The Dish of Dreams

A few days before Christmas, I was happily in the kitchen in my flat (washing up, I think) when a tousled husband emerged from the bedroom, demanding to know whether I had been "frying" (his word, not mine) eggs in coca cola...

Obviously, I looked at him open mouthed, with barely disguised horror etc...

It turned out that he'd been dreaming about it that morning, vividly enough that he really had no idea whether it had actually happened or not.

He remained weirdly obsessed (particularly weirdly, given that he usually refuses eggs in most of their forms) with it all day, despite my yucky-noises.

Kavey pointed us towards Oeufs en Meurette - eggs poached in red wine, which, I have to confess, also look rather revolting to me (and I say that as one who really really loves eggs), which made me think that maybe it wasn't quite so bonkers after all, so last night, we gave it a go...

On my way home from work on Friday, I bought these.

I boiled up a pan of the brown stuff.

I cracked one of my eggs into a thingummy - I'm not a great poacher at the best of times and supermarket eggs of unknown freshness aren't the best for poaching, and this is definitely more likely to result in success than cracking directly into the pan...

I chucked it in (making a whirlpool first, obviously) and waited for a few minutes.
And, hey presto, coke-poached egg.
I made husband eat it, obviously.
He did, and *said* that it was nice.

A bit sweet for my taste, but nowhere near as inedible as one might expect. Maybe I should work on some kind of sugary coke based reduction/sauce and serve it with ice cream for pudding :)

So there we go - the Dish of Dreams - never let it be said that we're not prepared to try anything once. And that includes the Oeufs en Meurette, which I shall definitely (*) make soon.


*Probably (**)

** Possibly

The Weapons of Marriage

I met my husband while we were both at university, many moons ago...
Obviously he wasn't my husband then.
In fact, while we were there, we didn't know each other that well at all.
We were on the same course, but we didn't talk much there as all the lectures were in the mornings and he doesn't really know how to make words before noon (I didn't know that then - I assumed he just didn't want to associate with me in front of Other People) and we had some mutual friends and acquaintances, so used to see each other at parties and the like from time to time.

When we finally moved on to Real Life (or, in his case, more university), we kept in touch in a vagueish kind of way, exchanging odd emails and things. I'm not really sure why, to be honest - obviously just one of Those Things.

Anyway, about half way through his PhD, husband-but-not-husband-then went to Japan for a PhD related whatnot, during a period when we were enjoying much entertaining email contact.
He asked me whether I wanted anything brought back and I (obviously) said "yes, a sword"...

Being the sensible young man he was, he did not, in fact, fulfil this request, but did bring this super sharp knife, which he (I think) posted to me when he got back, with the warning that both he and his flatmate had managed to cut themselves on his matching knife with in about 30 seconds of getting it home...

Nice, eh?
I didn't cut myself, but I did (and do) love the knife in spite of this (though it was, indeed, very sharp) and used it lots.

Anyway, one thing led to another, the rest is history and various other such cliches and we ended up, a few years later, married and living together in the sunny East of London.

For our first wedding anniversary, he gave me this.

It's from the nice people at Kin Knives and was the actual best thing I had ever owned (he's pretty good with presents).

It is super sharp and incredibly beautiful as well as being functional and has truly taught me the value of fingernails.
I use it every day and was utterly bereft in the summer when I sent it away for a few days to be sharpened.

Fast forwarding to December this year saw another (Jennie-free) trip to Japan and this amazing Christmas present.

Once again, super super sharp, and possibly the best one yet.
AND it has my NAME on it. In Japanese, obviously.

It's from Aritsugu in Kyoto, who are an awesome and very old (18th generation now) knife maker from Kyoto and, needless to say, I love it a lot and have been frantically chopping, dicing and slicing things since Christmas.

I'm not sure whether this story has a moral.
Maybe it's that knives are cool, maybe it's that I'm easily bought with sharp, shiny things or maybe it's simply that I have an awesome husband* - who knows...?

In any case, thank you for admiring my blades so nicely and with such appropriate ooohs and aaahs etc - as always, it has been delightful sharing with you.




*all of the above are, in fact, true...

After Christmas

You wouldn't know it from the (very very small) number of people on the trains this morning, but today is the first working day after Christmas.

As of last night, exacerbated by all the happy still-on-holiday people who don't even know what day it is, I was properly dreading it.

However, as is often the way with such things, the reality is really not too bad...

Along with the lovely empty trains and nice quiet office, I have been much cheered by the inaugural use of one of my lovely new Christmas stocking bento boxes...

Here it is - stylish, no?




And here's my lunch - leftunder (I made it last night, but it's *really* mostly for tea later today) ratatouille-style vegetables and some extra festive Stilton.




I have also painted my nails in the style of a packet of skittles for extra cheer-upping effect...




Hope everyone has had a nice Christmas!

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