Is this what they mean by leftovers?

So Tuesday nights are yoga nights, and people come back here after for supper. It's not exactly a show-off dinner party, but I do get to play a little.

Last night I made a Tunisian tagine, which is not in any sense the kind of Moroccan stew you're thinking of. In Tunisia it's all it's all about baking meats with eggs and cheese into a kind of frittata - sometimes, as last night, wrapped in filo pastry to make a crunchy cake of it.

Cue the expected anxiety, as of course it didn't cook in the time or at the temperature cited (why do published, presumably tested books get these things sometimes so very wrong?). Eventually, though, it did; and was yummy, and possibly the best of the season so far. And there's nothing left over, no leftovers.

Except that I now have mint and cilantro in my fridge, needing using: and any man in possession of mint and cilantro must be in want of a curry, say I. Mutton for preference, but I haven't sourced a supplier yet, so I'm hopefully shopping for goat.

The novelist's luncheon:

Curried butternut-and-apple soup, with bacon croutons and bread croutons fried in the bacon grease and apple croutons fried in butter. Oh, and a swirl of cream. He's a self-indulgent brute, this novelist.

What was your lunch?

Well, I guess that's a modus operandi

Grr. This was going to be a cheerful post all about how I seem to have taken to following a recipe until it annoys me (by listing an ingredient, say, and not telling you what to do with it; or giving instructions that include ingredients not listed; or using one ingredient twice, as in this case, or...) and then going wildly off-piste and just doing my own thing regardless. As in this case, where I followed a recipe for lamb curry quite closely (except for using goat, as is traditional) until it expected me to use the same turmeric in two entirely different ways; so then I slammed a bunch of coriander stems and a lot of mint into the blender with some water, whizzed it up and sloshed that in and now I have a green goat curry much at variance with any recipe ever.

And I was going to post about that, and enjoy it - until I overcooked the rice. Again. For the umpteenth time since I came to America.

Thing is, I used to have a kitchen timer that I loved. It would time four different dishes at once, and tell me the time too. And it stuck to the fridge door, but when I was cooking rice I carried it everywhere with me because I knew I had this tendency to forget; and so that was my modus operandi, and it worked grandly. And I reminded myself a thousand times to bring the timer with me, and - well, if I did, I don't know where I put it. It might be somewhere in my shipping, but I doubt it; more likely it's still stuck to the fridge door. Eheu!

Tomorrow, I swear, I'm going to buy another one. Even if that means the first will instantly turn up. Then I'll have two, and I can double-team myself.

'Scuse me now, I need to go and glower at the second round of rice...