Global warming & the food chain.

I thought I'd start this week's blog on a serious note - the general election.  It will not have escaped even the most observant of you,  that this week saw the first of the televised  election debates.  I understand that there are to be three such programmes and personally I have already had enough of election talk!  I preferred to watch the first episode of "Out of the Frying Pan", starring Ashburton Cookery School's own James Knight -Pacheco.  If you missed it, I would suggest you watch it on the BBC iplayer as it was a very entertaining show!  My liking for Duncan Bannatyne though, did take a tumble - Mr Misery or what?  I suppose he is Mr Misery who is also very rich but he did come across as someone who is used to getting his own way!

The unprecedented disruption to world  travel by the volcanic eruption in Iceland (didn't it used to be called Bejams?) has taken its toll on millions of  people, including Jonny who has just started work at Cardiff airport.  Dutifully arriving for work at 4am on Thursday, he was sent home by 7am - and of course no work = no pay!  Mind you if, I was a traveller and I was stranded in Uzbekistan I don't think I'd be very happy - being stranded in the Maldives may, I suspect, have its compensations.

This week's feasts started with roast pork last Sunday with all the usual trimmings although I did skimp on the apple sauce which I bought rather than made.  Shame I hear you cry - well that's just the way it is sometimes!  Monday saw the well tried and tested Cauliflower cheese with bacon & new potatoes and Tuesday was a disappointing rump steak from M & S. The peppercorn sauce was rather bland and the accompanying vegetables tasteless - back to the drawing board with Tuesday nights supper.  Convenience foods don't work!  Jennifer arrived back from her holiday in Houston so on Wednesday night I had been ordered to cook for her and her friend Holly.  Sweet potato and coconut soup kicked the evening off followed by Piri Piri chicken on a bed of salad leaves with new potatoes and to finish with a Lemon Posset!  I even made the Piri Piri sauce and it certainly didn't taste like the stuff you get in Nandos!  Thursday's dinner  was tagliatelle with mushrooms, creme fraiche and smoked salmon and on Friday Sue's mum & dad arrived for the weekend.  I thought I'd continue the fishy theme so cooked roast fillet of salmon with a teriyaki sauce on a bed of wilted spinnach with buttered new potatoes in chives for the main course and had made a Muscavado & Hazelnut tart for pudding.  I also dragged out the Melon sorbet with a lime syrup for starters!  The sorbet wasn't too bad considering it had been in the freezer for a week or so - I did blitz it the food processer with the white of an egg to give it a sorbet like consistency!  Saturday was my night off cooking so we had a Chinese take away!

So where does global warming and the food chain fit in, I hear you ask.  Well, I was particularly taken by one of the stories in the Daily Telegraph this week about the retired ornithologist who was too scared to go out of his house because he and his wife kept being attacked by a ferocious pheasant.  The headline "Psycho Pheasant" said it all!  Apparently,  John Tucker, aged 72, says that he can't even cut the grass without the ferocious bird following him around.  The bird has also learned to wait at the front door for Mr Tucker to emerge so John has now taken to escaping via the back window to avoid the feathered agressor! 
I blame global warming on this behaviour by the pheasant - it has surely been affected by greenhouse gasses and as a result,  it's brain has become addled causing  it to turn on humans.  Either that, or Mr Tucker in his professional life as an ornithologist, did something dastardly to the birds he was watching and so the pheasant is extracting some sort of collective revenge - either way, I have a couple of very good recipes for pheasant for when John Tucker decides to end it!

Happy eating!