A Slow Cooker Salon

If I could sing or didn’t hate The Sound of Music so much I’ve never managed more than 23 minutes of it in one dose, I’d be tempted to give you an early 2015 burst of some of my favourite things but instead I’ve decided to make a New Year’s Resolution that includes them.

I spent New Year with one of my favourite people. We lazed on the sofa drinking tea and watching Graham Norton in the run up to midnight and talked about our achievements and aspirations of the past and future for hours afterwards. Next day we ate fennel roasted pork belly and drank Prosecco to whet the appetites of the new year even though I burned the potatoes that were to replace the traditional lentils I’d run out of.

In one of our many conversations, she mentioned this wonderful piece on Serious Eats about Friday Night Meatballs and all that sharing food with people you’ve welcomed into your house entails. I thought it was a charming idea but didn’t get round to reading the article until a few days later and seeing all that it had to say beyond the simple power of meatballs.

For a long time because of both physical and mental health problems, I’ve felt like I’ve been waiting for my life start again, as if there would be a magical arbitrary tipping point when I could do things again. I’m not quite sure if I was expecting an actual Fairy Godmother to wave a wand or putting my faith in something else, but reading about Friday Night Meatballs I realised something striking: if I want there to be a moment like that in my life, no one else is going to produce it. I have to do it myself.

And so I decided to do one of my least favourite things in order to be able to do some of my most favourite things. I’d take the risk (eek) of hosting an open house Slow Cooker Salon so that I could meet people and feed those people the food I cooked. Spontaneity scares me so I’m going to set a few rules and see how it goes.

On the last Sunday of the month, I’m going to cook something simple and easy to eat in my slow cooker and I’m going to open an invitation to eat that dish in my flat to up to 10 people. They can be people I know offline, online, via Twitter, friends of friends, who knows. Obviously I’m not going to put my address online and say come on over, so people will need to email me to say they’d like to come and I’ll give them details and directions.

I’m going to start with meatballs in honour of the the idea that inspired this. I’m aware of people having dietary requirements so if anyone who is coming is veggie or gluten free or whatever, let me know and I can tweak things to accommodate them. On other occasions I’ll be keen to cook things that I can’t tweak to suit everyone but I’ll give lots of info in advance so people can decide if it suits them to come to that lunch.

And of course, if you’d really like to come but aren’t sure if you can eat what I’m making, feel free to bring something with you. In fact, anyone who fancies bringing something should. A gathering of people can be an excellent chance to finally bake or cook that creation that makes 12 portions and try it out on a different audience to usual. Or if your love of food extends to eating it, not making it, then bring some wine or buy something someone else has made. There will be no standing on ceremony here.

In fact, there were will be a lot of sitting on mismatching chairs (including the garden ones brought inside) and eating with uncoordinated cutlery and plates. There will probably even be plastic glasses. My entertaining is usually one or two people for a meal or a floor picnic of an afternoon tea so expect something that’s an unholy alliance of both in my living room. For this reason, it will have to be child free. My house is definitely not kid proofed or big enough to cope with small people alongside big people with big appetites. It’ll be a late lunch from about 2pm to allow for my faffing and your travelling.

It won’t be fancy, but it will be fun (and if it isn’t, we’ll simply never speak of this idea again, pretend it didn’t happen and carry on as normal…) So if you feel like trying something new to with food or making friends this year, contact me on the form below, and hopefully see you on January 25th!