Meat and two veg: the return

 I officially feel like cooking again. Weekend dinners have been properly from-scratch venison burgers with sweetcorn, courgettes, fried potatoes and home-made quick chutney. That is *not* something I do in high summer. Good, though. Utterly repellent in the photos, but I assure you it's tasty. 

I don't really do proper preserving, jams and chutneys for the long term, but I do like an immediate use chutney, that'll keep a week or two in the fridge. This one was based on plums, as I got some supermarket ones that weren't instantly ripe, while having an infinite number of market ones that all want eating right now. Boiled up with sugar and vinegar (cider in this case, it being the closest cheap one to the front of the cupboard, plus a splash of balsamic but not so much the whole thing turned dark brown). And spices, fairly randomly, including allspice, cloves, star anise and cardamom, and a great big splash of year before last's damson gin. Some walnuts added after boiling. Plus some of the damsons from last year, soaked in the boiling chutney for a bit, though I fished them out before serving - I'm not sure what state a damson is in after a year in gin, but I don't really want to chew on them and their stones. (I've decided despite having all these leftovers that I am doing damson gin this year too. Maybe also some blackberry [and elder?] whisky. Maaaaaaybe some fig leaf wine. Willing to hear other suggestions, and will keep you up to date.)

 The chutney is hideous, as I say. But it's sharp and spicy and sweet/sour underneath, and will go well with cheese once its inital purpose is done. You can never make just two servings of chutney... 

This goes with lovely fresh sweetcorn, diced courgette, briefly pan-fried potatoes... and venison burgers, which are really the main event, but didn't dominate the plate.

I wasn't sure I could get venison mince (had a lamb burger backup plan, yum), but hurrah of course Waitrose has it when you look for it. This is a German recipe, adding diced onion, juniper and marjoram-but-actually-oregano to the mix, plus an egg, which really needed to be about 2/3 of an egg for this much mince, but didn't go too wrong. 

Venison is so lean I don't mind frying burgers made of it, and these were easy - about 5 minutes per side. 

Inelegant plateful, but mighty tasty. It went beautifully with the deep, dark red wine I have open this weekend. For although I'm not denying the possibility of the odd further pink wine evening, basically, this is where we are now. Red wine, venison, corn, spuds, and willingly having more than one gas hob going at once. It's a tasty time of year. It also marks time passing, as if we didn't know. Hey ho.

Buon appetito all. Don't let the apocalypses get you down xx