As usual at this time of year, spent in a friend's cottage in the North York Moors. Almost didn't make it along the track on Friday after torrential rain. After that fine walking in forest and over the largest expanse of heather moorland in the world - all bright purple and with a glorious sweet scent. Cold and windy, mind you.
[INJ] Excellent. A week on Sat, I'm off to Wensleydale, to play in the Hardraw Scaur Brass Band Contest. Also spending a week in Swaledale for half-term. Can't wait to get back up to North Yorkshire :-)
Dutch cheese - always highly spoken of, but as far as I can make out (and I may have said this before elsewhere), there are only three varieties. However you can have them at any age you like. But until they get a couple of years old, there's no real taste, and no texture. And you can't grate it - ever. I think it's a bit arse-about-elbow to design the cheese to suit the cheese slicer, isn't it? And the cheese slicer/cheese scraper/cheese plane only works for about 40% of the truckle - it doesn't work once to get towards the edges of the cheese. Surprisingly inefficient for the Dutch. Rant over. Now bring me some proper cheese, please.