#augustbreak2025

I rarely cook from a recipe. Even in the days when I had a vast collection of cookery books, I mainly read them for inspiration and the pretty pictures. These days I do occasionally pick up on a recipe on the Internet, mainly from the Guardian. I enjoy Nigel Slater’s and Felicity Cloake’s writings, and they both seem to produce recipes that speak to my piggy inner self. Ottolenghi’s recipes are…

I cannot claim that I Never Forget to post a response to a given prompt, it’s far more likely that I simply can’t find time to fit it in, or lack any inspiration for/interest in it. “Never Forget” is definitely not a prompt that sparks my interest! Happily, something that fits the bill has cropped up. We were busy packing our van in preparation for our Autumn/Winter/Spring trip. We had thought…

Catching up again, after several days of hard labour and high temperatures. It has been all go, but I can settle down now as we are just about fully packed and ready to go. We should have been gone by now but Things got in the way. We popped up to the site office this morning, to collect a delivery of Things That Got In The Way, and to pay our dues (in the form of Taxe de Sejour) and so I took…

We are in a drought situation here, there’s very little that is wet – except for this coriander that I have just been rinsing and now need to dry off. I often don’t rinse my herbs but Coriander seems to be grown on sandy soil and there’s nothing more horrible than gritty coriander. This lot is for garnishing a Thai Curry that I am making of tiny Scallops. It has been another long, hot, and…

It is pretty typical that, after two days away under solid cloud cover, and coming home yesterday to about 75% cloud cover, today there are none! Nothing but blue sky, can I see. Slightly put out actually, as today’s forecast was for a relatively cool 23°C, and with cloud. An excellent forecast for working outside, in and around the van. It didn’t transpire and we have had a warm and sunny day,…

Today is the day that we returned to Base Camp, after a very good two nights away in Corcoué sur Logne, in order to prepare for a long trip. That makes today Shopping Day. We stopped off at the SuperU in Legé, buying what we hope will be sufficient food to last us until we depart. It doesn’t look like a great deal, but we do have to empty the fridge and freezer before we go and will be making…

The ridges on these Mutti sauce bottles form Lines. I was quite excited to find these on my last shopping trip. I dislike Ketchup, always have, but I know that Mutti make some really good tomato products and decided that it might be worth trying their Ketchup out. Plus, it’s bottled in glass and not in plastic, and this is a Good Thing. Mr L fancied the Barbecue Sauce, so we bought both.