Basque cooking

N's sister Begonia is here from Madrid. We ate with them at the weekend, and Begonia cooked traditional Basque food for N - who misses Basque cuisine. She brought squid ink with her from Spain, and they bought fresh squid at the excellent quayside fish-shop in Musselburgh. So the main course was squid cooked with tomatoes, onion, garlic, white wine and black squid ink.

I was proud of my son, he ate it all up without batting an eye. And it was very good, you could taste the sea, like breathing in a lungful of salty air.

I had this dish once before with N, in a bar in Bilbao, and I think it works better as a tapas type dish with a mix of other things, but nonetheless it was great to taste it again. In Basque it has a name, which sounds like the Abba song Chiquitita!

Black coloured food is always rather strange to eat, as the colour or rather the lack of colour doesn't make it look that appetising, think of liquorice, black pudding and black pasta, again made with squid ink. And all black coloured food stuff seem to have properties that make them almost too healthy! But they aren't as odd as blue food, apparently food dyed blue is the least appetising of all to the eye.

Yucky Day

Wet, cold and miserable here. I spent the morning in the kitchen, made pumpkin soup, with a little chilli for heat, and minced lamb, with aubergine, onion, tomatoes and cumin for dinner.

Son is up and about, and his eye is looking good. Yesterday he had a low grade headache, and we worried that his eye pressure was up again, but his headache passed and he was fine. (Think he skipped breakfast, and that wouldn't have helped.) It's hard to get things back into balance again after suh a scare.

Nothing to photograph outside, so I brought in some of the skeletons of my Chinese lanterns to photograph on the table. This is one of the shots. Not entirely happy with it, tiny things matter in such close-up shots.

Survival

Well that's another Christmas gone west. We had a nice few days and the food all turned out really well. I especially like the wee splash of cherry brandy in my cranberry sauce. Also did Nigel Slater's Christmas pudding sauce, which is pud and fresh orange and a little brandy butter melted together and poured over really good vanilla ice cream.

Happy to eat simple food today, as you can have too much of a good thing!

I got my annual jigsaw as one of my presents, and I'm enjoying putting it together. It's very difficult, as it's a pictire of a barn at sunset, which is perfectly reflected in a mill pond, so it's hard to know what's barn and what's reflection. No-one else in this house likes jigsaws, but putting one together reminds me of doing them with my brother and sister as kids, it was a bit like our Monopoly games where we'd all stash a get out of jail free card, except with the puzzle we'd each keep a bit back hoping to be the one to put the last piece in place, sometimes the thing would stand all but complete for days, with only three pieces missing while we tried to psych each other out.

I've done these photomosiac puzzles before and they're very good, each piece has a small picture on it, helping to make the larger picture.

I think jigsaw puzzles are really good things for teaching you patience and how to really look at shape and colour variations. They are also very good at keeping you in the moment, which can be helpful at Christmas.

Anyway I don't care if I'm considered a sad,old eegit,my puzzle is keeping me sane this holiday season and that's all that matters.