Changing tastes

Salmon today. I’m looking forward to having some nice simple salmon, probably en papillotte. We’re having some spicy patatas bravas with tomato sauce with the salmon. I’m also thinking of finishing off a tin of sweetcorn to complete the meal.

It struck me yesterday as I opened the tin of sweetcorn how much our tastes have changed. I used to regularly, most weeks, serve sweetcorn but these days it’s not often, maybe a tin a year. We’ve gone off them, finding them too sweet & rather tough skinned.

It’s strange because only last week I had a similar thought as I opened a tin of butter beans. Just the words “butter beans” conjures up in my mind the large tough unpleasant beans we had so often in school dinners. A while back we used to have a friend (now dead) who enthused about butter beans but I could never understand it. This time we thoroughly enjoyed them, even putting some cold, but cooked, in a salad for a bit of variation. It just goes to show how tastes change.

Food is on my mind at the moment, partly because we did the food shop yesterday, partly because I’ve just peeled the potatoes for this evening & partly because we picked the apples from our tree yesterday. This year is the first year we’ve had a good crop since the tree was planted in the garden makeover in 2014. I’m not quite sure whether that is to do with the immaturity of the tree before, the amount of compost the gardener put around it this spring or just the weather this year. We seem to have had a year of alternating rain & sun, just right for all the plants to flourish even if we humans didn’t relish it. 

We’ve even had so many apples we’ve passed some on to our neighbour. Braeburns are his favourite apples & that is what we’re growing. It seems a small thing to do when he helped so much when the Fox was ill earlier this year. He’s even volunteered to take me into chemo if the Fox is unable to some time. I don’t expect I will need to call on his assistance but it’s nice to know the offer is there.