Onions

Apart from 'Domestic Science' lessons at school in Hong Kong, I reckon the first time I ever cooked to a recipe was when my first wife taught me to make pasta sauce. I guess that would have been around late 1989. I was 23! 

When we were married, in July 1990, one of our presents was a vegetarian cook book, given to us by our friend Judy*. I was vegetarian at the time and I explored the recipes with gusto and, it has to be said, mixed results. (To be fair, though, I'm not sure the best of chefs could have had much success with the spinach and soft-cheese lasagne.)

Over the ensuing thirty years, I have accrued a small collection of favourite recipes and I still try something new occasionally. One thing that hasn't changed over the years, though, is how rubbish I am at chopping onions. I think my endeavours could best be described as 'rustic'. 

*The same friend who recently designed our office 'pod'.

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-11.7 kgs
Reading: 'How Art Made Pop And Pop Became Art' by Mike Roberts. I finished reading this, today. It's a book with a fascinating mission, which is to explore how the art schools of the fifties and sixties - which appear to have been dumping grounds for the likes of John Lennon, Pete Townshend, and Keith Richards - led to the creative explosion in pop music. It's taken me weeks to read it because as with Chris Young's biography of David Sylvian, 'On The Periphery', the book is let down by the author's ridiculous obsession with not leaving anything out. Thus, even the highpoint for me, which was about Gilbert and George's influence on Kraftwerk, was a rather stilted, laborious read. It's a book I'm glad I've read rather than one I enjoyed reading. In the right hands, though - i.e. those of a decent editor - this book could be made into a brilliant documentary series.