On a recent visit to the V&A Museum something caught my eye which struck me as quite odd.

I know that some people like to sit and contemplate whilst observing a painting… butt (sic) this is taking it a bit far.. What kind of perverted museum is this? So they’re calling them “stools” now, eh? Thanks, I’ll stand.

Olivia is back in Melbourne for a couple of weeks to catch up with family and friends – but the main motivation for her trip is the wonderful fact that her sister Emma gave birth to a beautiful, baby girl a couple of weeks ago. Yay – I’m an uncle again! Baby’s name is Ella Jade and by all accounts mother and daughter are doing great…

So how am I “batching” it up while Olivia’s away? Wild parties? Drugs? Women? Men? No folks – my secret indulgence was that yesterday I went to Harrods and bought a pheasant. Living on the edge, aren’t I?

There are a few things that keep bringing me back to Harrods (I’ve been there maybe only 4 times). The Christmas decorations department is really stunning. I always thought that Christmas tree balls were incredibly uninteresting. But the range they have at Harrods is nothing short of classy… I wonder what they have in its place for the other six months of the year?

It will come as no great surprise to anyone that my favorite sections at Harrods are the food halls. Like .. wow… Like any decent fresh food market they have sections dedicated to meat, fish, poultry, an awesome deli, fruit and veg.. yeah you get the picture. Within each section they have a surprisingly good range of products ranging from the very affordable to the obscene. The most expensive thing to catch my eye was in the butcher’s section: Wagyu beef at 115 pounds a kilo. That’s like 250 Australian. Like, come on.. The place is great eye candy as there’s a lot of things you can buy without comdemning yourself to poverty and you can just laugh and keep walking with the ridiculous stuff. I’ve only ever been to Harrods on the weekends and the whole place (but especially the food halls) are always packed…

Why did I buy a pheasant? Um, because I could.. I suppose being there reminded me of the story of Charles Neave who asked Harrods to source him a Halal pheasant. They said, “yep, no problems” I can’t remember the price, but it was something ridiculous like the equivalent of 120 Australian dollars. – Quite a lot for a small, gamey variant on chicken. So seeing the pheasants there brought back a few memories and thought I’d give it a go – even if these particular birds were not Halal.

I made it for dinner tonight (roasted it in a glaze made from orange juice, sugar and redcurrant jelly) and I must say, it was delicious. I can’t imagine I’ll be going pheasant crazy and having it all the time, but I was really pleased to have tried my hand at cooking one. I also bought some lovely cheese – one was essentially layers of gorgonzola and mascarpone cheese. The other was a small round of goats cheese with herbs and a layer of olive tapenade in the middle. I bought this second one because it was called “Olivia with herbs”. Mmmm all good.

Yeah, it looks like a small chicken.. but the taste is definitely at the gamey end of chicken.

Also worth a look in at Harrods is the rug section – where for a cool 15grand you can walk out with something you’d have no hesitation in making your guests take their shoes off for…

So yes, this is about as crazy as things have gotten for me while Olivia’s been away. I spent a couple of days in Germany last week, and will do the same this week and the next so I’m quite happy to spend my weekends chilling and cooking.. Sounds like a damn fine idea to me.