Green beans & mushrooms

I enjoy cooking.

Who knew?

If you have to understand for the past twenty years, I rarely cooked. I didn't need to, D is the best cook. The guy seriously cooks with so much love that his food tastes incredible. Impossible for me to compete against that.

So, here I am in Wilmslow and lo and freakin' behold - I'm cooking! And ya know what? Not only am I enjoying the process but it tastes really good! Perhaps all that sitting around drinking wine and watching D cook food I was actually learning and preparing for this very moment.

Here's my food diary for today.

Breakfast: 10ish am
Decided to go to RISE, the local independent coffee shop and have an egg with toast. What I got was a scrambled egg that lacked any taste and brown toast, a side of butter and an Americano coffee. The coffee came first, the eggs arrived cold and the lady forgot the butter. The toast was cooling off while I waited for the butter. Hello, the whole point of putting butter on your toast is so that it melts into all the nooks and cranies. I desparately wanted some orange marmalade and a bit of salt and lots of pepper for the eggs. But I didn't ask; I just wasn't in the mood, wasn't up to dealing with people. Apparently I had already pissed off some guy when I mistakenly sat at his table. Although there was no reason we couldn't share. He was part of a larger group of people sitting at the next table but it was full. Of course, I apologized and started to get up to move and he said no and instead he moved. They just looked at me - the whole lot of them. One, they're not very pretty and they all have sour faces. To be honest, they just kinda made me want to say f you and walk away. But I had my breakfast and my newspaper - The Guardian. The Guardian has a great magazine insert each Saturday, worth the entire cost of the paper. So I proceeded to eat my cold eggs and toast and by now luke warm coffee. And of course, the magazine insert had stories full of very sad stories. People this wasn't my idea of how I wanted to start of my Saturday.

Tatton Park afternoon
I love the space at Tatton Park, I walked on trails next to a lake, through a field of sheep and deer grazing, I stopped at a bench that overlooked the sheep grazing and ate two perfectly ripe small sized bananas. Yumm!

3:30ish
As I was leaving the park I started thinking of what I was going to cook once I got home. Here I am hungy and instead of thinking about take out or eating out I'm thinking of what I want to cook. Who have I become? Seriously.

Got home and got out all the ingredients: small onions, a ton of garlic, fresh ginger, mushrooms, green beans, red pepper, tempeh and bok choy. Chopped the onions, garlic and ginger - a lot! Added some sea salt, hot curry, turmeric and cinnamon and let it cook down, added the green beans and red peppers, after they cooked down added the mushrooms. By this time the pan was completely overflowing so in a seperate pan cooked the tempeh and added it all together. I had the bok choy to add at then end but there was simply no room.

What's amazing is that I was completely starved with low blood sugar. And anyone that knows me, knows I can't go long without eating. I nibbled on some left over steamed brocolli as I cooked, but then once I started chopping I really got into it. It was actually like a meditation. I didn't eat until an hour after I started and I was completely okay with it.

I really need to try and upload some photo's. Problem is that I'm taking them from my iPhone and am having synch difficulties. Too lazy to figure out the problem.