Blood and battlefields

Today on my way to work I stopped at the little park next to the river, where some of the orange poppies were out. I love those orange poppies. Wild field poppies, they're called, and Cheryl once told me they grow on battlefields because they seed on turned soil.

I know Amagasaki was bombed extensively during WWII. An old guy I met one time at this same park told me all about it, telling me that the school right behind the park was his old school, and it was closed for the duration, and the roads were full of bomb craters and everything was burned and blackened. But the bombing was 60 years ago, so I don't know if that counts.


In any case, the poppies are all over the place, and they are lovely.

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On Saturday evening I had lamb for dinner. It is unusual for a local supermarket to sell lamb, so when I found it I snapped it up.

The problem was what to do with it. As I've mentioned before I am not a very good cook. However, we have a rosemary bush in the garden (it grows and grows, despite not being cared for at all), and I decided to have lamb with rosemary. Then I thought no, with ginger would be nice, and then I couldn't decide, rosemary or ginger? So I had it with both. I made a soy sauce marinade with rosemary and ginger, then grilled the lamb. It was unexpectedly good. I didn't really know whether ginger and rosemary would work together, but they did.

Tonight I had the rest of the lamb. In fact I decided to have a meal of some favourite things, whether they went together or not.

When I took the big knife from the draining board I sliced my finger, and while it was not a bad or even painful cut, it bled profusely, and I did most of the preparation with a bleeding finger. I made a salad from baby leaf, mashed avocado on toast with salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon (ouch), steamed broccoli, and grilled green pepper and tomato with the lamb.

This time I decided not to bother with the ginger (mostly because I couldn't be bothered grating it), and instead marinated the lamb in soy sauce with rosemary, a dash of red wine and a few drops of human blood.

I didn't really expect it to taste very good - was the red wine a mistake? - but it did. I must remember how I did it, for next time.