Food & Fellowship

Jams, chutneys, cakes, bread, cookies, dinners, sweets, meze meals, party food – I really enjoy cooking and baking. Especially for parties and guests. It is so much more fun than cooking for my family. The children tend to prefer shop bought meat balls and only eat very few vegetables. So boring, but I’m hoping that exposure to a variety of foods will open their minds a little. The eldest has discovered that she likes Indian food and can take some heat. Great!

One can tell by looking at me that I prefer food and eating to exercise and sweating! In summer, though, the garden gives some exercise, which is good.

The photograph above is of a Swedish “Silltårta”. It is, bizarrely, a herring cake. I made it for my mother-in-law’s 70th birthday party. It is a savory cheese cake, with pickled herring, creme fraiche and a crust of rye bread and butter.

For some time now, I have considered becoming a vegetarian. I have no arguments for eating red meat, other than I absolutely love it, and that I would find it very difficult to cook without it. For me, the moral issue is predominantly that the energy and land that goes in to feeding the animals we eat is not evironmentally sound and the over production of meat for rich countries is globally unfair. Further, the industrial aspects of producing food is deeply troubling from an ethical point of view.

I have started cooking vegetarian meals at home, with the help of a service that provides home delivery of three well planned vegetarian meals every second week. As the kids eat little of it and the portions are for four, the three meals stretch a long way. I am learning about new tastes, ingredients and combinations – and what I hope to achieve is to have a mental back list of receipes that I can turn to when I am tired and hungry and in the supermarket trying to plan a meal or two. Instead of starting the train of thought with “meat, chicken or fish”, I want to start my planning process with seasonal vegetables. And I want to explore the world of beans, peas and lentils. Good luck to me!

This page is to keep track of recipes I like, that are fun to do and that I want to turn to later – and share with others that might enjoy them. For donkey’s years I’ve been photographing my food in order to one day make a family cook book as a Christmas present. I never get round to it, so this might be a way of beginning the process…