jcalverttoulmin
From: Sheffieldabout me
Hi, my name is Jude Calvert-Toulmin and I'm passionate about cooking, which is why I'm here. I'm a mother of three and a grandmother from Sheffield, England. I've been a photo-journalist for the music press and the climbing press in the past and have been running a popular art and music blog for the last three years. I'm an author of literary fiction now, and my first two novels are due for publication in 2009. I started teaching myself to cook in 1972 and have been learning ever since. My favourite types of cookery are Thai, Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, French, Spanish and Italian. I'm not too keen on treaditional British food! I've been following Jamie on the tele since he was just a lad in The Naked Chef, swinging down that stair rail in proper Parkour stylee and whizzing around Berwick St on his bike. He has been and continues to be a huge inspiration to me and my family. Other chefs I admire are Delia Smith, who is basically Queen Delia in my eyes, and the Australian chef Bill Granger.
Cumberland Sausages on the Barbie
I've been talking about making meals last, and food shopping on a budget, on this thread which is Jamie's hot topic this week.
Making your own sausages is a great way to not only save money, but also to experiment with different ingredients. So far only Brian has had his mitts on our Northern Tools sausage machine, but I'm determined to have a go soon. I want to make some Transylvannian Lemon sausages from a recipe for Lemon Sausages I've found in The Savoury Sausage by Linda Merinoff, which is a classic book on sausage making by an author who travelled the world in her quest to source authentic regional sausage recipes. Having spent much of the 1980's in the south of Spain with my Spanish mates, I adore Andalusian cooking, and also want to make some chorizo, which is particularly fine in Andalusia.
The photo above is of Brian collapsed after 2 day's digging and dry stone walling in our garden, which he has spent the last four years landscaping on the fantabulous budget of £00,000. All the materials he has used are found or recycled. The only exception is the pond liner and pond pump which we bought this year, and even they were bought off Ebay at a fraction of the cost of ones in retail outlets, and only once we'd sold stuff we didn't need round the house on Ebay to pay for it.
On the occasion of this photo, I defrosted some of Brian's sausages and barbequed them on the chimenea. I don't think there was any question that Brian was going to do anything other than flop on the Chesterfield! And for the first time, Jasper made the fire by himself. Brian loves Jamie's wood oven, by the way, and I've recently seen wood oven plans scattered around the house. Brian says he's going to build one in The Stone Staith, which is one of the "rooms" in our garden; a stone store, basically.
You can see loads of photos of Brian landscaping our garden on a zero budget in my latest article, The Garden With Seven Rooms, on my personal blog. My part in the landscaping won't come until I mosaic the fountain Brian's going to build, but Jasper has helped build the mud walls! (This particular article is worksafe by the way, 
)
Once I fine tune my own sausage recipe, I'll blog about it on here...
Introduction
Before I start blogging about culinary matters I'll introduce you to my family, because some of them will feature in future blog entries!
1. This is Brian. He's a Health and Safety Advisor (although I prefer the concept of being a facilitator as his job is to help people, not prevent them from doing things!) and also the film programmer for ShAFF, Sheffield Adventure Film Festival, so if you're a skater, parkourer, climber, mtbker, surfer, whatever adventure sport really, and you're passionate about making films of your sport, then get in touch with him!
Brian's culinary credentials: Brian is also a gardener and garden landscaper in his spare time, and his areas of cooking experience are in wine-making, distilling, allotments, vegetable growing and preserving. I'll be blogging about his Spring 2008 pickled onion collection soon.
2. This is me with my son Jasper Jed who is 12.
Jasper's culinary credentials:
Jasper - "Mum, is it OK if I make some pancakes. It's alright if you're busy, I can get all the ingredients out and do it myself."
Me - "Does that include clearing up afterwards, son?"
Jasper - "No you can do that bit."
He has a lot to learn but he's passionate, and he's a natural!
You can see Jasper making pancakes in his short tribute to Jamie at Home, which he's called Jasper at Home on YouTube, here.
3. This is my daughter Hollie who's 19, and a mum to Reese.
Hollie's culinary credentials:
Hollie: "Can you make me some more toast, Mum?"
4. This is my daughter Jodie who's 16.
Jodie's culinary credentials:
Jodie: "Muz, me and my mates want that Chicken Korma you do. And that Dolchy Der Whatever ice cream for afters please, the one that tastes like toffee. Soon as poss coz we're going out. Thanks love you!"
5. This is my grandson Reese, who's nearly 2 now.
Reese's culinary credentials:
Reese: "Yum!"
I'll be back with another post soon and thank you for having me on here.
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