things never change. :-)

And it doesn’t stop, when you grow up. Maybe we all – consciously or unconsciously – seek others like us: who won’t judge; who won’t call us crazy (or, if they do, at least do it lovingly, with a fond shake of the head). People who understand. And if you can't find them in everyday life, you can look for them online.  On Twitter people are joining ‘twibes’ – online tribes.

Not me. I’m not a joiner, never have been. Adrian's the one who does committees; joins societies; belongs to things. I made an exception just once to get an integrated health care centre up and running here on Exmoor. I've always believed that if our doctors focused on preventative healthcare, they would create health and save money. If they taught people how to eat properly; how to meditate or do autogenic training; how to relax and exercise... If they employed osteopaths, bodyworkers, taught Alexander Technique...and good (firm emphasis on good) psychotherapists (just for starters)...we might have a health service, rather than a sick service. But anyhow, it drove me crazy. Sitting going round in circles; endless meandering; talking, talking, talking: everybody thinking he or she were right.

It didn’t happen. Of course.

A backwater of Epidauros - my dream healing spot

You know (or maybe you don’t), the more I hear of words, the less I trust them. The more I read, the less I know. One of the most blissful weeks of my life was on silent retreat – painting into the night, music in my ears, sometimes dancing, sometimes crying. Another was in Greece on dream pilgrimage, visiting the ancient healing temples, stretching out on the warm sunkissed stones, being bitten by the snakes of Asklepios. Or just sitting in the bus, as it wound through the mountains up to the plains of Sparta, to magical Mystras, staring out, wondering... No words, just feelings. Sometimes nothing. And nothing is alluring, so alluring. Then it tips into everything and...

Sorry, I’m meandering, wandering off again...  Not to the woods today but to the gym – in my uniform of course. Chatting to my neighbour, our lovely vicar; to my instructor, just back from Austria, high on mountain air and cross-country skiing. Chit-chat. Chit-chat. Nice really. I guess it’s what we humans do.

But, then again, why? Are we so scared of what lies beyond silence? Ach, I can’t explain it. Words, see? Useless. If I could only show you...