The game's afoot!

The toe up socks in action! the color is not the way this camera picks it up, more of a jade green, but very nice all the same, harvested yarn from a massive man's sweater, tons more to go. I'm very smug about having conquered the toe up world and the provo cast on. Next: the New York Marathon. Well, I'll follow it in the newspaper.

Food lately has been interesting. I made lasagna for the first time, using the recipe in the Everyday Gourmet, and the recipe for the filling was so generous that I ended up making two, why not, since I finally remembered to buy lasagna noodles. Turned out fine, and there are numerous little packages of lasagna in the freezer for days I fancy it and don't fancy cooking it.

I found Two Fat Ladies, the cooking show, on DVD at the library, and have been watching their adventures with their motorbike and sidecar, zipping around England to all sorts of unlikely venues to cook, for lacrosse teams, the priests at Westminster Cathedral, a village fete cake stall, a Scottish castle, a Boy Scout camp in Northumberland, with different ovens and kitchens at every location, quite a feat. I would hang sooner than eat their wayyyy too rich food, all about red meat and game and cream and creme fraiche and other such things that look lovely,but oh dear.

I love the way Jennifer bursts into song at a moment's notice, and quotes all kinds of lit'ry texts as she beats and chops, and how both of them hark back to amazingly exotic childhoods and earlier lives, it's like an anthropologist in the kitchen watching them, a different life form.

And they're intrepid, going out with the fishing boat to get their crabs, shooting away on a grouse moor in Scotland, throwing a line into the water at a lake to get fish for breakfast. This being TV of course they do get the crabs, grouse, fish, etc., like magic...one piece of magic even TV can't do is arranging decent weather in England, and there are episodes where everyone is soaking wet and miserable in the outdoor scenes, but gallantly going through with it all.

There is one dish I fancy trying, involving hollowing out a loaf of bread and stuffing it with mushrooms and beef (chicken for me) the contents cooked ahead, then squashing it down under a heavy weight for hours before slicing it. I can do this if I pick up mushrooms, and it might be fun. I like the idea of flattening the giant sandwich, which is what it is, then slicing off however much is needed.

Oh, and there's a great new detective on my personal reading scene, well, two, in fact. One's Spencer Quinn, and the narrator is a German Shepherd, Chet who is the detective sidekick of PI Bernie. Very funny stuff, and very good, too. The other's totally new to me, Claire O'Donohue, the detective's Kate Conway,who works in cable tv doing reality interviewing, and gets embroiled in crime anyway.

This is the sort of reading you can do when you feel like doing nothing but need something to read while you do nothing.