A record arrived in the post today.  A proper record that came in a sleeve, pressed on black vinyl that needed a needle and turntable so that it could be played. It is by Silent Sleep who were the band we saw playing at the opening party for Homebaked last Saturday evening. I spent part of the Sunday evening trawling the internet for information on them and ended buying the album. We have been playing it today in between scaring the kids with bits of The Velvet Underground and Can.

Back in my day it was the parents who shouted to have the music turned down. Here it is the kids. Don’t they know that some  music has to be played loud otherwise it misses the point. A bit like how some music sounds better being played on a scrappy old record player rather than a bees knees digitalised and remastered so the life gets cleaned out of it CD.

Lunch today was carrot soup made with a bag of 50p carrots from the grocers with roast beef sandwiches. The roast beef was left over from last night.

We have an expanding patch of horseradish in the garden. I pulled out some of the roots last weekend but didn’t get round to using them. so we had them last night, grated and mixed with creme fraiche together with a small hunk of beef that I flash roasted for 45 minutes and very good it was to.

Tonights supper is going to be another attempt to keep the whole family happy. Potato gratin with smoked haddock. The gratin is done and ready to go into the oven.

I cleaned, peeled and sliced six large potatoes. The gratin dish was smeared with butter and I finely sliced a couple of onions and mixed them with some garlic and dill. I then built up layers in the gratin dish starting with a layer of potato, then the onion mixture, then some butter, creme fraiche, salt and pepper and then another layer of potatoes and so on.

As I was going I poured in some double cream and I used salt flavoured with truffles. A present from over the summer.

That will all go into the oven shortly to cook until the potatoes are more or less done. For the last half hour or so I will lay some chunks of smoked haddock on top. Hopefully the juices from the smoked haddock will add flavour to the potatoes. If I get two out of the three kids eating it I will rest easy.