Not everyone loves Valentine’s Day. In fact when I talk to some people about Valentines Day their reaction is to sneer at it and talk about “crass commercialism.” I’m not sure what to answer to that because of course it is quite true and I can only offer “But this is a day to eat more chocolate! Why the hate? Have some chocolate!” A friend of mine hated it because she thought that it was silly to celebrate on just the one day when you should celebrate it every day. To which I answered ”But this is a day to eat more chocolate! Here, have some chocolate!”
Chocolate and I are sort of new found lovers. For the first 17 years of my life I hated the stuff and every time I was given some chocolate I would pass it onto my sister. A couple of times I got curious about what it tasted like and ate it only to and how do I put this delicately…I would throw it up afterwards. I didn’t understand why anyone would want to go through that every time that they ate chocolate (I didn’t understand that my reaction to chocolate was not normal and thought that everyone did this) and I left it alone until I was at uni.
It was then that our love blossomed and I came to love and appreciate chocolate-in moderation of course. I know that there are people that have been saying lately that sugar is the cause of obesity and should be regulated or banned for minors but I still believe that everything should be eaten in moderation. Also I am one of those difficult people that if you banned me from doing something, I will only want it that much more 
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| February 8th, 2012 by Not Quite Nigella
Over the years Mr NQN has had to get used to me. When we first started dating he used to say “Do you have to get so dressed up?”. He is a country boy after all and there were mutterings of overdressing and I suspect too much makeup (although he was smart enough not to comment on that). There was the singing in public, the fact that I liked biting him because I thought he seemed tasty, the way that I’d enjoy my food a bit too much, the odd food that I’d make and the other strange things that I did that embarrassed him. Until one day he actually said to me
“Oh I like the way you used to dress”
This was of course after I had dressed more casually to try and not embarrass him. I looked at him and I smiled. Did he actually like me being me? Did I no longer embarrass him? Success! I had indoctrinated him into my world and he seemed to like it there (and a good thing because I don’t like having to do things any way but my own). Now he is used to shopping adventures where we travel to buy a good free range ham. He is used to buying bottles of root beer and pouring them over said ham. He is used to me inviting people over for food (he is naturally very shy and inviting people over just would not occur to him).
And speaking of that ham, this Christmas we were seeing our families as we planned a small family dinner combining my family with Mr NQN’s. His family were all over the place (their natural state of affairs being chaos), and trying to find a date that suited everyone meant that Christmas was going to be on December 26th. I had to point out that December 26th was no longer technically Christmas so I invited whoever could come over to our place on December 24th for dinner. Christmas Eve is when the Finnish celebrate Christmas and this is when my family celebrates Christmas because quite honestly my sister and I couldn’t wait another night to open our presents and our parents just relented and it became tradition.
Aura Lily
Well it turns out that all of the family members could make it on December 24th after all (I guess it was that annual tradition of herding cats preceding Festivus that the Elliotts seem to delight in!). And suddenly our small family celebration burst out to a table for thirteen…around our table that seats 8! But not to worry, we had plenty of food. My ham was a 5 kilo beast-modest enough and covered in a crunchy, moreish breadcrumb crust and then basted in a flavoursome root beer caramel. I had made this many years ago before the blog and before Mr NQN and was so besotted by it that I vowed to make it again when I had a lot of mouths to feed. The ham is easy enough to do and just requires a basting every 30 minutes and then a coating of a breadcrumb crust. It is then baked and basted to glistening perfection before being sliced up with some of the breadcrumb mixture and the sweet, fragrant caramelised syrup.
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| December 25th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
My family were rather strange eaters when we were growing up. My father wanted nothing more and nothing less than Cantonese food whereas the rest of my family and I craved other things. We’d watch ads on television where families sat down to roast dinners and vegetables and wistfully gaze at the images of families eating roast dinners wishing that one day we could try them.
Some days, and I suspect days when my parents just couldn’t be bothered putting up resistance, my sister and I were allowed to cook. And before you think I’m going to regale you with some tales of culinary prodigyness, let me assure you that the extent to what we would cook would be emptying out a tin of baby carrots and peas into a saucepan and then serving it with a coq au vin. A bizarre combination but with no blueprint to base it on, we were just thrilled that it wasn’t a Cantonese dish. There were no noses turned up at it from anyone, we all enjoyed the dishes, perhaps just for the novelty.
Whole nutmeg
I was at a friend’s house when I first tried eggnog. I had never had it before because my parents are of the thinking that alcohol is the first step to going to hell (I’m not kidding, follow this with some gambling and they’d likely institutionalise you ). My friend’s mother however, did not subscribe to that theory and I think that she loved the extra brandy kick she could get during the Christmas season to help her cope with two bratty girls. I tried the eggnog and was fascinated by it. I loved the flavours of nutmeg, brandy and rum and when she told me that it had raw egg in it (after I drank it), I was too far in love with it to reconsider my position. And it’s always a combination of flavours that puts me in the same mood as my friend’s mum-jolly under times of extreme stress. Sometimes you just have to find your joy when you can.
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| December 21st, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
I used to work for a man who didn’t mind when I called him Voldemort, Harry Potter’s dark lord of evil. That kind of gives you an indication of how strange and twisted he was. Having said that, he wasn’t 100% awful, he definitely had moments of being kind and nice but mostly, and until he got married he was a strange tyrant that you could hear demanding things like a petulant baby his loud vice roaring across the room “All I want is….” was a frequent cry.
“Expecto Patronum!” I used to mutter under my breath during this time. Luckily he only had the vaguest understanding of the Harry Potter series. These two words in the book were what Harry or other wizards would say when needed a protector and a weapon against predators and Dementors. I was hoping that the spell would work to appease tyrannical bosses.
The Harry Potter series is one of my favourite series of books, ever. I’m not much into the fantasy genre but there was something that immediately grabbed me (and millions of others). I love the way the author J.K. Rowling’s mind works and how imaginative she is. And like with many of my favourite books there is also an element of food. One of the foods that she created was Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Jelly Beans. These are like muggle or non magical jelly beans except that there is a huge range of flavours good and bad. Alongside more regular flavours there were ones like earwax, bogey, vomit and dirt. As such they were marketed as “Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans – A Risk With Every Mouthful!”
And I woke up one day and said out loud in excitement “These would be perfect for Halloween!”
I didn’t quite have any inclination to replicate a vomit flavoured jelly bean but I decided to make jelly beans in a variety of flavours including some not so nice or non traditional jelly bean flavours mixed in with your regular flavours. Having a look in my spell cupboard… ahem pantry I took out the following flavours: coconut, chocolate, pear, black pepper, lemon myrtle, vindaloo curry, violet and strawberry and paired them with colours.
Finding a recipe for jelly beans was hard-very hard indeed. What I realised is that nobody really makes jelly beans because they are easy and cheap to buy. But because I was under the Confundus charm spell I paid no heed of the warning and made a batch without having any molds and they just melded into one and didn’t look even vaguely jelly bean shaped. I regrouped and bought some molds that in truth look more like mini Easter egg molds than jelly bean molds although they were sold as the latter, and made them again. The flavour of these jelly beans was distinct. Clear and quite scary for people picking up a red jelly bean and expecting a hot cinnamon or strawberry jelly bean and instead getting a mouthful of garlickly vindaloo!
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| October 31st, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
If you had asked me what my main aims were during primary school it wasn’t really to achieve great marks, be popular or become a prefect or school captain. It was quite honestly, to avoid all sport and P.E. classes. I’d rather have been in the library reading books or doing something peaceful. Having a hard ball thrown at you and hitting it with a wooden paddle seemed like a pretty good way to get some sort of injury and and my physical limitations and clumsiness always ensured that I was the last picked for any cricket game (and I shudder whenever the sport comes on television).
I was never given prime position of a bowler/ pitcher or a batter. I was the one out in the field assiduously avoiding all contact with the ball-we had all decided that it was best that way. And one day while far out in the field listening to the distant rumble of the cricket captain getting mad at another student for not hitting the ball far enough I was busy contemplating the dry yellow grass. A raven swooped down and sat on the fence beside me and looked at me. I was alarmed. I had seen the movie The Omen and didn’t know the difference between a raven or a crow and was terrified that the look that it gave me was a challenge.
It looked at me and I looked at it and it cocked its head so I cocked my head back. “Don’t peck my eyes out ok birdy?” I said to it and it didn’t agree or disagree so I considered that a draw. My mother who was superstitious told me that ravens were creatures that signified illness or death. The strange black bird kept me company for a few minutes that afternoon far out in the field and thankfully it didn’t attack me although perhaps it had seen me when the ball freakishly came out my way. I screamed, ducked and it whizzed past my head and the bird flew away in alarm. Clearly I was not to be messed with as the sight of a mere ball caused a meltdown.
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| October 26th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
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