Monday 13th January - Stay at Home Moon

 Full moon tonight; but it's looking cloudy outside... it's also known as Cold Moon... which seems entirely appropriate. 

I would have stayed at home too, but had to go out on an errand. Glad I did, though; I bumped into a friend from Book Club, and another friend from church who I haven't seen in years. 

He is a bit of a stickler for doing thing properly, and used to gently wind me up when I was a regular organist at the early service over things like which was the 'right' tune for a hymn. 

He had a wicked sense of humour; once he suggested I should play 'I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts', as the final voluntary as everyone was leaving, and was rather taken aback when I obliged...

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Otherwise it was definitely a 'Stay at Home' day.

The cake I made yesterday turned out well (mmm I could eat another piece right now). I'm eyeing up two Nigella recipes; one for  Bara Brith, which I might get started on tonight to bake tomorrow, and one for spaghetti with sardines which sounds pretty good as a future supper dish.

In accordance with my drive to do more cooking I knocked up a really simple tomato sauce for the tortellini we were planning for tonight's supper. It serves two, so half is saved for another time. We usually have a bought pesto sauce, or just olive oil, lemon and parmesan but I fancied a change.

Here it is;

One small onion diced, one or two cloves of garlic crushed, sweated in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and a knob of butter until looking promising. I would have also used up a red pepper chopped small that was lurking in the fridge, but it had gone too squishy. 

To that I added a tin of chopped tomatoes and about a third of a tin of water, a couple of sundried tomatoes chopped small, salt, pepper and plenty of dried herbs.

I left all of that gently simmering for about 20 mins, then it occurred to me that a couple of tablespoons of sherry would help it along. 

I let it carry on simmering while sorting out the tortellini. It worked really well and I enjoyed the simple uncomplicated flavour. 

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Psalm 23; 'I shall not want'. Well I do want all sorts of things all the time, but a better translation might be 'I lack nothing'. True, enough for me. I have all I need. Praying for people in desperate circumstances who lack so much of what I take for granted.