Happy birthday to Tim

Wink took us out for lunch today, in honour of Tim’s birthday. So it’s also the 9th anniversary of the second time of meeting him, the first having been here at the second blog party.

I’d been out early, for me, with a 9 o’clock hair appointment. She trimmed my hair and left the fringe, which I’m going to grow out and see if I like it. Most of the grey hair is at the front, so I’ve got darker hair with a pale fringe, which isn’t a good look. We’ll see how it goes. I don’t mind going white, it’s interesting to see how it progresses. I’m not at all tempted to colour it. I am both too lazy and too inclined to fuss about roots.

Lunch was very good. I had sea bass (I don’t know why ‘sea’ is added, isn’t all bass from the sea?) with risotto and it was delicious. The risotto would have been enough on its own, without the fish and pickled samphire and I was sorry not to be able to manage it all. I wish restaurants wouldn’t put too much food on the plate. If there’s leftover chips, I’ll bring them back for the chickens. i’m sure they’d have loved risotto but it wasn’t very portable. A peach started to go brown right at the top and it wasn’t possible to rescue it. The chickens loved that, too. When I was weeding the other day, I saved all the edible weeds for them – they are pampered fowl.

I must look up a recipe for pickled samphire, while it’s in season. It would be good to extend its life. So delicious.

I remember the first time I ate samphire, in 1970. All fishmongers sell it now and it’s been a fashionable food for a long time, but it was so unusual then that a good restaurant sold it, boiled with butter, as a first course, just as you might have asparagus. Though I suspect that few places would just serve asparagus to eat with your fingers, nowadays. Which reminds me, I’ve at least one artichoke ready to cut.

2 comments on “Happy birthday to Tim

  1. Blue Witch

    Happy belated birthday to Tim, and happy meeting anniversary.

    I tried to grow samphire a few years ago, having picked up a plant at a gardening show. Depite only watering it with salt water, at exactly the dilution suggested by the seller, it was a huge disaster. Sadly as I love it. I don’t think they sell it in the north.

    You do get freshwater bass, but I expect most ‘sea’ bass these days is farmed in SE Asia in the non-sea anyway.

    Reply
    1. Z Post author

      It’s still picked with the root here in Norfolk, if you drive up to the north of the county. It needs a great deal of washing, of course. Sorry to hear that sea bass is not desirable. Whether to buy farmed fish or ocean fish is another matter, but I do buy anything with its place of origin on it, like Cornish squid, for example.

      Reply

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