Ratatouille and Roses

I wish I could say that all the vegetables in the basket above are from our garden but no such luck I'm afraid. Just the courgettes and the garlic are ours, the rest courtesy of the local market. So what are we eating this weekend? There's the makings of a ratatouille in the basket and a cauliflower cheese. Sometimes we just make cauliflower cheese; other times we make cauliflower and macaroni cheese together and add a few chopped tomatoes and sliced mushrooms all in one dish with the sauce - delicious.

When we cook the ratatouille sometimes we fry the ingredients and at other times we roast them in the oven on a tray and then put in a pan or casserole and add the tomatoes, both ways are delicious but I expect the roasted one is healthier as you use less olive oil. The mixture can be left overnight and cooked again the next day and if you add some passata, either home made or from the supermarket, it really enriches the flavour. We serve it in different ways too, sometimes with plain French bread, or with garlic bread and, favourite at the moment, on a bed of couscous. It's a very good way to get your five a day. If you follow it with a fresh fruit salad you feel very healthy and virtuous.

I was thinking about my happiness list in the last post and realized that I hadn't added many sounds to the list and I should have done because there are sounds that lift your spirits and make you happy. Sometimes the sounds are quite moving, making the hairs on the back of your neck prickle or bring a lump to your throat. For me it's things like bird song, church bells, church and Welsh choirs, the sound of a cello, bagpipes, the tinkle of a harpsichord, wind chimes and people with mellifluous voices reading poetry or prose, the voice of Scott Walker. I know some of those things people will hate, like perhaps the church bells or the bagpipes but I find them quite wonderful.

The weather is so dire again and most of our flowers have been spoiled by the wind and rain; amazingly I managed to catch these lovely pink roses before they are dashed to pieces. I don't know what variety they are, they have been here since we moved in, but they come back year after year with hardly any help from us.

As you can see we decided to have the pasta and cauliflower bake this evening so it's ratatouille tomorrow.