Stilton Ice Cream and Old Friends

Toothbrush has still not arrived.

I will go to Borough Market today and try and get some food for Sunday lunch, or at least order something which I can pick up tomorrow.

I was emailed by a television researcher who had read a forum post I sent about my Stilton ice cream, suggesting I might like to participate in a television programme and make my dish to present to some top chefs. There would be heats all around the country and there would then be an overall winner. The idea was to find people who had some wonderful signature dish and were undiscovered cooking heroes. I pointed out that though I felt I was the possible inventor of Stilton ice cream, it had since become an actual dish, not only for a starter, but apparently, with sugar, as a pudding which had been very popular for a small dairy who 'could not make enough of the stuff'. It seems that he was looking for weird and wonderful dishes which did not actually exist, so I suspect he might have a problem finding them, as almost everything has been done already. It was fun to imagine creating my dish, or any dish, on the telly though. Unfortunately my 'signature' dishes are very simple and un-English: Sauerkraut, and Couscous, so would not have done at all.

Last night I went to dinner to meet three ex Art college friends who I had not seen for several years. Everyone had been incredibly busy: one had just been to Paris to exhibitions, and was still doing artwork; one had been project managing an entire rebuild of the back of her Georgian house, creating a rental flat in the basement and the other friend was doing huge amounts of community work in a small village in the countryside in the north of England. We ate a super roast dinner of lamb shanks followed by chocolate cake and strawberries and cream, washed down with lots of red wine and followed by coffee and cognac. We took photographs, compared cameras, and swore we would all meet again soon, and not leave such a gap between meetings. I do hope we will.