Category: Culinary

Both food shots and the occasional own recipe in here. For foodies.

Bleak Midwinter in Finland (with apologies to Christina Rossetti)

First published as part of the Daily Telegraph‘s February 2008 Creative Writing Competition. It was one of the six shortlisted out of about 40 entries. As ever I did not get the first prize, but it attracted a lot of positive responses. The reason for the “lizard and gizzard”  was down to the set words you had to include in the piece for the month, which was a continual feature of the contest. This time “lizard” was one of the words. Or possibly “blizzard”. I can’t even remember which ones the other set words were!

The picture which accompanied it is one of my stills from the visit with the image of Christina Rossetti, the authoress of the original Bleak Midwinter Poem, superimposed.

With Apologies to Christina Rosetti
"With apologies to Christina Rosetti..."

1.
In this bleak midwinter,
Frosty winds beat time;
Mirth stands hard as irony,
Slaughter-like the rime.
Crow is eaten, crow on crow
Crow on corpse of crow,
In this bleak midwinter verse,
Made not long ago. Continue reading “Bleak Midwinter in Finland (with apologies to Christina Rossetti)” →

The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 3
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Dungeon Crawler Carl: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 1
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“Packed lunches not safe” – latest UK Gov-no advice.

A UK Gov-no Quango, the oxymoronically named “School Food Trust”, in the person of its chairperson Mr Rob “Daylight” Rees, has been quoted in today’s online Torygrass as saying that parents “are hampering efforts to cut obesity in children by sending them to school with packed lunches”.  Mr Daylight said “the best solution would be the parents to pay for their children to eat healthy hot meals and canteens rather than giving them lunchboxes”. He also wants to give schools the right to open packed lunch boxes at the school gates and ensure that inappropriate content is not allowed onto school premises. Apparently he wants sophisticated entry controls at school gates similar to those at airports, with students being asked if they packed their satchels all by themselves, and mineral water only being allowed on board if it is bought in the airside shops and has high enough fluoride levels in it to control all risks of explosions or independent thought. Continue reading ““Packed lunches not safe” – latest UK Gov-no advice.” →

Project Hail Mary
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The Gate of the Feral Gods: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 4
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Eaten like a true Belarusian…

This is pretty much George’s first solo appearance on the channel. He doesn’t do that much, but he can be very amusing in his own way. There was something cute about the way he was eating those chips. We had a chip maker for a short while, but then it broke, after using it for less than a dozen times. The chips were very good while they lasted.

The Czech word for chips, by the way, “hranolky”, I used to just take at face value, but recently while developing my goldlist I discovered that literally it means “little prisms”, which is quite an original term for them.

The Infinite Extent: Bobiverse, Book 6
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Fury in Death
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At the Tandoori Palace

 

This was a snatch of the food at Tandoori Palace Restaurant in Marszalkowska, Warsaw, during one of our visits about four years ago. This is actually our second favorite Indian restaurant, the first being Nikhil’s Asian Village in Raszyn, just south of Warsaw. The ownership is the same and the menu and recipes are the same, but there is less clientele so the food is made fresh. There’s still a difference between dishes made to order and those which have been on standby for a few hours, so we usually go the extra mile for Raszyn. The Raszyn one doesn’t deliver, and the Marszalkowska one does, but still it is worth it.

We find that spending 250 PLN on take home curry makes 10 meals in total, so only 25 PLN per head on a curry meal. It may seem expensive but you do get a lot of mileage out of it, and so we like to do this about once a month. Sometimes like here we go to the restaurant, and then just get what we don’t eat bagged up.

I could tell an amusing story about Elena’s first experience of a real Indian style curry – when she came over to the UK and my parents asked if she liked spicy food. She said yes, but what she had in mind was the Belarusian version of Indian food. When my parents proceeded to give full spicey-licence to their culinary skills and produce as Indian a curry as I think any non-Indian could ever make, my poor little wife (fiancee then) was begging for a glass of water!

But she has got used to it since then.

The Billionaire's Obsession ~ Simon
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