See how they rise up!

Yeast bread has always eluded me - the dough fails to rise and it comes out inedibly tough. My lovely friends have on occasion choked down leaden loaves, pretending they're impressed, but you can't pretend an indigestible lump of undercooked dough is really bread.
This time, however, was different. I used fresh yeast, strong flour and a Darina Allen recipe, spent twelve minutes by the clock kneading it and left it to rise in a sunny kitchen, while I went and sorted through the letters I received as a teenager (long story).
After proving, knocking back, proving, putting in oiled tins and allowing the dough to rise for an extra ten minutes, I put them in the magic new oven on the Automatic Bread Setting. Fifty-five minutes later, I had two beautiful golden loaves of bread.
The Man and I have spent the rest of the afternoon sneaking into the kitchen and cutting ourselves slices of delicious soft light bread.
I have cracked the secret of yeast bread. My next plan is to get a system in place where I have pizza dough in the freezer for making after school suppers for the Kitchen Accomplice.

Spaghetti? Squash?

One of the things I love most about food is how magic it is. Most of this is the kind of chemistry that happens when you boil an egg - clear liquid goo goes solid and white. When you add flour to melted butter and it forms a runny sauce, then you add liquid and it solidifies. You put cake batter into the oven and it disappears, leaving a cake in its place.

This is all magic where it feels like you, the cook, are the conjuror. You are the agent of the magic.

But even better is the magic the food has inside itself. One of my favourite examples is rarely available on this side of the Atlantic. It looks like a normal squash - big, round, a bit dull. You cut it in half - same story. Scoop out the seeds and bake or steam the squash as you normally would.

Then - ABRACADABRA and Hey Presto! - use a fork to scrape out the flesh of your boring yellow squash, which turns into noodles. Like so:

This is the spaghetti squash tossed with butter, cheese and basil leaves. No pasta involved.

Even the Man, who had traumatic memories of being forcefed spaghetti squash in a Winnebago overlooking the Grand Canyon age 10 admitted grudgingly that it wasn't as awful as he had expected.

Which is high praise.

I took the leftovers to work as my packed lunch the next day and was delighted to discover that it was genuinely nice, not just exciting because it's so weird.