"Easy Peasy" Says Jamie.

I have been watching the Cooking Channel a lot lately. I should have said the Food Channel but in reality it is about cooking. When you cannot eat what you want to eat then the next best thing I think is to look at food or even smell it and that seems to take the edge off not having it in your mouth. Back to the Food Channel, where I have been watching the likes of Jamey Oliver and Nigella and that skinny Canadian woman who zips around cooking lovely French things. I have made the beef stew she cooked and it truly was a lovely thing. I ate two helpings and I don't like stew. Yesterday Jamie was making meaty potatoey things in his stone oven. My two companions were drooling over the pork roast when I suggested we have that for dinner one Sunday. There was instant agreement especially that I would cook it and they would eat it. One of them said this would be ideal as I like to cook [unsaid being that he liked to eat.] Well I do like to cook but having done it all on my own for these last forty years the whole thing is beginning to lose its lustre. Which is why the cooking shows seem to come into their own. I can enjoy someone else cooking a meal for me and though I don't get to eat it I still enjoy the effort they have put into it. It isn't the same going out for a meal. That is done for the money and the wait staff don't give a monkey's whether you like the nosh or not, at least not at the places I get taken to. I think the ideal would be to have one's own private cook so that recipes could be discussed along with menu planning and shopping and then to wander in and out of the kitchen enjoying sights and smells and having the plate parked in front of you would be a fine thing. Sort of like being a husband of the old school. I have one, you can ask him. Ah well roll on the Lotto, you just never know what is around the corner.

The Face on the Barroom Floor 2

The self portrait is coming along. I won't say nicely because it is anything but. There is a certain likeness but I am more interested in an impression than a repo. There is a lot of chatter where I paint and I am now used to being solitary and find the noise a real distraction. I used to like working alongside other people but not anymore it seems. We are all labouring away on portraits in various media, some of us more skilled than others. Next project if and when I finish this will be a landscape though there is talk of a sculpture class in the New Year. This is not much of a tale as there is nothing much to report but hope for better things next time. Love to you all.