When I first started blogging, dare I say it over ten years ago, it was an outlet for me to cope with cold English weather. Having lived in Houston Texas pretty much my whole life cold weather was new to me — and I wasn’t prepared for it. Getting the right gear helps, so once I was armed with coats, sweaters, boots, scarves, etc. I was ready to roll. But the reality is that the winters in England are longer than anything I had ever experienced back home — I had a pretty difficult time with it. There is only so much bundling up you can do and after a while the cold and wet winters start to take their tole and get old and boring.

I can’t quite remember how it started but my boyfriend, now husband, started cooking a Sunday Roast a Sundays. I’d take a few pictures post them on tumblr with a little story and before we knew it was a Sunday ritual. By the time that Friday rolled around we’d start thinking about what we would make for the Sunday roast. It also became a way for me to embrace the coziness of cold weather and I realised that I liked to cook. We did that for about five or six years and in the spring and summer months we called it the Sunday Grill. Occasionally we’d go out for a Sunday roast but we always made sure to have a lovely meal every Sunday. As much as possible we shopped locally praising our local butcher, greengrocer, fish monger, etc.

Somehow life became busy, we didn’t always have time to cook a nice meal on Sundays as we normally did and eventually it fell off the radar, which makes me sad. Fast forward ten years and we’re in a global pandemic where we have to stay home and practice social distancing to prevent the Covid-19 virus from spreading. Through all of this time has slowed down.

We’ve always done meal planning to make sure we’re eating well and so we don’t have to pay for our lunch during the work week. Now that we have extra time at home we are making use of all the cookbooks we have — and there are a lot of them. Sprucing up the meal plan by making even the simplest meal an occasion or taking ourselves to far off places. Like when we experienced Persia, through our Persiana cookbook.

Or created a feast of Italian antipasti delights accompanied with an Italian orange wine. While taking ourselves on road trip across Italy through the eyes of Renae Smith and Kieren Toscan and their Fiat 500, Gina the Fiat in their book The Great Fiat Hunt.

One thing that I’m realising through all of this is how precious time is. I like blogging and sharing my food adventure and my aim is to be able to do that more often.