Cooking With Richard

Wow … & her blog

(Thanks M-kun for finding the bento porn pool on flickr)

At a pet shop near Hemel Hamster:

おいしそう:

だいげーびる:

M-kun:

Vaguely cooking related video:

More PES …

GingerNinja has turned up in my inbound links, recycling garden snails as food. Now that’s what we like to see! … and eat …

Unfortunately all the snails in this house are being eaten by our song thrush, faster than I can collect them.

Our crazy driving holiday around Scotland is now over. I drove 1,104 miles. Here are some photos:

Troooon

Booooat

♫♬listen to the song ♪♫♬

Arran and Lamlash

Home of the worst pub on Arran …

Lunch

Castles and shika

Shikatetsu …

The Lamb and Whisky

The Array Whisky distillery, home of some rather pleasant spirits.

Loch

Maggie the moggie

It’s my bro’s moggie:

I think this is a brilliant concept. This artist called “SLINKACHU” paints snails and then photographs them in urban environments. Previously he was famous for doing these little people on ordinary city streets.

I really hope that the artist lets the snails “go free”, perhaps to be discovered by a bemused commuter, or a snail connoisseur…

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While I was looking at this snail art, I saw that the artist had painted a sadly familiar “tag” on a snail, “TOX.08“. If you regularly travel through London, you will be familiar with the depressing vandalism of this teenager. I found this 10 minute documentary on the internet about the culprit of this eyesore, it’s worth watching because it shows the people who have to clear this spam off tubes, and where tube trains go in the night …

ガーコ is still sitting on her nest. We’re expecting ducklings towards the end of this week. Here’s the latest photo of (an) egg, she covers them up before she goes out each time.

While you’re waiting, here’s a photo of our lovely long-tailed tits:

Here is M-kun playing Mario Kart Wii, which is bloody good fun:

Dorchester:

Little Wittenham and the Wittenham Clumps, Northmoor Trust:

Bravery:

Lambs!

Push!

A special treat for the tinybirds:

One of my favorite Middle-eastern foods has to be falafel. This is based very loosely on a BBC recipe but the recipe itself is wrong in several ways, most particularly you need to add a fair bit of flour to make it stick together. Also leaving out the baking powder is probably worthwhile.

Raw falafels:

Deep frying:

After deep frying:

With pitta bread, salad and a yogurt, olive oil and lemon juice sauce:

Pitta and falafel pocket:

In Japan:

In Britain:

This was a rather lovely, friendly restaurant that we discovered in Rue Mouffetard, Paris.

We had a starter of escargots (snails):

N-sama had a beef stew which tasted like a peposo:

I had a very pleasant cassoulet:

Altogether, a highly recommended restaurant, not particularly because the food was outstanding (although it was very good), but because the place was cosy and friendly.

Photo and someone’s boggy entry.

Mushi (insects) are very popular in Japan as pets or even for eating. We got these tasty mushi from a popular mushi shop ….

From here:

N-sama bought me a tiny helicopter for Christmas, so here it is in action …

Hmmmmmmmmm…. Second time lucky?

OK … third time?

IT FLIES!!!

Edit:

The Professionals fly:

Lamb and mint sausages (from the local conbini of all places), with real mash and onion gravy.

Lamb sausages are tricky to cook — I nearly set the kitchen on fire several times — but they taste great. Last time I had them was in Cyprus.

Night night …