Submitted.....

Well my first draft has been submitted and I suppose I should really wait until it's actually published before adding "Food writer" to my list of skills for the CV.

Not that I have a CV of course. I have done one in the past but I'm not sure I've ever actually submitted one to anybody. I've never needed to thankfully!

I'm already thinking of a new seasonal menu for July and this time I'm going all out on a full 4 course effort and I'm going to concentrate on one key ingredient for each dish.

Starter - Wild Mushrooms
Fish - Crab
Main - Venison
Dessert - Raspberries

Again it'll be easy to cook with plenty of elements being able to be prepared in advance....or if you want to be extra gastro "Mise en place".

I'll also be pairing up wines with each course too but for the time being I'll just get on and research some ideas that I already have.


Apart from all this I had a rather wonderful weekend. Saturday was spent over at a friends house for a birthday celebration BBQ. Beforehand I popped into Binghams brewery in Twyford and picked up a minipin of Twyford Tipple. I realised not long after arrival that I'd be the only person drinking this and lets say it was going down nicely! Not quite all 18 pints of it mind you.

Sunday we invited our good buddies Martin & Ellie over for dinner but prior to that we hopped in the car and all headed over to the Hurst country fayre. It was a glorious day and naturally most of the time was spent in the firstly watching some falconry followed by a street dance troop then finally some good old fashioned morris dancing.

Martin won't thank me for informing the world that morris dancing used to be one of his favourite pastimes but I was glad for this as he was a wealth of information....all very interesting too....uh hmm!!


On the back of the programme we noticed that visitors to the fair we're entitled to a free tasting session at our local vineyard "The Stanlake Park wine estate". Not being ones to pass up a free libation we decided to stop off on the way back and I'm so glad we did. It's a really wonderful place and taking the weather into account we could have been anywhere in the world. It reminded me of the winery tour I did when visiting Melbourne earlier in the year. It's a real gem and I'm going to give it it's own write up in due course.




Needless to say we were always going to buy a bottle or two so six purchases later we were on our way back for a nice Sunday dinner.

We had an alfresco starter of chargrilled vegetables, stuffed olives, seafood salad, hummus and pitta bread which went perfectly with the wine and sunshine.

For main I'd made a chicken, asparagus and tarragon pie with some potatoes and peas with panchetta. I've understated the potatoes a bit there because they we're in fact potato mouselline from a recipe by Larousse. Absolutely stunning they were too. I'm, not sure I can ever have potatoes done a different way again !!

I need to tweak the dish a little more before giving the recipe because I wasn't particularly happy with the pie filling and I want to work on it a bit.

Highlight of the weekend though was getting my first feel of a Bumpska bump :-)

Toodlepip xx