Halloumi Salad joy!

Wow – seems I have been in a bubble for so long! Have been out of the loop because of delivering the Words Festival. It has been successfully completed now, so I shall treat myself to a bit of writing time, I think.

Did a flash fiction writing workshop with Calum Kerr as one of the final events and wrote a piece about food – cheese to be specific. Will have a go at editing it then share it on here soon. Being a natural poetry writer I think I could get into flash fiction, as there is a lot of crossover – something new to try!

Tonight however, tea is occupying my thoughts: would probably never have considered halloumi with a warm lentil salad before I saw it in Cook Vegetarian magazine but it was really fresh and tasty. Will go down as a favourite dish now, though I did add griddled peppers out of habit!! I also added a couple of squeezes of lemon and replaced courgette with cucumber – oh and added some cherry toms!! Recipes are made to be tinkered with… 🍲

RIP

Oh dear! So soon. I managed to keep Derek alive for 3 days. On Tuesday he looked perky, like he was doing his stuff and proving me wrong.

But look what I found today when I finally tracked him down. Somebody had put him in the cupboard ‘out of sight……etc’. Derek didn’t take to life in the cupboard, what a sorry sight.

So I will consult with the sourdough starter family and see what’s up with Derek, if I can revive or should I consign him to the waste. One thing is for sure, the first aid course I did yesterday isn’t going to be much use for poor Derek.

tennative attempt

A tennative attempt at sourdough and poetry!

I have had little success with sourdough. As with pets and plants it takes a little time and some thoughtfulness. I confess to killing many plants and a few pets…. the lesser variety I will add before you label me ‘dog killer’. I am as much surprised as my offspring are that they have reached adulthood intact.

I was favored with a sample of 55 year old sourdough starter that went black and racid in days most probably through neglect rather than deliberate misstreatment. Yet Carol has inspired me to try again. I bake and teach others how to bake so surely I can master a sourdough with a bit of thoughtfulness and care.

So meet Derek. He is to be the star of the ‘Food Positive Sourdough Diary’ you can find the diary here. Comments of encouragement and chastisement are welcome.

 

But this is a writing blog I hear you cry! I write, its cathartic, but mainly prose. As with pets, plants and sourdough I dont get on with poetry, but thanks to Carol I am giving it a go again. It might be rubbish but it really doesnt matter…to try is enough.

Derek,

quiet bubbling

awaiting sweet release,

approaching fire flavour burst

in dough.

Okay, so I missed a couple of days!

Firstly a little update on Chuck the sourdough starter. He has been refreshed and fed but was still a little lacklustre. I have fed him again tonight (feed me, Seymour!) and I hope he will recover some of his former vigour. Watch this space – I miss my sourdough!

The challenge for day 29 of NaPoWriMo was immense, hence my silence, and I am surprised I even managed it, frankly. As a result I am soooo going to cheat again tonight and post something I wrote a while ago and, yes of course it’s a… poem!

I love cooking, and I love making veg curries. When I was chatting with Shirley earlier in the week she said they had held a brilliant curry evening at Food Positive recently.

Living in Bolton I am really fortunate to be able to get everything I need fresh, and on my doorstep. Here is a poem I wrote about my love of cooking curry:
Trade Winds
The scent of mustard seeds
bites the air.
Ghee-starred tiles sweat,
the essence beading
as seeds burst and brown.

Damping them down,
the startled pods of Cardamom
glow and swell,
sounding out clearly.

Lower notes too:
clove buds through the steam;
the lingering melancholy
of Fenugreek.

Cinnamon speaks of dusk,
It’s parchment heart
seeking out the heat.

The air dances with turmeric,
saffron veils
lightly brushing the stars.

Sunset,
and the Trade Winds sweep
suburban England.

 

Tonight sees the end of NaPoWriMo so a new chapter begins. I have a long working day tomorrow, and am driving to Sussex on Friday, so will do what I can. After tomorrow I will focus on this blog and try to develop all kinds of work. Help me out and post a comment, which can be a foodie piece, guys!

 

 

 

 

 

Cheating again – sorry! Thoughts of sourdough and mushrooms.

Only a few days to go to the end of NaPoWriMo and I, together with Shirley, will try and redress the ridulously poetic bias of this site. It’s definitely my comfort zone, but I am capable of writing prose!

I am going to cheat (yet again) and post one of my musings from day 7  about my beloved sourdough starter, Chuck, but I have also been thinking today about tastes that bring back memories.

One of mine is field mushrooms. When I was a small child we would go out early in the morning, in local fields, and look for the ‘fairy rings’. I could never (and actually still can’t) get my head round the fact that we would pick a crop of mushrooms one day and yet the next day there would be more massive white, saucer-like caps in their place.

How did they grow so quickly? There definitely seemed to be something magical happening.

We would bear them back home proudly in a cotton handkerchief, wipe them off with a cloth and pop them into a sizzling pan with some butter. The tarry black juices would flow, and the house would be filled with the heady scent, which would soon be joined by the spit and sizzle of proper, hand-cut bacon. Never did mornings taste so fresh.

The only thing that could have improved it would have been the scent of freshly made bread!

With that, I lead unashamedly into my ode to Chuck. He has been rather quiet of late, so I have taken the step of throwing away half and starting him off again – fingers crossed! ‘Chuck’ is my sourdough starter and has literally lived in a Kilner jar in my kitchen since Christmas.

Sour dough,
I love you so.
You know how much
I knead you,
but do I really need
to feed you
every day?
Live and bubbling,
you are troubling
my dreams.
Just when it seems
that you are rising,
I come home
and it’s surprising
that you’ve dropped –
fermentation’s stopped
and so the cycle
has to start again.
But
when the chemistry
is right,
we share a blissful night
before the dawn
and the oven’s yawn
swallows you whole.

 

Please say hello!

Whether you are into poetry, stories, blogging or just food, please feel free to get involved and share your thoughts by leaving a comment. We would love to share what you have to say and we want to get a dialogue going.

Curtal Sonnets – no, me neither!

We are finally up to day 26 on NaPoWriMo and were asked to do curtal sonnets.Went with a food theme and came from an honest place as I got a new jar of Marmite (other yeast extracts are available) today, after a month of a supermarket own brand mistake and am unnecessarily excited!

Strange form and I may have it wrong but here goes:

I’m sorry, Marmite, great to have you back,
it seems you’ve been away for far too long.
I can’t believe I bought another brand,
Who would believe I’d go so far off track?
Mea culpa – I know I was so wrong,
Beelzebub himself controlled my hand.

Although I have strayed so far from the fold,
Nothing else tastes quite as good on my tongue.
Supermarket alternatives are bland
and I so miss the one with flecks of gold.

Hate it? I don’t understand…

Sensory stimulation and savouring – plus sweetmeat

I do love food. I am a veggie, though I cook meat and fish for my family.

I found the book, Toast, by Nigel Slater, an amzingly inspiring book – I actually think he stole my childhood!! It made me want to write about food and the memories it brings back to us all.

I have amazing memories of our local greengrocers, for example, which come back with the smell of stored apples, sacking and dust. Likewise the cake shop, with the sickly sweet smell of icing and the bubble gum machine outside the door, which always had wasps hoveringup and down withing the glass jar in the summer. how did they get past the gumballs?

This doesn’t relate to my childhood but I hope you like it – it was an exercise in exploring the senses.

 

Sweetmeat
Cinnamon eyes,
deep-pressed
in cocoa dough.
Clove-spiked chin
pin-pricking my cheek.
Your hair tumbles,
crunch-crumbled
to chocolate curls.
Plump glacé lips
slip askew as,
bit by tiny bit,
I devour you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bread – a poem

Okay, so in the spirit of sharing, here is one I made earlier. I have just taken up making bread this year. I actually went to a course at Food Positive recently and made a couple of delicious loaves and increased my confidence enormously!

Needless to say, I wrote this a while ago and this is just artistic licence – my husband need  have no concerns at all…

 

Bread
They don’t make love
so she makes bread –
spends long nights sifting,
gently placing peaks in her silent landscape.

She dozes lightly, till it’s time
to rise from the cool sheets
and share the dough’s warmth.

Kneading the swelling mass
she soothes and shapes,
folds and forms:

Buxom cottage loaves;
petit pain – the tops slit, just so;
rustic ciabatta, starred with olives,
and fleshy baguettes.

She brushes his arm with soft hands,
returns his smile,
as she watches him break bread.

 

Welcome! Join us to share foodie thoughts.

Just wrote the intro below and realised how stuffy it sounds! Please don’t be put off – jump in and take a look, then please get involved or just say hi. If you are passionate about food and/or writing then you are in the right place.

 

This is the boring, but maybe useful, bit…

This site has been created to complement a food and writing workshop called ‘Eat Your Words’ that is taking place as part of the Wigan Words Festival 2014 at Food Positive in Ince, Wigan.

We wanted to create a site where people could upload their thoughts about food: poems, stories, musings, memories, maybe even recipes. Although we would love people from Wigan, Hindley, Leigh etc to get involved, we are happy to welcome anyone who loves good food and wants to talk or write about it.

‘We’ are Shirley Southworth from Food Positive and Carole Ogden, a freelance writer who ran the workshop. We have worked together on events and have a shared love for food and writing.