Maybe it is because it is February but yesterday’s Farmer’s Market seemed quieter than usual. There were less stalls and fewer people milling around. But the chicken man was there so I bought a good sized one to cook in the evening. He assured me he would be back in April.

One of the butchers was selling a couple of lamb kidneys which were difficult to resist. They are now in the fridge in the basement where I will no doubt forget about them. A different butcher was selling some stewing mutton so I invested in that to turn into an Irish during the week. As I write it occurs to me that the kidneys could go into the stew?

From the butchers I moved on to a veg man and bought a paper bag full of mushrooms and ten or so slender pink stems of  rhubarb that looked too pink to leave behind. If we didn’t eat them I could always turn them into pink vodka.

We ate the mushrooms, chicken and rhubarb that evening.

The mushrooms went on toast. Chopped garlic was cooked in olive oil before the mushrooms were added. They were given plenty of salt and pepper and then stirred until they started to collapse in on themselves. I then stirred in some more garlic, a squeeze of lemon juice and chopped parsley. They were tipped onto a large white plate and we helped ourselves slithering them over our toast.

In the meantime the chicken had been covered in too much paprika and dumped into a hot oven for an hour together with some peppers that had been stuffed with rice.

We had those with patatas bravas and a thick deep yellow garlic mayonnaise and rocket salad.

The rhubarb was cooked until soft with a squeeze of orange juice and a couple of spoonfuls of sugar. We ate it with ginger biscuits.

We then put ourselves to sleep with lumps of Lancashire cheese and too much red wine listening to Rod Stewart.