Me and Keith . . .
Food again . . . well, yes.
This morning on the train I read a tweet from someone saying that Patrick Swayse had died . . . very sad and all but my only connection to him is a couple of, let’s be honest, somewhat crappy movies that I like (Road House and Point Break). About 2 hours later, and via another tweet, I discovered that Keith Floyd had also passed away and that one hit me a bit harder.
After a little introspection I think the reason is that the way I cook and generally muck about with food was clearly influenced by him. After a quick shuffle over to his page on Wikipedia I discovered that his first TV show, Floyd on Fish, was broadcast in 1984 and on my birthday as well. That would have made me 11 and I vividly remember watching it.
Floyd cooking on TV seemed to be a world of chaos. From ordering a handheld camera wielded by a poor bloke who Keith always thought was pointing it in the wrong direction, “not at me, at the food!”, to occasional spills, the odd missing ingredient, the general feeling that not a whole lot of planning had gone into the actual making of the dish and, of course, a generous glug of wine.
Throughout all this I always got the impression that the man really knew what he was doing. Ingredients weren’t just being thrown in for the sake of it, he knew tastes, he knew his palette and he knew that right now what this dish needed was a little touch of this . . . what I got from his programs, apart from a few laughs (and if I remember rightly some damn fine scenery) was that you didn’t have to follow a recipe like a maths formula, just go with it, create and enjoy
For one or two other view on the late great Keith Floyd you should head over to The Grauniad and check out what a few professionals think.
Keith Floyd, RIP
KFC’ish . . .
Here’s how it starts.
theWife: What do you fancy for dinner?
me: (shrug) dunno, what do you fancy?
theWife: don’t know . . . something chickeny, with lots of vegetables!.
And with that my brain starts ticking, my taste-buds start tingling and I know we’re in trouble. Read more
Food, glorious food . . .
I would say it’s that time of the year again but it isn’t . . . the fact is I’m on a diet. again. This isn’t the first diet I’ve been on and it almost certainly won’t be the last but what makes this one different from the others is that this time i’m keeping it in my pocket, it’s online, readily available and there’s no getting away from it.
I should probably back up a bit at this point and enlighten you all with some background facts. I’m 35 years old. I weigh, or at least at the start of this weighed, 19st 1lb and I have arthritis. The reason I mention the arthritis isn’t some cheap attempt to garner sympathy be simply a way to explain why I can’t just go and run the weight off like a lot of other people might. Read more
Pick A Pomegranate
I’d never thought of how Pomegranate’s grow until I read this post … dunno why but it seems weird! Someone will be telling me that spaghetti grows on trees next!
Blair’s 2AM Reserve
Holy crap this stuff sounds nuts … “1tsp. of Blair’s 2AM reserve mixed with 1 gallon of sauce will produce extreme heat”, wow!
I’d be tempted to get some and chick some into a colleagues salad to see what happens but I’m afraid it might actually kill them!
Top 10 Incredible Food Facts
More interesting foody facts (actually the first lot from last year) mentioning amongst other things that “The FDA allows an average of 30 or more insect fragments and one or more rodent hairs per 100 grams of peanut butter” … eewwwwwwwwww!
Another 10 Fascinating Food Facts
Another 10 Fascinating Food Facts:
Onions taste the same as Apples, Bananas have large hard seeds, Ketchup was originally a fish sauce and 7-up used to contain Lithium – the drug commonly prescribed now to sufferers of bi-polar disorder.
If you go to pub quiz’s this page could just win for you one of these weeks 
mmmmmm, Thai Green Curry
Thai Green Curry, rice and Spicy Prawn Crackers
After a trip off to Al Amin for supplies, dinner tonight consisted of a rather warm Thai Green Curry, rice and freshly cooked Prawn Crackers.
I’ve cooked the curry many times before and they really are pretty easy to knock together, but I haven’t cooked prawn crackers for years. They’re good fun really. Just heat up a pan of oil, drop them in and fish them back out 10 seconds later. Chuck em into smoe sweet chilli dipping sauce and munch away all night
We actually cooked far far too many so we’ve stored them ready for munchies later . . . and later might just be tomorrow. While at the store I also picked up a Papaya so that we can chuck together a Papaya salad for lunch tomorrow . . . mmmmmmmm
