The Mystery of the Missing Cook Book

Well, James has just solved a mystery that has been bamboozling me for nearly a week. He asked me for my Gammon in Red Wine recipe, one of the Anderson family favourites for New Year’s dinner. I was given this recipe many years ago by Grandma, who had found it on a recipe card in the Danish Food Centre back in the 1970s. The Danish Food Centre used to be a very trendy eating establishment in St Vincent Street, very modern and unusual in the days when most Glasgow restaurants were very traditional Scottish, or sometimes traditional Italian. There were Indian restaurants too, but James’ and my parents would never have tried anything so spicy, they preferred the relative familiarity of Chinese food. So the Danish Food Centre was a bit different, with open sandwiches and fresh, tasty ingredients. It’s long gone, I’m sad to say, I think it must have closed by the end of the 1980s.
However the tasty Gammon in Red Wine recipe lived on in Casa Anderson. I carefully copied the recipe into a little floral recipe book that I bought when I got married. This was in the days when, if I cooked something delicious, James would be so delighted that he would take a photo of it!
However, when I looked for it this week I couldn’t find it at all. I grew increasingly perturbed, because it had many of my favourite recipes in it, some given to me from friends and family so not easily replaceable. James and I hunted high and low with no luck.
Until this evening that is. James took a look inside a folder where I keep other recipes, just in case I had inadvertently tucked the recipe book inside it. And he immediately noticed a page from the recipe book, carefully cut out and filed in the folder.  Further investigation produced the rest of the pages, including our beloved gammon recipe. Only at this point did I remember that some time in the past few years I decided to cut out the pages and discard the book, in order to put all of my recipes together in the folder. Although I was a bit annoyed with myself for forgetting that the recipe book itself no longer exists, I was delighted that all my recipes are safe.
In other news we went to Oran Mor this afternoon where we saw the fabulous “Doris, Dolly and the Dressing Room Divas” with Steven and Hilary.  Originally a hit at the Edinburgh fringe festival in 2016, this upbeat and fun trip into nostalgia was perfect for lovers of musicals like me and Hilary. I have a feeling that James and Steven were somewhat less entertained. Afterwards we wandered along Byres Road and had coffee and a chat in Nardini’s.