This evening I cooked the last of the Gubbeen chorizo sausage left from the cheese fair we had at the end of September. I had smuggled it out at the end of the afternoon, the last pack of sausage in the basket. Since then it had lurked at the back of the fridge, not quite forgotten, waiting for a Friday evening when I was feeling the pinch.

It was simple enough to pull together. Chorizo always loves lentils. So I started with some finely chopped onion in olive oil to which I had a couple of squashed, crushed cloves of garlic and a small carrot cut into pieces not much bigger than a lentil.

After that had cooked through on a high heat for a few minutes I emptied into the pan the lentils, two good handfuls from one of the two packs in the cupboard. All it needed then was a bay leaf and lots of water before being left to boil until the lentils were cooked.

Whilst the lentils were cooking I fried off a chopped rasher of bacon in some oil and allowed the chorizo sausage to gently cook through. The lentils took about half an hour. There can be a tipping point with lentils between a mush and a small forgiving pod with some bite left. We got to the right side of that point this evening, the liquid almost cooked down.

So the lentils were added to the pan with the two sausages, seasoned with salt and pepper and left for a few minutes more for the flavours to mingle. Just before serving I stirred in some chopped parsley.

On a side note I spoke to Dad this morning from the Cottage in Ireland. He had just come from the pier where he had been scrapping off the thick folds of mussels which had gathered on the bottom of the pontoon over the last few years. They must have looked so good to eat, perfectly sized nuggets of seafood. He had been warned against them and I reminded him of the harvest we had taken two years ago; they had been as sweet a bowl of mussels you could hope to come across and left some us four hours later criss-crossing the Cottage to the toilets for relief.