Nasty 'n' nice

I have a horrible secret. I like sweet and sour sauce. The nasty type that's all sugar and colouring and cools to a kind of gel. I ordered a pot on Friday night to go with my boiled rice and tofu.

It's been a while since I've ordered it but a book I was reading made me crave it. Amusingly the book was Bad Food Britain: how a nation ruined its appetite by Joanna Blythman. The left over sauce took revenge on me this morning when the polystyrene container it was in split on the bus and smeared itself all over the inside of a cotton bag.

So let me whisk you away from orange coloured nastiness and instead tell about my Sunday afternoon. I often cook on a Sunday afternoon and just as often feel that maybe I should be doing something more important instead. Blythman's book points out that in Britain we are taught to worry more about the cost of food (it's got to be cheap) than the what it actually tastes like. We are taught (by adverts and marketing campaigns) that cooking is something difficult that we want to avoid doing if we possibly can. But an afternoon of cooking delicious things to consume over the following week should be something to celebrate, not seen as a time wasting eccentricity.

So here's what I cooked on Sunday afternoon:

• I made a big pot of popcorn.
• I started my sourdough (which looks marvellous in one of the kilner jars from my Grandma's).
• I made caraway crackers (following Hugh F-W's recipe in Saturday's Guardian).
• I whipped up some fruit and nut bars. I've done these several time now and have started adding a variety of fruits.
• I also had a go at classic white uncheese (the shop I buy canned tomatoes from most unexpectedly had agar on the shelf). It didn't come out as firm as I expected. Maybe I need to add more agar. It tastes delicious anyway.
• Then I made a big vegetable casserole with lots of herbs for flavour and mashed potatoes for dinner.

Next weekend I hope my sourdough will be ready to make bread with. I'm also planning to make some digestive biscuits. If they turn out OK I'll use them as a base in future for lime tease cake.

so, dear readers, respect yourself, rise above the hype and adverts and cook yourself food from scratch at least once a week. Cherish time preparing and eating. Food is a necessity, so it may as well be a pleasure.