No phone for the last few weeks so can't take any pics... still cooking and eating like crazy though cos there is nothing else to do during this motherfucking lockdown which is getting really really old now.
Anyway, today girlfriend was struck by inspiration or particularly bored or just wanted to try a groundbreaking and deeply rigorous scientific experiment into how much weight it would be possible to pack on in one day and whether that weight would be visible at the beach tomorrow. Whatever the thought process behind it, for dinner we gorged ourselves on three courses of her devising (well kinda), despite there being no real reason or even excuse to do much more than heat up some beans and crawl back into bed.
The first course was definitely inspired by Poirot on telly the night before. His coruscating attack on inexplicable English taste and the food that arises from it provided a vital clue towards solving the mystery, but, more importantly, his description of fish paste and salmon paste as indistinguishable slurries somehow caused Liza to become enthused with the idea of salmon pate to the extent that it simply had to open the batting today. The recipe she adapted called it salmon pate at least, but in my opinion, it was so light - despite its creation involving the blending of almost half a kilo of smoked salmon with creme fraiche and lemon juice and a few other things - so light and fluffy in fact, it seemed like it better deserved the name mousse. Either way it went down a treat on toast with pepper and chives etc
Girlfriend has just spent a few weeks in France and came back having fallen in love with the country. She's abandoned learning Portuguese and instead taken up a refresher course in French, plus she keeps banging on about their castles, the countryside, their style, their (relative to Portuguese at least) incredible friendliness and, in fact, to make a long story short, the utterly overwhelming superiority of every single aspect of their culture to that of Portugal. And most of all she's been talking about their food. As a result our main course was a cassoulet which my friend's grandmother was kind enough to cook for her during her trip (France also has amazing grandmothers it turns out). This one was white beans, three different types of big hearty sausage, numerous vegetables and... well you know what a fucking cassoulet is but trust me this oone was a particularly large and delicious example of the breed.
Thirdly and finally, while away she was invested into a secret brotherhood of melon obsessives (I assume so at least - she hasn't actually said that explicitly, but it's the only explanation I can find for the mountains of melons of every different size, shape and colour that are suddenly appearing in our house and then muscling their way into every meal) and that has caused her to search out more and more recipes using these huge beasts. Today it was coconut milk with two different kinds of melon floating in it and a dash or three of lime juice. Cold melon soup I think it's called which sounds sophisticated, but it also struck me as rather like a non-alcoholic pina colada which I understand is not universally viewed as a symbol of exquisite taste and opulence.
Well, I say "finally" and that was indeed true in her case, I however waited until after she went to bed and got so high I dribbled out all this bollocks on to dissensus... rule of thurmb that might be worth noting for those who have a life with worthwhile things to do in it and all that, if it's late night and I write this kind of amount the explanation is usually the same and you may be best advised to skp it...
Night all and sleep tight, hope the bed bugs don't bite.