food – Page 2 – Louisa Parry

Mmm cheese, likes it there, cat love

13/7/2010 / louisa / 1 Comment

1. The risotto is cheesier than normal. On the fine line between sickly and perfect comfort food, I wouldn’t like it every time but for a one-off, it’s delicious.

2. Deposited there for the duration of our supermarket visit, Lily sits on the living room rug, tail wagging, and watches me say goodbye to Katherine. By the time we reach the store, just a mile or so away, Katherine sends me a photo of Lily on her back on the sofa, receiving a belly rub. She loves her auntie Katherine.

3. It’s cooler today so the cats are catching up on love. Carla attaches herself to me all evening until I go to bed, when Boron takes her place. He even snuggles under the duvet next to me – his winter spot – and we cuddle as I fall asleep.

Breakfast, animals x 3, showcase x3

11/7/2010 / louisa / 0 Comments

1. The sweetness of the crisp bacon, the sourness of the muffin, the silkiness of the scrambled egg and the substantial chewiness of the sausage. A great breakfast.

2. Animals:

a) The chickens cluck around me, interested in what I’m doing to their drinker, to their grit hopper and to their coop. When I’m working on their nest boxes – in the strip of no-man’s-land outside their enclosed run, they gather around the run door watching and waiting for my return into their world – or plotting their escape, it’s hard to tell which. After I’m done, I take them borage leaves and before I can bend down to give them out, one cheeky girl flies up and snatches one out of my hand. Definitely getting braver.

b) She looks like a puppy when her back legs bounce up at the same time. I think she knows it too, knows to do that so we can’t help but fall in love with her more.

c) Boron is asleep in Lily’s bed – her big dog bed that’s actually a bit too big for her. Boron looks tiny in the cushioned oval, his extended paw clawing on/off at the blanket as I talk to him.

3. The last night of the showcase:

a) The scrap of paper – torn to just the minimum then folded many times to much delight – finally makes it back to me just in time for the start of the show.

b) I’m more nervous tonight than I have been because John’s in the audience and I want them to do a good job so he’ll enjoy it. Afterwards, he says he did.

c) From where I’m sat, I can’t see the action, just a slither of stage at the very back. Their shadows – from many different light sources – are overlaid so many times that they’re abstract strips of light and dark.

Not a working lunch, play time, farm life

29/6/2010 / louisa / 0 Comments

1. The table is full of food and we all graze and chat in the sun.

2. One of Lily’s best friends (a white Staffy called Tia) breaks loose from her owner and comes running up our garden to play. Lily hears her approach and gives a plaintive groan – she’s not allowed down to that bit of the garden without our supervision. I follow her out and they run around together before Tia’s owner calls her back.

3. The size of the towns & villages decreases the further we move out from the city but soon we’re there. The fuzzy black dog wanders around lazily in the sun, unperturbed by the loud turkey and when he opens the barn door, she sits down inside amongst the chickens. He bundles four of the ginger birds into our box and we take them home.

3BT – bright, underage pub goers, salty slices

28/1/2010 / louisa / 0 Comments

I’ve been neglecting my beautiful things of late. Naughty louisa, naughty.

1. Even though I wake up earlier than normal, I feel thoroughly refreshed and ready for the day. The sun shines brightly into the room.

2. The bar is overrun with babies. There are six downstairs (in three separate parties) and upstairs in the restaurant there is a full antenatal group meeting upstairs. The lovely barman runs to the door whenever someone arrives with a pram to welcome them and point them in the right direction. He rushes up and down the stairs carrying prams and generally being cheerful. All the babies repay his kindness with silent stares and contented chunters.

3. Pink meat sliced so thin it melts on the tongue.

3BT – pate, cats, plunk-plink!, delights

11/1/2010 / louisa / 0 Comments

1. The toast is evenly brown and perfectly crisp. The pate is strongly flavoured but delicious, and stirs in me the desire to make my own. I add it onto my “things to make” list.

2. Throughout the day, all the cats visit me at my desk. They sit on my knee between my body and the table, and purr as I stroke their soft-soft chests while I work.

3. The water plunks when it hits the growing body of water in the cup but plinks! (with an exclamation mark) when it hits the edge.

4. Katherine and I watch dogs parading (in Best in Show) and eat Jaffa cakes, while Joe murmurs over the baby monitor.

3BT – waking, bacon, quality

9/1/2010 / louisa / 0 Comments

1. Even though we don’t have to get up particularly early for work – and work from home, it’s still a pleasure to have an alarm-less morning at the weekend.

2. I nibble off the piece of bacon extruding from the bread and it’s delicious – perfectly salty, perfectly crisp, bacon at its best.

3. Despite being together nearly all day every day, sometimes we don’t actually see each other that much – working together or working in the same room but not together, or as has been the case recently, being in the same but being ill aren’t in any way “quality time”. Today – a day off work and the first day neither of us has felt particularly ill – is a “quality day”, even though we don’t do much. We sing silly songs with each other, we make dumb jokes, we provide sarcastic commentary to the media we’re watching, we awww at cats, we tell stories and we kick ideas around. Even now, when I’m in bed hurriedly writing this, John interrupts to ask about the use of “had had” in the book he’s reading and we have a discussion about that, “it it”, “in in” “that that” and my favourite, “not not”.

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