Glasgow Lasagne

a New Year's freebie to all you jaded metropolitan foodies out there....'glasgow lasagne', eaten once only in 1995, with much delight, cooked by my mate from partick (a great painter/artist called iain thompson) on a 3 day incursion into sassenach territory - to his pleasant surprise, skagen court/school hill area of bolton was a familiar and welcoming milieu. all washed down with simultaneous cans of irn bru and spesh, a maverick two-drink gambit which i thought showed commitment and a certain celtic panache. it's a £7 din-dins for two, and a cultural hyperlink into the bargain.

method:
in a pyrex dish (almost free of gloss paint) place layers of toasted sliced bread (buttered) covered with a layer of cold baked beans, cover with grated cheese (cheddar). then another layer of toast (also buttered), more beans, more grated cheese. repeat one more time for a proper triple decker flat-warmer. Cook in oven till melty and bubbly. apply brown sauce. eat. then oot to 'the borough' for lots of holts and pool/darts discussions of pressing matters of the day with assorted ne'er-do-wells, shirkers and claimants.

posh versions may be available and 'better' in some specific ways but...would not be the same, on a metaphysical level. food memories - only alzheimers can take them away...

HNY and may the road rise to meet you

x

home sweet home and all that...

rivington pike in winter - from great hill/white coppice (west pennines)

i don't normally get home-sick and i didn't take this picture. i was looking on the web to find some pics to show my kids - i used to play out on the moors and in the woods there for hours, with my sister and mates, from being about 7 or 8. long free summers where you made stuff up and explored in little gangs on missions. before everyone got the paranoia. then when i was about 15 or 16, with a couple of mates we'd go and sleep out all night - winter and summer - and get drunk on anything we could get served. from the pike you can see the curve of the irish sea, blackpool tower, snowdonia and the long, long line of the pennines and about four cities and fifteen towns, ragged concrete pools on the plain, as organised as vomit. the ones where the industrial revolution, factories, computers, L.S. Lowry, Les Dawson, Joy Division, A Taste Of Honey, John Cooper Clarke, Hobson's Choice, Happy Mondays, split atoms and Hard Times were born. there's a cheap jewel sea at night, stirred by wind-tears from the westerlies that make you think you're going to fall.