Twenty Years

I'm starting this blog today for a special reason. Twenty years. Two perfectly ordinary words on the page or the screen, but when I said them out loud at 6.30 this morning it sounded like an awfully long time! Today it is exactly twenty years since Ed and I began our life together. Never was there a more convincing illustration of the adage that "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach". We were students at business school, and Ed was making regular visits to his mother to collect home-cooked meals to keep him going during the week. Ripe for the picking, it seemed to me.
He is a very choosy eater. Some people would consider that a criticism, but for me it is only right to be particular about what we eat, and we'd both rather go hungry (at least for a few hours) than eat something poor quality or unappealing. Easy to say that in 21st century Europe, of course, with food plentiful and affordable every day of the year, but surely that is all the more reason to make the effort to nourish ourselves well and to profit from one of life's greatest pleasures?

Carnivorous Male

Why meatballs? Well, as you will see if you persevere with this blog, as our menus have evolved over those twenty years, meatballs have come to occupy an increasingly important place in the repertoire. Found in almost all of the world's great cooking traditions (although curiously absent in French cuisine), made from a variety of different meats, sometimes singly, sometimes mixed together, they have proved to be an inexhaustible (so far) source of innovative, tasty, kitchen suppers - and indeed have been known to grace the table for dinner parties and special occasions.