It’s been a while. In fact it’s been almost half a year! Shocking and inexcusable I know. For the first three months at least I did have a crazy work life as a robust reason for simply not having the time to post. However, that reason really turned into an excuse from about the start of the year and for the past two months it’s been nothing short of a pathetic pretext for simply not having my shit together. It’s like exercise – get yourself into a routine and it’s not so hard to stick to it. Break that routine and getting started again becomes harder and harder as time goes on.
Turning 50 last summer was much more difficult than I ever expected it to be. It’s a milestone that I’m very glad to have reached, but along with it comes the realisation that, in all likelihood, you’re past the halfway mark. I know we’re all living longer these days, but I really don’t expect to be a centenarian, so chances are I’ve less time ahead of than behind me. That being the case of course, rather than wallowing, which does no-one any good at all, I’ve resolved to make the most of these years and get that bucket list well and truly underway.
So, enough of the doom and gloom from me. I’ve well and truly kicked my own arse this week and decided to make some changes. One of those is to get back to blogging and doing what I love and you may have noticed that in doing that I’ve refreshed the site and given it a whole new look. I hope you like it. Next week it’ll be me getting the makeover, but more of that later.
I’ve been going a bit crazy with the recipe books in recent weeks – borrowing a pile from the library and doing a few swaps with workmates. There will be recipes coming up soon from Dhruv Baker’s ‘Spice’ book and from Rachel Allen’s ‘Coast’ as well as a few from Sabrina Ghayour’s lovely ‘Sirocco‘, which is my favourite of her three books to date. I used it on Saturday past to create a lovely summery meal for a few friends and it went down a treat. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pics, so I’ll simply have to recreate it again soon and share it on here. May as well pretend summer is on the way despite the wintery weather!
When it came to dessert though, I revived an old favourite and adjusted it a little to make use of a packet of chocolate Oreo’s we’ve had hidden at the back of the cupboard for many months. I adapted Nigella’s Chocolate Key Lime Pie from my well thumbed and stained copy of ‘Kitchen‘. the results were delicious and given its simplicity, I was well chuffed with myself! It certainly beat the last occasion when I had friends around and decided to recreate the entire menu from the Waitrose Cookery School class I attended last June – Greek Street Food. Not a good idea as everything needed finished off at the same time and at the last minute, meaning I hardly got to speak to my guests at all. Sabrina and Nigella were a lot less demanding and lower maintenance.
cookachew.com 