It's Thursday, already - I started the week feeling as though I had been put a day back, as though an eighth day had been added to the week, to the working week. With Friday looming, I almost feel I have won back the day I lost to daylight saving. Jonathan and Tara came over for dinner last night - it wasn't planned so nothing lavish ended up on the table. In my retirement from the crazy world that is cheffing, and combined with being a good batchelor - I have perfected the 'one-pot-wonder'. One-pot-wonder is comprised of the most reliable base, it's a chunky tomato/chilli number with napoli sausages, potatoes and chickpeas. Last night I substituted the Napoli sausages for chicken livers. A nice big bowl of one-pot-wonder and some crispy ciabatta to soak up the juices cannot be easily beaten in the comfort food department.

A gorging of truffles and the finest chocolates known to man followed. Phil brough back the most amazing chocolates from Belgium. I love delicious things!

It's strange to think that people eat purely for fuel - the shit some, most people eat is distressing. I am not necessarily talking about rubbish or junk food - I have a sister who more or less survives on pasta rice and cucumber. This could easily be mistaken for 'clean', 'simple' food - it's neither, it is bland schluck. Having grown up in South Africa, where there is no food culture at all (there is, since we have all the Greeks, Portuguese and Italians), I feel cheated - there was until recently a serious lack in the ingredients market. I don't think many South Africans know what a shallot is, or have any idea of seasonal ingredients, or fresh ingredients. Even on the coast, where South Africa's oceans are being pillaged of all fish for markets other than South Africa's, one would expect a fresh fish culture, still to this day it is substandard, underdeveloped and just as good as non-existent. For most South Africans, the closest they get to eating fish, is in the form of a fish finger which consists of nothing more than fish bone-meal and the rest of the shit that got scraped off the floor of the monger's.