Rainy Day Woman

The rain piddled down all day; the dog slumbered; the cats snoozed; the chickens drooped.
I find the best way to ward off cabin fever is to tackle some task that has been put off 'for a rainy day'.
So I tackled the larder. A tougher job that you might imagine.

I've always lived in a gastronomically adventurous household. My father had a passion for exotic food at a time when it was not easily available, and most certainly not in rural Wales. But he was resourceful, inventive and self-sufficient. As a child, it was not unusual for me to open the airing cupboard and be greeted with the stench of kim chee, a Korean fermented cabbage concoction; the mound of coats and blankets occupying an armchair overnight meant that the yoghourt culture was incubating; I unwrapped at my peril the mouldy green cone of Swiss Shabziger cheese, perhaps the smelliest in the world; necklaces of dried wild fungi hung from the ceiling; Manx kippers and Spanish ham arrived by post and in the vegetable garden grew purple potatoes, black kale, multicoloured beans, Chinese pak choy and the long white roots of Japanese daikon.
It was my mother who did the everyday shopping and cooking and kept us supplied with bread, cakes and jam.

Nowadays my elder son channels his (unknown) grandfather's enthusiasm for Chinese cuisine and once again there is an assortment of recondite oriental ingredients that will be turned into something heavenly. There is a collection of spices from Syria. There is my box of culinary essentials for Indian recipes. There is Nigerian yam flour. There is Peruvian dried potato. There is Iranian apricot leather. There is Greek trahana. There is Spanish bacaloa. There are the numerous jars of jams and jellies and marmalade that I turn out relentlessly each year as the season comes around. Some items have been here so long that they have morphed into mascots and souvenirs. A handful of ancient bottles and jars - their lids rusty, their labels illegible - I have secreted right away: they are what remains my father's mysterious sauces from 'before the war'. How could I throw them out?

Here's the portion of the larder that I tidied. It doesn't include the flour, rice and pasta, beans and grains, nuts and seeds, oils and vinegars and hot sauces...they all live somewhere else.

Here's Waylon Jennings with the title song.