Good manners: the noise you don’t make when you’re eating soup.
~ Bennett Cerf
If I kept a food diary, I would have documented a pretty colourful week. A slice of sweet-as-hell “Anzac cake” (from a bustling cafe); perfectly toasted croissants with melting cheese and salty ham; chocolates scooped from a basket; salmon, cream cheese & alfalfa artfully arranged on mini pikelets; rolls stuffed generously with smoked chicken and glistening salad and smeared with sundried tomato paste; crispy spinach samosas; a bag of perfumed feijoas (a gift); chocolate and caramel slice cut into pretty scalene triangles……
Now, before you think I’m whipping all these things up in my humble kitchen, I am not. Food has just been raining down on me for some reason. Fruit was dropped off at my front door, chocolate was left on my desk at work, coffee was delivered to me with a smile. Seriously. And I had a work lunch and a workshop/networking lunch in the last two days – not a usual occurrence – and we were totally spoilt by corporate chefs/caterers.
:-)
Along with all of this food, I’ve been reading a book I found in the library – “Climbing the Mango Trees” by Madhur Jaffrey – a story about her childhood in India, complete with lovely descriptions of what she ate growing up. An edible book!
Since food has been spilling into my life this week, I haven’t had much need or want to cook.
I have cooked two things this week though:
a slightly modified (to suit what I already had) version of Nigel Slater’s pumpkin, tomato & cannellini soup (pictured above) – I made what looked like a small pot of it, but the soup seemed to last forever… warm and sweet and tangy and perfect on the two rainy afternoons and one cool night when I had it (this soup is great for keeping in the fridge/reheating in the microwave – yay!)…
and an experiment composed of end-of-week fridge and pantry remnants – pasta with parmesan shavings and a sauce of butter, brown sugar, garlic, leek rings, cannellini beans, rosemary, lemon, a tiny trickle of soy sauce and milk which turned slightly frothy as the sauce began to roll into a gentle boil on the too-hot (unstoppable) electric stove.
… Side note: definitely falling in like with cannellini beans these days.
Time to sleep – good night and have a great weekend, everyone!
treehousekitchen 
My wife just got me Easy Curry by Jaffrey. I really need to bust it out. Great post, I was hungry after the first sentence.
I, too, have an unstoppably too-hot electric stove! Maybe your stove and my stove are twins?
Quite possibly indeed! I lament the loss of the gas stove.
I just love soup season, and you are right there always seems to be meal after meal, i’ll be digging out some mushroom soup from out of my freezer this week :)
Now that’s my kind of food week! I think I will get that book by Madur too, it sounds like a good read.
wondered whether you would like to join the http://www.foodbloggersnz.com association? It’s a site to promote all nz food bloggers, events and an upcoming conference.