Green slime in a pan – it always seems to look less pleasant when photographed in a pan

This is the first post of the morning, the second one being here.

Today we have naming of soups. Yesterday we had tomato, a staple of the soup world and easily produced from a can of tomatoes. Tomorrow we will have mixed vegetable, for those are the ingredients we have. But today it was blue cheese and broccoli. I would like sweet potato and chilli, but that requires ingredients which in this case I do not have.

Tomorrow we will also have poetry, because I can feel some coming on. It is the end of the month and I really need to send some out if I am to maintain my momentum. I have always admired Henry Reed’s Naming of Parts, but if you are familiar with the poem you will probably already have guessed that.

But back to today. I had the remains of the chopped onion from last night and a head of broccoli that was still good but had spent a week in the fridge. I had bought it out of habit but not used it, and an unused head of broccoli is a problem waiting to happen once it gets to the second week. That was all I needed. I didn’t add garlic today, as I try to avoid monotony, but I did use an organic stock cube. I also had a nice piece of Shropshire Blue in the fridge.

Still looks a bit primaeval, but it’s getting better

I bought it to keep for Christmas, but Julia, in an uncontrolled burst of internet shopping, bought a huge piece of Stilton from Cropwell Bishop. As she also bought a gift pack for Number One son and partner, I won’t be able to give any away, so it looks like we are well provisioned for Christmas, and it seemed sensible to start on the Shropshire Blue now.

Shropshire Blue is a slightly puzzling cheese as it probably doesn’t come from Shropshire, and much of it is produced by local dairies that also produce Stilton. It also seems to come from a recipe developed in the 1970s. For many years I assumed it was an old recipe from Shropshire. In fact it is probably best described as Stilton Cheese with annatto dye added. The use of annatto to dye cheese is an old practice, and I once had a stone glazed bottle which had contained it, though I’m not good at dating such things.

With cheese

So, to recap, Shropshire Blue is a cheese that is mainly made in the counties of Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire. They also make Stilton, a cheese named after the village of Stilton, which is in Cambridgeshire, and only about ten miles away from where I sit. You can’t make Stilton cheese in Stilton because the name has a protected status and it can’t be made outside Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, though when milk supplies are tight the makers are allowed to source milk from outside the area, including Cambridgeshire.

It has always struck me as slightly hypocritical  that the dairies can protect themselves from competition, but use outside sources when it suits. And that you can produce Shropshire Blue in the “Stilton” area, but you can’t produce Stilton in Shropshire.

I’m sure life used to be simpler.

With cheese and sandwiches