Kitchen Experiments

I really enjoy cooking, and am keen to expand my repertoire. However, a search on the internet found no cookery schools closer to me than Yorkshire, and none of the local colleges offer basic courses, preferring catering and hospitality-led training instead. So I decided to trawl through some of my recipe books and learn how to make some traditional dishes and perfect them. I will sign up for courses where I can, but what with the wedding and only me working, I can’t really afford to go South at the moment. I have signed up for a tapas course, run by a woman in Durham but held in Newcastle. This is taking place in June and I’m really excited. I’ve also found a sushi course, which I assume is run by Yo! Sushi, as there’s an outlet in Fenwick and I think a restaurant somewhere in town. In the meantime, I have tried three new recipes, all with great success. The first came from a low-fat, low-calorie recipe website (I’ve already lost a stone, so I need to keep going with this!), but was amazingly simple and very tasty. Chicken, wild rice and shiitake mushroom soup is pretty much just that, although it also uses onion, carrot, garlic and chicken stock. And I added a pinch of chilli flakes, because I operate on the principle that no recipe can’t be improved by the addition of a little spice! My version was not identical to the recipe given, but it turned out well.

Next, I made frittata, as I’ve been reading a lot on how good eggs are for you and it’s a simple but enjoyable meal. Ours was chorizo, green pepper and spring onion (what there was in the kitchen!) and was really good. I was pleasantly surprised and quite relieved, as frittata is basically a fat omelette! I think some variations will be made soon.

Finally, and still on the egg theme, I made scotch eggs, as Mark has been quite keen to try these since a friend of mine made these for us. Again, they are fairly straightforward, although it was a bit of a faff to wrap the sausage-meat around the egg! I baked them rather than fried them, so they were fairly healthy. The sausage-meat of course is quite high in fat and calories, so I suppose to make them even healthier you could use the meat from low-fat sausages (a recent discovery and now obsession of mine – in a sarnie with tomato sauce they’re pretty good!) if you could be bothered to squeeze the meat out of the casings. I don’t think anyone sells low-fat sausage-meat!

Future Plans

Mark and I have been thinking about what we’ll do next for quite a while now. The wedding is now taking place in September and I’m delighted to say it’s all sorted with minimal fuss and effort! And hopefully cost! We are going to get married at the registry office in Gateshead, as we aren’t religious. This will be followed by a small afternoon reception at a local pub, the nicest one in Gateshead and just down the road from the civic centre. We’ve got the rooftop terrace so hopefully the weather will be nice so we can get some good photos. The evening do will be at the arts centre in Newcastle. It has a large underground room which is often used for plays and music. My brother, a professional musician, has asked to play, and an old friend of mine has offered his band as his wedding present. Likewise, the invites and the cake are gifts and a cousin and one of my best friends are doing the photos. We have found a caterer and I have organised the flowers. The only headache was my dress – I didn’t want anything too fancy and my one trip to a bridal shop was not the most fun! I have spent a couple of months looking at department stores with bridal sections and on the high street but nothing stood out. Finally, I decided to get one made, and have met a lovely lady who will make me exactly what I want for about the same price as a dress in a shop – although I know people will pay thousands for them! After the wedding we are not planning on having a honeymoon but are going to do some travelling. We have come across a website where people worldwide advertise for help on their farm, in their home or their hotel in exchange for board and lodgings. I’m really taken by a hotel in Jaipur which is looking for help to run the reception and the bar, both of which I’ve done before. Really, though, we'll be happy to go anywhere and have an adventure, so not ruling anywhere or anything out! Although I have never especially considered hospitality, I do think that some months travelling about and being open to whatever opportunity is presented to us could really help us find something we’re keen to do long-term. We don’t want to stay in England, so who knows?

Grief

A rather odd post title, I suppose, but one which will explain my long absence. In early February, my ex-boyfriend died suddenly and too young. For many reasons, this has been extremely difficult for me, not least because we split up three years ago, and nobody tells you how you'll feel. What can I say about the last three months? I've been quieter than I've been since I first started talking, cried more than I thought possible. It was a massive shock, and although I found out later he had been unwell for a couple of weeks, no-one had told me. I think they all expected him to get better, although I have tortured myself with variations on why he didn't say anything. His parents invited me to the funeral, which was very kind of them, as although we parted (reasonably) well, I haven't seen them since it ended. His father asked me to visit the chapel of rest with him as well, which was easier than I thought, although it was the first dead body I had seen and I hated that it was him. A lot of people were shocked when I told them I'd done that, but it was a mark of respect and I felt I owed him that. My dad came to the funeral to act as a buffer, as he was concerned that some people would 'blame' me - we live in a small, old-fashioned working-class community where everyone knows each other's business, or likes to think they do. I spent much of the wake looking after my ex's 90 year old grandma. So in the intervening weeks, has it got easier? Yes, to an extent. However, I think about him first every morning and frequently throughout the day, some days more than others. My boyfriend has been wonderful, but of course it's hard for him to see where I'm coming from, particularly as he and the ex didn't get on (even before we were together) and my parents seem to have made a decision not to mention him; likewise my friends recall only the negative side of the relationship. This is not unreasonable as they obviously were privy to my decision to end it, but... I think there are two things that make it difficult for me: the first is that I still live in the area where he's from and we lived and socialised. So many things in my surroundings can trigger an unexpected memory, and I look for him constantly. The other issue is that he and I went to Australia together for a working holiday, which was the best experience of my life and I know his too. Much of the time there was just the two of us, and that period was the closest we'd ever been. It is impossible for me to accept that all the memories of that trip are now only mine, and no-one else knows what we did, remembers odd things we found funny, interesting or weird. I have had some very kind emails from the people we met while we were living in Melbourne, who had fond memories of him. So I'm starting to pull myself together, but it's hard. As a small aside, one thing that really did help was running, and it still is. I find that half hour remarkably therapeutic, despite the fact that my regular route takes me past a score of memories every time. I went for a run on the morning of the funeral and it calmed me down and was a great way to take up part of the morning, rather than fidgeting around the house and getting uptight and more anxious than I ultimately was. And it's certainly helping me now, too. Cheers KS xxx