Keen-wah....Vegetarian cooking

Theory day. More about Irish cheesemakers, but a Welsh one slipped under the radar today too! Its an organic cheddar called Hafod, and is made near Brecon! The farm is called Bwlchwernen Fawr. Also looked at how to make our own flavoured oils, vinegars, preserve lemons, herbs etc and tried a surprisingly nice squash of rasberry vinegar. After cheese/preserving/biscuit of the week we moved onto vegetarian food, and our lunch! Darina enthuses daily about ‘delectable’ bits of brown meat, offal and shrimp brains so didn’t think it would be quite up her street, but the food she made was absolutely delicious. Wonderful chickpea stew (Skye Gyngell’s recipe), coconut, coriander and tofu curry, sweet potato salad, moro dahl, croquettes, quinoa and herb salad, aubergines with saffron yoghurt and pomegranate seeds…you get the picture. This afternoon we had a talk on the hundreds of different careers in food and looked through all the menus that Darina has collected on her travels. She raves about certain restaurants alot, and areas too....California seems to be top of that list! San Francisco in particular by the look of all the menus. Makes me want to go back and do a bit more culinary exploration.....good as Houstons is! Rain has abated and the sun was out again so after theory went running down to the beach and back. Pink house now currently munching on delicious homemade (goes without saying) chocolate cookies, supping green tea and having our daily dose of The Tudors....slightly shambolic TV series of dubious historical accuracy and codpiece shots aplenty! ….. :-)