Home, Primrose and Venison Pie

Oh, what a wonderful evening and what a superb, wonderful recipe. I have been watching What To Eat now, by Valentine Warner and have been quite enchanted with the programme. I suppose his style of cooking hearty food rather reflects how I like to do things in the kitchen, but I'm really impressed with some of the interesting twists he gives to dishes.

After watching last week's programme in a soulless hotel room in London, I ordered his book and looked forward to getting home (just for the sake of getting home) and to seeing what was in it. It didn't disappoint. He writes as he presents, with wit and warmth, so yesterday was spent poring over thick pages filled with enticing pictures of autumnal fare. As our local butcher is particularly good with game, I tried my hand at the venison pie, and stocked up on dark, thick ale, soft, dark sugar and some gingernut biscuits.

Poor old Tom, he was getting quite crazed at the smells floating around the kitchen today as I cooked off the base and opened the packet of venison - seconds after snipping the bag, up went the nose and the locational twitching began. As we had left the poor old cat on his own (well, nearly, more about that later), I cut off a small chunk of raw venison and found that it was very magnetic! After that, Tom retired to his sofa, in front of the rayburn, where the aroma of cooking Bambi wafted down over his head while he dreamed of being a lion.



Tom hadn't quite been on his own during the week we were away. Our kitchen has been a miserable and outdated place and I decided that I couldn't put up with it any more. I arranged for Harry, our trusty builder/decorator to come in while we were in London to strip the 1970s poppy wallpaper and paint the walls a fresh "wild primrose" colour. I had to select the paint online as I wasn't mobile enough to sneak off without Kim, and the fresh, new kitchen was a surprise for him. Harry did us proud and got the job done, everything back in it's place and cleared up without giving the game away. I, on the other hand, nearly told Kim several times as I was so excited... but managed to bite my tongue each time.

We got home at just before nine on Friday night, bearing fish and chips as we were both really tired and hungry. I opened the kitchen door for Kim and let him walk in before me. He looked up, looked down, looked very confused and said, "Something's wrong". Then he spotted that his chair was in the wrong place and started wondering why it had moved. "No, it's not just that, there's something else..." Eventually, he worked out that the faded old poppies were gone and the walls were bright and freshly painted. It took a while to sink in, as he was suffering from a head cold as well as being worn out from a long week. It was hilarious.

So, I have a fresh kitchen, Kim is delighted that it's looking brighter and much bigger than before and the cat had company while we were away. Not a bad result. Even better was to sit down to an aromatic venison pie, fresh local vegetables and a heap of creamy mashed potatoes, while the rayburn warmed our backs and the cat valiantly helped munch through the pie filling. Life is good and Valentine is an inspiration.