With surprise I see that I will today have completed 3001 posts on this blog. Statistics is not my best subject but I suppose I should feel some satisfaction. I am not complacent. Dumb persistence in wanting to chalk up something on the board to justify my existence is the best I can claim for motivation.
I still totter about the house. So, perhaps just for the time being, something called a personal alarm now hangs about my neck. If I fall over and can't rise to my feet I press a button in the middle of the pendant, people will rush to my help and voices will promise me relief, probably the most powerful incentive that I could possibly have to remain upright.
Apart from the alarm installation, this morning is spent reconstructing a taste sensation. My daughter Pippa and I prepare a dish from my childhood, a favourite of my Grandmother's. It consists of chicken cooked in a sweet and sour sauce composed of masses of grated onion, garlic, chili, ginger, coriander, cardamom, tomato, cinnamon, sharpened with wine vinegar. The taste, intriguing and complex as memory itself, comes wonderfully alive when we sample it with a bowl of rice over lunch. I have promised Proustian words associated with it for Pippa's new family recipe blog.
I still totter about the house. So, perhaps just for the time being, something called a personal alarm now hangs about my neck. If I fall over and can't rise to my feet I press a button in the middle of the pendant, people will rush to my help and voices will promise me relief, probably the most powerful incentive that I could possibly have to remain upright.
Apart from the alarm installation, this morning is spent reconstructing a taste sensation. My daughter Pippa and I prepare a dish from my childhood, a favourite of my Grandmother's. It consists of chicken cooked in a sweet and sour sauce composed of masses of grated onion, garlic, chili, ginger, coriander, cardamom, tomato, cinnamon, sharpened with wine vinegar. The taste, intriguing and complex as memory itself, comes wonderfully alive when we sample it with a bowl of rice over lunch. I have promised Proustian words associated with it for Pippa's new family recipe blog.
4 comments:
Three thousand posts are amazing! The power of daily posting. For my ten years I have only 1857.
Your grandmother's dish sounds delicious. Gastronomy must run in the family.
'Dumb persistence in wanting to chalk up something on the board to justify my existence'
Bollocks. And congratulations. Yes, you should feel satisfaction, I do whenever I come here.
I can't believe, I mean I do but it astonishes me nevertheless, that your grandmother even knew of such exotic spices and flavours. My grandfather was a great one for strong and spicy flavours I understand, but I think the best he probably got was vinegar, salt,pepper and Coleman's mustard, of which he was very fond as a Norwich man.
Will you give us a link to Pippa's blog?
Congratulations on your new Blog status -- a real achievement and a difficult challenge, as I am now fully realizing. Be assured that you stand as a great inspiration.
Intrestingly I have found a recipe for chitanni in a book called the varied kitchens of India which uses tamarind paste rather than vinegar and may explain the lemony memory you had. I will have a go at making it this way and bring you some to try
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