try again?

I cooked lamb shanks yesterday. It took longer than I thought. They were very good and the best part is—no lefotvers!

This building I am locked in has become a tiny village dependent on barter and gossip for survival. “Love they neighbour as thyself” as Someone once said—even the ones you don’t like. it’s not that hard to avoid them; this building is like a rabbit warren. It takes months to find your way with all the corridors and elevators and entrances and exits. Visitors need directions or a guide. You enter on the sixth floor and it’s only two floors up to my level but it’s at the back so it’s seven down to One and one more down to Terrace—on my side. The elevator(s) on the opposite wing only go to One and then you have to use stairs to get down to the Pool (Terrace). I think.

Hard on dogs, but not as. They have a better sense of direction than I have.

This is about lamb shanks.

I make soup—as most of you know—every week in the winter because I have a balcony. It’s my surrogate freezer where I can store a plethora of soup until I eat it or give it away. Some of my soups are so good I don’t want t to share them, but I do, though not as much. There might be a thaw.

I also have to remember who likes what or is allergic, or whatever. I do have one dear neighbour who doesn’t like mushrooms and who is a very good cook and makes me feel she is doing me a favour if she accepts my offering. You see, I have to be careful. I love split pea soup and I make it well, so I always give some to my friend because she likes split pea soup and one bag of split peas makes a LOT of soup. I’m getting to the lamb shanks.

Last week when I took split pea soup to my neighbour she gave some some—lamb shanks, that is. I mentioned that she is a very good cook She’d had family visiting and she had cooked lamb shanks as a special treat they were all fond of. She had two uncooked shanks left and she didn’t feel like cooking them, so she gave them to me when I gave her my soup. (One good tureen deserves another? Weak pun.) I don’t think I have ever cooked lamb shanks. It’s not that they’re that expensive—a very cheap cut, in fact—but they require a lot of prep time, and time was what I didn’t have a lot of, in my Other LIfe.

I still needed some time, working as you know on that new Foreword to an old book. I gave myself a hard deadline and finished two days ago, in time to cook lamb shanks for a neighbour qualified to join me, difficult in a lockdown situation.She had to be someone who lived in the building, had all her vaccinations and boosters, and liked lamb shanks.

I had kept Googlilng lamb shank recipes, easier to reach than my cookbooks on the top shelf in the kitchen, so I was ready. The day after I finished my Foreword I cooked them, grateful for the respite for my eyes. They were delicious, we had a nice evening and I went to bed early because I was tired.

Now, at last, I’m ready to write a blog.

Tomorrow?