Furious about Supper.
...also The Christmas Companion, and Game
I am overwhelmed, and that means that I am furious about supper.
…or ‘dinner’ as my children insist on calling it.
I often do not know what to do with the rage spike that happens when I am asked this simple question. And you might have thought that I’d have this one nailed by now.
Every day, I make supper (or I heat up supper, or I put food on the table and CALL it supper) and every day once it’s done, I feel like I’ve climbed a mountain and got to the top. I breathe a sigh of relief and get in a bath…or lie down, or go to bed…the people are fed… It’s DONE…HURRAH! And then I blink, and it’s tomorrow and someone naturally asks me what’s for dinner.
I have tried multiple systems. I have done meal plans, and followed people’s family cook-book ideas, and I have batch-cooked and made sure I always cook double, and I have pored over supermarket orders and tried to be meticulous about having something for every day, and I have stocked my freezer with ready-meals: I have done ALL THE THINGS looking for a ‘solution’ only to find that there really isn’t one.
You can make life easier using all these ‘hacks’ but you don’t SOLVE ‘what’s for dinner’ with some sort of tertiary food maths. You solve it by ensuring you aren’t overwhelmed by all the other things so that you don’t have to BLAME it for everything.
One day, if I do okay, there will be nobody asking me what’s for dinner, and it will be so lovely and also a bit sad.
I want to tell you about game, because I’ve been fascinated by reading Guy Adams and Jamie Blackett on the economics and ecosystems that surround the industry, and how absolutely crucial it is that we seek out and eat as much of this food as we reasonably can. I’m not going to make the arguments here because I don’t feel sufficiently knowledgable yet, but I do know that supporting purveyors of wild food is good for our bodies from a nutritional perspective.
I’ve therefore ordered Christmas lunch in the form of a few of these game roulade things, which solves our turkey loathing problem and means we are left with zero waste. Bit smug about this development.
The brilliant article from Guy Adams is over on Scribehound Countryside (another excellent Scribehound collective) in which he lays out some ‘game rules’ which include buying game (and if possible filling your freezer with it) in place of other meat, and always ordering game at restaurants. I don’t think that the general public has any idea of how important the wild meat industry is to countryside economies and to the environment in general.
He flags three really good online shops:
Pennant Valley Game (and specifically their pheasant kievs)
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Almost enough…except that the postman has just rung the doorbell and I HAVE to tell you about Skye McAlpine’s book which has just arrived…it feels like this book is everywhere on Substack right now, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t tell you about it.
I haven’t bought a Christmas cook book since Nigella’s, and didn’t think I wanted another until I watched Mark and Skye chatting about this book last week. I don’t know Skye but she instantly marks herself out as a radiator. My brilliant friend Kira calls people who give out warmth ‘radiators’ and I love this idea, because the word also implies light. Anyway, Skye McAlpine is definitely a radiator; I can feel the warmth and the light through the computer screen and I instantly want to be near to people like that, which is why I married one. By the way the opposite of a radiator according to Kira is a DRAIN…how AWFUL… we must all try very VERY hard not to be a DRAIN!
This book is turning me into a radiator. It has re-ignited the Christmas spark in me. It is a beautiful, kind, twinkly companion full of literally hundreds of things I hadn’t thought of.
I’m particularly taken with her Christmas salads and I am definitely making this one, with beetroot and feta
…and also this one, with shaved sprouts (if I can make the magimix shave them for me.
I also LOVE how many recipes she has that include panettone. Before today I have never dreamt of eating panettone (just not my thing) but then I open Skye’s book and there’s these lovely looking little panettone and gorgozola bites,
…and there is also panettone stuffing…how GENIUS…I would totally eat that, and now I am praying that my dear friend Grub who always gives me panettone for Christmas as a joke because I loathe it, decides to keep annoying me this year.
Anyway, beautiful and also USEFUL book, luscious pictures and friendly, happy writing. Highly recommend.
Definitely enough!
Please don’t forget to go over and subscribe to The Garden Collective, where I write monthly (amongst other garden writers). If you like gardens and gardening it is the single most brilliant present you can give to yourself, or anyone else. All my gardening stuff is over there. I listen to the articles every day and I learn so much.
Thank you for reading. No gift guide from me this year (I’m so bad at making them look pretty!) but I HAVE put lots of things I love and use, mostly garden-related, directly into a shop, which I hope you will find useful. I may get a small commission on some of the items in this shop if you buy them, (at no extra cost to you) and I am grateful for that because I need more Bendicks Bittermints.
Please do like and share this post, either on the Notes feature, or better still, more widely to your family and friends, and as always, thank you for reading.
x Laetitia
My husband regularly says “what do you fancy for dinner?” Which means “what are you making for dinner?” And even though I cook for a living and there are usually leftovers and batch cooks and often whole meals I have cooked earlier in the day it still makes me feel tired and ragey, in part because all I want after being surrounded by food all day is a bit of toast or some soup. I can only imagine how people not involved in food must feel - the way I do souped up by a million.
The Rage is so familiar 😂, and I love cooking. Some nights I long for just a glass of wine and a packet of crisps