Curry favour

With a couple of inches of snow on the ground, an icy chill in the air and Steve off to Edinburgh for three days, Nic's focus was on warming comfort food.  So the Madhur Curry Easy cookbook was out again.  This has probably been one of the most used recipe books we've ever had.  Everything in it just works.  Using up the remains of the monkfish that had been squirrelled away in the freezer following our Lebanese recipe and some frozen leftover coconut milk (there's always leftovers!), she tackled the Sri Lankan fish curry and adapted a green bean recipe to the sadly underused courgette.  Not one to make life easy, instead of opting for rice with this, she made a red lentil dhal.  Four pans and much chopping and stirring later ... well, she does love it! ...

Nic hit the kindle again tonight.  Hilary Mantel's Bring Up The Bodies is proving as - if not more - enjoyable as its predecessor, Wolf Hall. Nearly finished it though, sadly.

Meanwhile Steve had an early start to head off to Morpeth station to get the train to Edinburgh. No breakfast but homemade coffee in his Bodum again to see him through the journey. Lunch was a healthy omelette and salad with a strawberry & banana smoothie. Eventually left the office just before 18:00 and headed back to the hotel to read some more of The Hydrogen Sonata before dinner of squid & salad starter with a main course of steak, potatoes and salad - drinks restricted to lime and soda to maintain the no drinking rule during January (and probably February too).