Newsflash…Lawn Update

Arrived home today to an ominous looking letter from the local Health Authority. It appears my terribly neurotic next door newly weds reported my yard to the authorities as a health hazard. My other neighbours and friends have had eggplants, corn, tomatoes, basil, beans, melons and watermelons all summer from this “bad” lawn and they are all still alive! Meanwhile, they (the newlyweds) spray every known chemical known to man to keep themsleves bug free and I am demonised for a little horse shit?. I will cover the lot with mulch tomorrow and hopefully suburban order shall be restored. I cannot wait to be able to afford a few acres in the country behind a gate away from the “frightened masses”.

I don’t know if this is true, but it certainly was fun to read. Let’s hear it for the ingenuity of a cook.

“Appeal to burglars’ bellies backfires Tue Aug 14, 2007 9:53AM EDT BERLIN (Reuters) - A cottage owner in Germany tried to ward off burglars by leaving canned foods on her doorstep, but robbers found the offerings so tasty that they broke into the house to get second helpings, German police said Tuesday.

The woman who owns the cottage and adjacent garden in Brunswick, western Germany, had left a note for potential burglars not to bother breaking into her cottage but to help themselves to the canned foods on her doorstep, police said.

“The polite appeal that they treat themselves apparently just increased the appetite of the hoodlums,” the police said in a statement. “The perpetrators not only took the canned foods but broke open the door and took cucumber salad and sausages.”

Petty robbery of summer cottages in Germany is not uncommon since the owners often visit them only weekends.”

One day my daughter told me she had a recipe to write and she wanted to put it on GreatGrub. She’s was four-years-old and needless to say I was a little skeptical. But she was determined so we made an adventure out of it. She loves fish so we went to the fishmonger to pick out the fish. Then we needed some other ingredients so we stopped in the grocery store. I carried the basket and she showed me the way. That night we made the fish and after dinner she dictated while I typed. Chloe’s Fish with Eyes is that start of what I hope for Chloe is a long relationship with cooking.

Apparently all these years we’ve had it wrong. Dinner, not breakfast, is the most important meal of the day!

“A couple of years ago, there was a study to determine what caused children to get high score in the SAT’s. IQ., social circumstances, and economic states all seemed less import than another subtle factor. Youngsters who got the highest SAT scores all regularly had dinner with their parents.”

Shari Lewis Awakening your child’s natural genius

My wife has been baking non-stop and I have been making comfort dishes like Three Cheese Macaroni & Cheese. You see our daughter started nursery school this week and although she may be off on an exciting new adventure, we apparently are in need of some serious consolation.

My wife and children made White Trash Toffee. Boy is that good. It’s an awfully sweet indulgence on a hot hot day.

Today my Sicilian neighbour Dominic delivered a bunch of vine ripened and warm red grapes. They were so delicious, so sweet, so everything! It got me thinking about what we have settled for in store bought produce. Everything is picked way before it’s prime and only when you get something that is allowed to fully ripen are you reminded of how things should taste.