Luckily my Tesco Metro (a kind of mini-supermarket designed to render the art of cooking useless – but more of that some other time) is only a short walk away, so I took a few minutes to browse the isles for a quick, but not totally mindless meal.

The solution was the following.

Ingredients

From the supermarket…

1. 1 Margarita pizza
2. 1 Packet sliced chorizo
3. 1 Jar artichoke hearts
4. 1 Tin anchovy stuffed olives

Plus from the cupboard – dried chilli flakes, dried fried garlic.

Recipe

1. Pre-heat oven (follow instructions on pack. Circa 200 c)
2. Open packets, jars, tins
3. Lay out toppings on pizza
4. Stick pizza in oven (follow instructions on pack. Circa 12 mins)

Serve with fresh basil (optional), your favourite quaff-able wine – McGuigan BIN 736 Shiraz Viognier in this case.

Variation

Happy with the result, but not happy with Tesco being out of stock on artichoke hearts, I added zucchini and fresh spring onions to the toppings instead.

The post Bachelor Dinners #2 – Anchovy Stuffed Olive Pizza appeared first on David Fuller.

I’m worried about the longevity of the books in my electronic collection – especially because I have books on several different platforms that didn’t exist five years ago, let alone in five years time – whereas the paper books I bought as a student will exist in hundreds of years time.

But back to the idea that the media by which a story is consumed will have a detrimental effect on a generation of readers. I can’t see it. In fact, ebook readers with built in dictionaries make the experience of being educated and enlightened a lot easier.

Did you know that on most ebook readers, you can highlight a word and ask the built-in dictionary to define it. Not only that, you can share the definition as a note for future reference.

And thanks to that functionality, the word peregrination may not be lost for a few more years thanks to it’s use in ‘Cloud Atlas’.

The post Peregrinate appeared first on David Fuller.

Actually, now that I think about it, that statement is factually incorrect. I moved out when I started my first job, aged 21, but I knew how to cook before that. In fact, as a scout, I participated in competitions that required the ‘patrol’ to prepare a three course meal from fresh ingredients in a camp kitchen over an open fire.

Most teenagers can manage sausages on a BBQ, but the rules of the completion required us cook a starter (soup from memory), a roast chicken and three vegetables for main and a steamed pudding for dessert.

The first year, we lost points for not being able to show the shells of the peas, thus not being able to prove that the peas were indeed fresh. The first year, our steamed pudding would have made a better weapon for blunt force trauma than a dessert.

But in subsequent years, we managed to build the eating area and kitchen out of spars and tarpaulins, set a trestle table with a rudimentary bush inspired centrepiece and nail the soup, roast and steamed pudding on an open fire.

I rarely cook three course meals these days, and it’s not the kind of cooking that you do for yourself, but I see those competitions as the equivalent of training at altitude – once you’ve done it in the hardest conditions possible, it’s hard not to succeed with the conveniences of a modern kitchen.

So I’ve decided to blog the occasional recipe. Some will be quick ‘bachelor’ meals. Some will be favourites of my wife, and some will be traditional recipes that might otherwise be lost.

The post Bachelor Dinners #1 (The Origin Story) appeared first on David Fuller.