food – Page 3 – don't confuse the narrator

cheese dreams

Insomnia found me browsing the web when the headline Cheese fire causes traffic meltdown in Norway tunnel caught my eye.

As a cheese lover, how could I not be interested in a story that starts:

Some 27 metric tons of flaming brown cheese (brunost), a Norwegian delicacy, blocked off a three-km (1.9 mile) tunnel near the northern coastal town of Narvik when it caught fire last Thursday. The fire was finally put out on Monday.

Twenty-seven metric tons of toasted goat’s cheese: a turophile’s delight!

(I gather brunost is made either from goat’s milk or a mixture of goat’s and cow’s milk, though perhaps not from the breed of mountain goat whose rather hazy photo I snapped in the Sierra de Francia, Spain.)
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food for thought

It’s autumn, and cool enough, at last, to think about putting the oven on and preparing something other than salad for lunch.

Looking for inspiration, I ended up on the BBC GoodFood site. Immediately, an alert box appeared on the screen:

Alert box: how we use cookies on bbcgoodfood.com

Sadly, although it’s a recipe website and claims to use cookies to provide “the best user experience”, we clearly don’t have the same idea of how cookies could improve my internet browsing: they don’t send out samples to frequent visitors.

I admit to being disappointed.

taking stock

LIght verse: ‘stock count’

Jar of marmite & assorted stock cubes on kitchen shelf

Tidying up the kitchen shelves reminded me of this verse I wrote for a friend who works in retail:
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computer consumables

Yesterday’s post touched on domesticity and cleaning, so I think this is as good a time as any to post this poem.

Slattern

  My laptop 
is a messy eater. Each morning
 I find tell-tale crisp crumbs 
wedged
 between its square white teeth 

alongside 
cracker fragments and 
the improbably orange powder
 of industrial snacks.

  It’s happy 
sat atop a take-out pizza box
 and olive stones have never yet
 upset its equilibrium. 

It’s anchored
 to the desk by coffee rings
 and gin-and-tonic lemon juice 
has glued the disc drive shut.

  Pass me
 a paper towel and I will wipe
 that smear of melted chocolate
 from the space bar lip.

Remember: Don’t confuse the narrator with the writer. You may have seen the photo of a dreadfully dirty keyboard the other day, but you should not assume that this poem is in any way based on real life!!

drinks invitation

The festive card in the photo was on the table at a restaurant where I had lunch the other day, offering a number of ‘drinks bundles’ for diners.

I don’t know much about beer prices, but I do know that if a house wine costs £15, getting four for the price of three does make it a much better deal.

Mind you, four bottles of wine is quite a lot, which is presumably why the restaurant felt it necessary to add the rider:

Enjoy alcohol responsibly

Why they felt it appropriate to display the card on a table clearly designed for a maximum of two people, I’m not sure. Suffice it to say, I did not take them up on their offer.