A good bolognese starts with a decent Sunday. You wake up slightly later than intended. After an early Saturday night provoked by a physically and mentally challenging week involving elongated exposure to only just past sub temperatures. This is a frosty Sunday morning.
The fire is cranking. Sun is pouring in. You start with a warm lemon water. Pint size. Pour it down in one go as good as you can get it. Wrap up warm. Head to the cow shed. The sun is in your eyes. Finish off milking out a cow. Refresh the calf bed with clean dry wood shavings. RNZ concert in the full morning sun in the milking shed. The calf is not even a week old.
Spend the next few hours wheelbarrowing things around, while your over involved neighbour chews your ear about his ex and a random selection of internet conspiracy theories dressed up as health and fitness advice. Send him home for lunch and down some hot english breakfast tea and sliced apple with kikorangi blue. Add some crumpets made from wholemeal sourdough starter discard with maple syrup and lime juice.
As soon as the neighbour shows back up head up the hill and start clearing gorse. Have a blaze, take a load off. Really get stuck in. A bit carried away even. Clear more gorse than you intended. Send the neighbour home.
Get the mince out. Collect a generous bouquet of herbs. Including what's left of the late basil in the greenhouse. A few peppers, some carrots. A miscellaneous selection of brassica leaves. Do the dishes. Do a quick vacuum just until the battery of the dyson craps out. The fire is going. Assemble your sauce in a heavy lidded pan. Get it nice and hot and place it on top of the fireplace and head back outside.
Haul water to all animals in your care living outside of the jurisdictions of your troughed enclosures. Just imagine you were carrying dumbbells. Restock the firewood stack by your house. Feed out. Get everything ready for the afternoon milking.
Cherish the relief in your bones as they hit the warm house after a cold afternoon milking and tidying up. Place the bolognese on the stove and cook without the lid. Stretch your limbs while you wait for the pasta to cook. Notice how you feel. Grate slightly too much cheese you your bowl and eat while streaming something entirely pointless like Lena Dunham's new show.
To finish: Stay away from Queenstown. They'd drink 1080 if the google AI summary listed it as an ingredient for an espresso martini.
