Food facts, tips and opinions I've picked up along the way (purely subjective of course)

1. Lentil and bacon is a match made in heaven
2. So is lentil and red wine (seriously add as much as you think you should, then a bit more. Best stew ever)
3. red onions are the best for caramelizing
4. caramelize them by frying at a medium/low heat, and halfway through adding soft brown sugar and butter until they have turned golden and soft
5. mustard and cream as pie filler
6. green lentils. seriously. GREEN LENTILS (I may have a lentil addiction)
7. cook mushrooms with lots of thyme, garlic and white wine (or prosecco, or rosé, really whatever alcohol is on hand) in the frying pan, with salt and pepper for heavenly mushrooms
8. If you want a change from traditional bruschetta, use the above method of mushrooms and put them on garlic rubbed toast, delicious alternative 
9. when a recipe calls for garlic cloves, use at least double the number asked for
10. tomato and cheese sandwiches are your friend
11. Polish spiced ketchup called Pudliszki Pikantny will be your best friend (Heinz will be demoted to that awkward acquaintance you don't really want to see, but have to hang out with sometimes out of politeness)
12. cook your chicken breasts in butter (frying pan lid on) for a better taste
13. buy better cooking wine. it can still be crap, but it should be drinkable, otherwise it has no business being in your food. And yes, cook with wine. It is excellent. 
14. pavlova. learn how to make it (very wow. much cool). 
15. stop flipping meat like a hot potato. flip it once each side only. The longer the meat has contact with the surface of the pan, the more it can caramelize and be delicious 
16. salt, butter, oil. They aren't healthy, but they are tasty in cooking
17. replace celery with leeks (in pies, stews, soups etc) its much tastier if you are a celery hater as I am
18. Don't burn the garlic! It turns bitter. And don't use the green shoots in cloves if garlic is old, it is also bitter
19. to get the skins off garlic, chop off the ends and crush lightly with flat of the blade, skin should remove easily. Alternatively, pop cloves of garlic in microwave for a few seconds, and the skin will fall away (but I find raw warm garlic slightly off-putting)
20. to get the most juice out of lemons/limes use a fork to squeeze it all out
21. If you're making nachos, tray bake them in the oven, it's a whole different ball game
22. Put smoked paprika in potato salad 

Thesis

The funny thing about starting my thesis is I thought I would have some idea what I was doing by now - but I don't. 

Does everyone else feel this mild sense of panic all the time? Is anyone else procrastinating by dabbling in new cooking (the Moroccan lamb was particularly good) or closing Facebook only to find you've somehow opened it back up again ten seconds later and are scrolling through the same shit, someone's sunny holiday making you jealous, stupid ads which you don't care about, but you stare at them anyway. 

A month ago I didn't know where to begin, and now I have almost finished collecting my data, does that mean in another month I will be deep in writing and actually know what I am doing? I hope so. 

Somehow I feel like I will be just as lost, writing words, unsure if they are what I meant to put down, or simply my fingers scrabbling uselessly for something, anything to say.

My head is above water, but I am slowly drowning. 

The Door

A door within a door
Who lives there anymore?
A home, a house, a castle on a hill
No walls, no words, all now still
And where once a kingdom stood
There remains a single piece of wood
No roof no floor, a home no more
Simply - a door within a door

The Illusion of Separateness

The illusion of separateness. A book I finished yesterday whilst lying in the grass in the sunshine,  marveling at how lucky I am.
Its still rattling around my head and I thought that made it worth talking about.

Its about the intersection of lives over time and through the war, and it's such a perfect mix of sadness and beauty that it left me feeling both lucky and devastated.  It left me with a perfect mixture of but what if...  and if only.

A mosaic of beauty and tragedy and emotion, of fervor and grief that left me reading over and over the same lines as they struck me so deeply.

It is perfectly encapsulated for me in this one paragraph:

He had never loved anyone so much. But it was something he could never admit to her. It was a truth anchored in his heart so that her pain might be less, so that she might find another, get married again, have children,  watch them grow,  make their lunches, see them off, visit them in college, get old herself, plan retirement, give away all her jewelry to grandchildren,  regret nothing - even forget, even forget the boy she was first married to, who took her picture at Coney Island, then was blown to bits in his B-24 by anti-aircraft guns over the French coast, escape impossible. 
The book of their love would be a chapter in her life. 
A digression that ends in a rain of metal over wet fields.  

..... behind her, the people on the Ferris wheel and the roller coasters were screaming too. You could hear them up and down the boardwalk,  lost forever in that last great afternoon of their lives.

Home

Home is  funny place, which I am simultaneously trying to escape from and return to. My heart longs for home, even as my feet wander farther still.
What am I searching for? 
And what will I do when I find it?