The Sunday Round-Up

Look what I found in the Asian Times (one of Brierfield's free papers) yesterday.  With reference to yesterday's blog post - here it is in black and white,  my old enemy turmeric is being touted as the new wonder drug to help fight bowel cancer.  Funny thing is, it says the active compound found in turmeric is curcumin.  Wouldn't you think they would have found that one in cumin?

It's been a bit of a busy week.  On Tuesday night I met up with the lovely Carrie-Ann to discuss our plans for TV.  We got a bit lost (even though we were no more than five miles from my home) and ended up in a very weird pub called The Roggerham Gate.  The only other punters were a table of men making fish flies and a bloke collecting his egg money  - the Roggerham sells eggs as well as crisps at the bar -  £1 for a half dozen and very nice too.  My quick drink with Carrie-Ann turned into three hours and when I came home at 10.45pm Ged had not even put the sea bream in the oven.  We feasted at midnight on the crispy skinned fish and a bottle of Kourtaki Retsina.

Today I was a good girl and took the kids to church (why do I always sing 'Cadbury' instead of 'Calvary'?) leaving Ged to take the pork out of the electric oven which was on 240C to crisp the skin and put it into the gas oven on number 1 to slow cook for 5 hours.  Herewith is the result of a misunderstanding.

Not so cracking crackling

Strangely, after removing all the incinerated  crackling the meat was still moist and delicious.  God knows how, as it was on number 9 for over 2 hours.  Last week was the first time I had ever managed to cook a bit of pork without ruining it - thanks to Johnnie Mountain's new cookbook.  It now seems  I can do no wrong with the cloven hoofed beast.

Talking of pigs, last night we went to the beetle drive and pie and peas supper in Barley.  Bev Lancaster, the dinner lady at the kids' school, who is also a local farmer arrived late because her poor pig had been set upon by next door's cows.  They had cornered the poor thing and battered it and bullied it until Bev came to the rescue.  It was shaking like a leaf when she found it.  I've never trusted cows and this tale only confirms all my worst fears about them.  Nasty beasts.  Actually I'm pretty scared of pigs too, ever since I was a London nanny and took a two year old to The Kentish Town City Farm.  Little Sammy put his hand out to pat the pig and the pig took his hand off.  Or so I thought.  It actually gobbled up his mitten-on-a-string.  I screamed the place down unaware that Sammy had quickly pulled his hand back up his sleeve.

I've also caught up on my old friend Fernando's The Restaurant Inspector series this weekend.  After telling everyone on Twitter not to miss it, I missed it myself.  I'm thinking of writing to Channel 5 to tell them that they have to stop feeding foulness to my friend.  He is a man of elegance and refinement!  Poor Fernando, hurling in that awful African hell hole.

To bed for my pre-filming beauty sleep.  Carrie-Ann has had her hair and eyelashes done today ready for the event while I have done nothing but cook and scrub my mother-in-law's kitchen.  Not fair.