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Today I have been beyond irritated by 1) far too many people’s lack of consideration and/or a clue and 2) some people’s dogmatic adherence to their own way of thinking and lack of even a glimmer of understanding that things can be more complex than the only one sentence answer that they can keep in their tiny mind.

So, instead, I bring you a brief interlude of tonight’s supper, from Nigella Lawsons’ Kitchen book. Now, I have a great many of her books and How to be a Domestic Goddess, with its often deliberately misinterpreted title has become my favourite out of my dozens of cookery books. And her brownie recipe is the best I’ve ever found.

In my experience, people are either a fan of Delia or a disciple of Nigella. There seems to be little common ground. I’ve always found Delia pompous and bossy, lacking any self-deprecation or humour and I have not a single one of her undoubtedly accurate tomes in my kitchen library, even though I have most of Nigella’s. Conversely, the many Delia fans I know all seem to despise and loathe Nigella with a passion. Perhaps it’s because of her sensual approach to food. Perhaps her TV programmes are too sexy for some. In which case I feel myself pitying them. I don’t know because I’ve only ever seen one episode of one of her shows and she seemed OK to me. I have always loved Nigella’s writing ever since I followed her column in the Evening Standard and her approach to food corresponds closely with mine.

I was looking for this book among all the boxes that had just come back out of storage yesterday in order to make MsDD’s birthday brownies. After about 45 minutes of fruitless searching, I decided that it would be a better use of my time to pop into Bromley and buy a new one and shop for the brownie ingredients, which I did. (The removals people, who were putting together my table, suggested that I bought the brownies, an idea that I dismissed out of hand, of course.) I found the book I was looking for in the shop along with this one, which seems to be both a celebration of the heart of the home and also a book of quick fixes for home cooks who are often too exhausted or too short of time to make something that requires more than an hour of standing up in the kitchen.

This morning I sat eating my fast day apple for breakfast and perusing this book looking for something to make for supper for the other two. And my eyes alighted on this recipe for Lamb Steaks with Rosemary and Port. It’s really quick and tasty, I’m told, and seemed to impress my discerning food samplers. Let me apologise for the picture above, which is the photo of the page from Nigella’s book. I meant to take a photo of my creation but I forgot!

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