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.