Mini sweet and savory pies, just before they go in the oven. The sweet ones are apple and yoghurt, and the savory are lamb and cabbage. You can also see the corner of the mysterious foil-wrapped object on the right side.
Mixed Kitchens
One of my greatest reservations when we came to England was the prospect of sharing a kitchen. One of my firmest requirements for any kitchen we had to use was a dishwasher. The lodging into which we moved does have a dishwasher, but it is broken and doesn’t seem likely to be fixed while we reside here. It’s used to store soap powder. This crisis is mitigated by the fact that instead, we have extremely huge sinks. Each sink is about eight times as large as our previous sink, which was so small it must have has a previous career in a dentist’s office.
The first night we were here, Chris offered to make us dinner. He asked of if there was anything we didn’t eat. Kara said no, but in hindsight, wishes she had said “fish”. Chris went out to the store, and when he returned, he brought back a hare fresh from the butchers. He proceeded to combine the hare with lots of vegetables in a meaty, dark stew. When he went out again to pick up Justin from work, he left Kara with a bowl of dumpling batter and a plea to watch the stew. It turned out tasty, but we have noticed that this is a habit with Chris — starting to cook, and then leaving his guests with the kitchen while he goes out. It always seems to work out ok, though.
We have found that sharing a kitchen with Chris (since Justin doesn’t cook very often) to be a fairly satisfactory situation. Most English people seem eat around eight in the evening, and even later when dinner is more formal. We usually eat around six or seven, so we don’t run into each other much.
The only thing which we have found to be undesirable about our shared kitchen is the frequency of fishy smells and Chris’ tendency to wash up, but leave pots and pans full of dinner laying about for several days. The latter also frustrates his partner, Justin, especially when the food spoils. There is also a rather mysterious foil‐wrapped package on the edge of the counter. After the first week or so, we peeked inside, but we are still unelucidated. It looks like it might be a strange kind of cake, maybe for Justin’s birthday this month, but by that time, it will have set for at least two months! It may be something in the Christmas pudding vein: we saw Chris make three or four large puddings last week, and, of course, those are meant to set and “mature.”