Oxtail Soup

Everyone’s depressed and winter’s coming in. I’m not suggesting soup can solve much, but when I go back to Yorkshire I need it in my system to function. A big pan of something on the stove also warms the house up nicely. Coming back home makes me realise how blooming freezing I’ve been all my life; surely everyone ‘wears’ a duvet watching TV at night? Wait, you mean you don’t sleep in a hat?? I’m typing this while wearing a shawl for crying out loud.

Crisps made in the Microwave, aka Magic Crisps

There is no savoury snack that I savour more than a crisp. Though nutritionists would need a lie down on hearing this, a fond childhood memory of mine consists of me standing by the side of our cooker as my mum cooked up thin slices of potatoes in a chip pan to make “crisps”. Yes, I was a chubby child but it was the nineties! Plus, my mum never really did anything like that, so it was a naughty, indulgent experience for both of us. In fact, I don’t even remember Amy being there, so perhaps the secrecy added an extra spice to our nocturnal proceedings. My impatient wait by the cooker as the oil came to temperature was nothing compared to the agony of allowing the cooked crisps to cool on a piece of kitchen paper. Sprinkled with salt and chewy in places, those crisps were divine. We’d eat them greedily as each batch came out of the pan and so never had enough for a bowlful.

Scotch Broth

Everyone’s getting so excited about Christmas but we haven’t got any of our decorations up yet! We don’t normally put our tree up until about the eighteenth, so in the meantime I think there’s time for a quick non-Christmas post. We’re big on soups in our house and if there isn’t any soup, then there’s a strong chance that Daddy won’t actually eat lunch, which is really annoying because he ends up wandering the house and invariably getting into a stink with one of us. With the days getting even shorter and even colder, it’s important that his immune system is tip-top so I often find myself slipping as much nourishment as possible into soups to trick him.