Who's for Mackerel?

When our friend Thomas comes from Norway to visit he brings us some tins of this delicious mackerel in tomato sauce.  This time I asked Bb to gently remind him how much we love it as our stocks were down.  He did. And Thomas arrived with this little haul!  As you can see, there are 10 tins here. That puts our current stock at 22 tins!  I think I can afford to give our friend a Philippa one for Christmas. Or maybe two!   It's delicious on toast with just a little spread of butter!

Given that I'm spending more time at home these days, I thought I might as well take advantage of some wee bits of home to blip as I always love those kinds of blips myself.   This shelf, one of five, is in our understairs walk in cupboard which we grandly call the bodega.  We don't normally store food here, but I just put those tins here till I could squeeze them in with their 12 friends in the kitchen cupboard.  Three of my most loved and oldest books are on the shelf too:  Cooking in Spain by Janet Mendel given to me by an ex-colleague Simon in the mid 90s; Family Casseroles, a Marks and Spencer book, given to me for Christmas by my mum-in-law in 1989, the year before Bb and I got married or even engaged actually (trying to tell me/us something?!) and The Food Aid Cookery Book, which has 1986 written on the inside front cover by our dear late friend Liz-Anne. I think she must have have given it to us as a pressie and it's full of little post-it notes about the recipes.  She was a great cook!  I've only attempted a few out of this one, but our favourite prawn recipe is in here. 

The mug is of me and my dad, taken in Barcelona on Avenida Diagonal in July 2008, the year before he passed away in the October. 

Isn't is amazing what little snippets of life come flooding back just by 5 mins looking at a shelf?