went far too quickly. So quickly I’m somehow on holiday. Supposedly. A holiday with a laptop & occasional Internet connection never turns out to be a holiday. And that’s not just because I’m researching world food

Two Weeks ago

We tortured chickens. I know – not fair. They were dead though, honest – even if they did look alive, sitting up like that on the grill, all attentive, like they were listening, which must have been hard since the flames were really noisy.

Maybe they liked it. Everyone likes free beer (that’s what they had stuck up inside them – delicately fisted by a can of Fosters). It wasn’t looking good as they spat gallons of flaming fat all over the barbie (presumably this machismo looked all the more authentically Aussie).

Stefan did a prize job dousing them with water in a delicate kind of chicken dance. Beneath the elegant blackened frills, they eventually tasted pretty succulent. I atoned for the horror by rapidly rustling a salad with everything possible in it. way less effort; way better.

 

Sin did great tats as always, and fine roasted peppers, while Alex & Nabi made beautiful bountiful salads, JP made a yummy yaki, Claire shamed us sadistic carnivores with her delicious and copious vegetarianism, and Emma did something brilliantly filthy with ice cream cones in reference to priapic Papuan penile gourds.

Pheromonally roused by this or otherwise, Si & Di popped by to say hi, & all was well & beautiful.

Rachel hosts in Kentish Town. Rachel is one of those awesome people that comes to dinner once and immediately offers to host; this’ll be just her 2nd latitude She’s also one of those amazing species called women, who seem to do most of the hosting. We’d better start calling it hostessing. In a nice way.She has space for 20 as the scanline heads towards its 1st date with the International Date Line. We’ll be longitude 160, the gap between North and South ever-widening into that great gape of the Pacific and its scattering of island-nation pearls.

We’re enjoying our last moments of mainland Russia, with the whiff of the States surprisingly close as we enter the Bering Sea. Further South, we pass just east of Mokil (not urban slang for just a(nother death )toll) in Micronesia, and passing through the Solomon Islands (not difficult – there’re a thousand of them) where our Queen is also their Queen, so they’re probably also jubilantly snoozing off a long Jubilee weekender. They have great-sounding radio stations – Radio Happy Isles and Radio Happy Lagoon foremost amongst them

We’re also passing by New Caledonia, where their penile gourds point downwards rather than upwards (presumably spawning wholly new culinary inventions). & we’re adrift between the lands of OZ & NZ, one single letter yet hundreds of miles apart, united by their differences on whether they invented the 1st Pavlova and whether Vege or Mar is Mightier. The Aussies export their fish to the US yet eat Atlantic Salmon, while the Kiwis breed fattier lambs that meet British tastes – & beat their British equivalents in carbon footprint, despite the food miles.

See you at Rach’s! RSVP

rach_turner@yahoo.com

In the Near Future