I am conscious that it has been quiet from here over the last few days; a combination of a busy few days during the day and a busy weekend.

The good news is that there has been food and we ate well over the weekend telling all who were interested just how good Bobby Womack was.

We were out Friday night eating a roast leg of venison that had been marinated for a long time in red wine before being put in the oven. It was excellent, rich and gamey, and reminded me that I have recently been given a rabbit that is now resting in the freezer and waiting for me to do something constructive with it. Feelings run high in the family over the eating of rabbit (we had for a short while a pet rabbit called Cookie) and I suspect that I might even have difficulties persuading Galen to join me in eating it.

Saturday lunchtime was pitta bread stuffed with falafel, lamb, yogurt, onions, tomatoes, cucumber and lashings of hot chilli sauce. The kids were able to pick and choose and were just about all able to choose something they liked. The falafel were made using a dried chickpea flour mix from The International Store which looks a bit like the dried stuffing mix I seem to remember from a long time ago. Once it is mixed with water it needs 20 minutes or so to thicken up and you can then use a very neat falafel shaper to scoop out the mixture into just the right flat pat shape to be dropped into a shallow pan of hot oil.

Saturday might we had friends to stay and we enjoyed a long slow meal. I like a meal that starts with a drink and some crisps, then moves on to something more substantial to nibble (in this case chorizo and pedron peppers), and then on to soup and the start of the meal proper.

The soup was a beetroot soup with black cumin from the first Moro cookbook. The black cumin came from The International Store and apart from the price seemed fairly similar to ordinary cumin. The soup was flavoured slightly with sherry vinegar which helped to cut through some of the richness.

We then had cod pan fried and roasted in the oven, with saffron flavoured rice, chickpea salad and some more of the kale from the garden which just seems to keep on giving.

Then it was roast quince with honey and cream and to finish a great block of Tasty Lancashire and an equally great block of Double Gloucester.

We were replete at the end of it.

I did the washing up listening to Don’t Stand Me Down by Dexy’s Midnight Runners which just keeps on getting better and better.