My week in food....

Monday: I seriously thought about going to Lakeland today, to spend my vouchers. But I spent so much time thinking about it, by the time I got round to it, it was too late. So I ate jacket potatoes (with slow cooked leeks and cream cheese), which is what I eat every Monday lunchtime and it was delicious.
Tuesday: I recently finished a project and to celebrate and discuss the next project I was taken out for lunch. We went to Brasserie Blanc, Raymond Blanc's chain of French restaurants. It was upstairs in Covent Garden, and although Monsieur Blanc describes it as a can can of a restaurant, it felt quite refined, overlooking the beautiful plaza of Covent Garden. I had steak tartar and then dressed crab, helped down by a beautiful glass of New Zealand sauvignon blanc. Interesting that even a very French style restaurant still serves new world wines.
Wednesday: Another work lunch, this time with the illustrator and designer about the new project. We sat in the office and some really quite sad old-school white bread baguettes were brought in. Tuna, ham and cheese, brie and basil, washed down with orange juice and tiny slices of cake. Really unprepossessing. But delicious. Amazing what tastes nice when  you're hungry.
Thursday: A friend of mine was giving a talk for Women in Journalism. It was really interesting and I enjoyed it, but it went on for ages. I thought it would be a little prelim to din dins and a glass of vino. In my world pretty much any evening activity should be a prelim for dinner and wine. But we finally got out at 10pm and headed for the nearest pub, which, lucky for us, was The Well. I had what I always have, a rare burger and glass of red wine. It was divine and I felt like I'd earned it.
Friday: Today I really achieved something. I burnt pasta. Not any old type of pasta, 3 kilos of spaghetti. The plan was that for the school's Hallowe'en shindig on the last day of term I would help some other parents make some Ghoulish Grub; worms in a blood sauce with eyeballs (see pic). I just needed to do the easy bit and cook the pasta. They lent me a huge saucepan (without a lid) and I started to boil up some water for the first packet. An hour later and my house was a steam bath. The windows streamed, I could have given myself a nice facial, and still the darn water didn't boil. In fact half of it had evaporated. So I made a makeshift lid out of foil and eventually it came to the boil. In went the pasta, I waited for the water to come to the boil again, and then waited for the 8 minutes for it to cook. I drained it and out came a huge globule of congealed, burnt pasta. It had taken me roughly two hours to get to this point. For the next round I learnt my lessons, I stirred the pasta throughout and I didn't wait for it to come to the boil again, I just kept an eye on it. Then I had to go out and buy more pasta to replace the stuff I burnt. The whole thing took about four hours, the wallpaper is coming off my walls in strips, but my pores are remarkably clear.