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After my spell in hospital last week with an eye infection . . . I’m home but suffering. It’s slowly healing but has to be one of the most uncomfortable and painful injuries I’ve ever had. Doubt I’ll be wearing contact lens again in the foreseeable future.
We are now in the seventh month of the saga of my refrigerator. The eighteen month old very expensive “lemon” on a fridge which couldn’t be repaired or replaced has finally been given the heave ho from the kitchen and the manufacturer has promised a replacement. However when the moment came they suddenly ran out of stock. I’m told the replacement will be in within three weeks. In the meantime, with visitors due over Easter Bridglands in Mullumbimby kindly loaned me a temporary fridge. Well I’m grateful but it has to be the dumbest design ever, yet I’m told it’s a big seller because it’s cheap. It’s probably cheap because it’s such a silly design with the freezer on top and the fridge at the bottom and as it’s a very small one, you have to get on your hands and knees to get into the fridge part. I bet a man who never goes near a kitchen designed it. It’s like the new dishwasher I got a few months back. The old one that had plugged on for twenty years, up and died and the plumber who passed the death sentence told me to get a new one and suggested a brand he said was great. While he was there Boris rushed out bought the new one he recommended and had him install it. Turns out this is a crazy design too. I’ve never had so many glasses break and it simply doesn’t wash well unless you put it on “intensive” which uses two hours worth of hot water at full bore. I’m never taking any man’s advice on an appliance in the future but will read everything Choice has to say on the subject.
I’ve added to my collection of vintage cookbooks with “On Feasting and Fasting” a collection writings on food and eating. I’m entranced by references to A Blue Violet Salad mentioned by George Ellwanger in a story in 1892. With prose as purple as violets he describes a bowl of Batvian endive and dewy violets plucked from the garden that was a salad as seductive as a siren’s smile. On a side dish was minced parsley celery and chives dressed with olive oil, white wine vinegar from Orleans and a spoonful of Bordeaux. Some of the violet petals were added to the dressing as well as danced upon the endives like “blue sapphires upon the white bosom of the endive.” Other captivating recipes call for garlands of cowslips, primroses and white violets to surround and decorate the food. Followed by desert of rose petal jelly.
Perfect for Easter wouldn’t you say?
Cheers
Di’s latest book The Islands, published by Pan Macmillan, is now on sale.
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