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This recipe was a mistake, but it worked out both for savoury and sweet purposes so I thought I would share. I was preparing the ingredients for the onion rings recipe from Ottolenghi's Flavour cookbook, and I failed to read the recipe through before starting to mix things. I was working on the assumption of a batter, but as it turns out the recipe was for egging then flouring the onion rings. As such, being a bit of a numpty, I mixed the wet and dry ingredients together without really paying attention and then realised I had messed up. I set aside the batter I had begun and instead followed the recipe as it was actually written. I detest food waste, so the batter I had begun needed to find a use. The use I found for it was to turn it into pancakes. These I both cooked normally, and a few I deep fried (as I already had a pan of oil going), which had very interesting results. They got puffy and light and cooked faster. As a pancake variation they were tasty and I will revisit them in future. Being a mistake doesn't make them any less worthy of sharing! Ingredients: 1 c whey (or buttermilk) 2 1/2 tbsp white wine vinegar 1/2 tsp turmeric 1 1/3 c flour 2 1/2 tsp nigella seeds 2 tsp lime zest 2 tsp baking powder 2 eggs (or more accurately, 1 egg and 1 egg white as I used a yolk to make mayo) 1 tbsp butter 1) Mix the dry ingredients well with a fork. Gradually beat in the wet ingredients to form a thick-ish batter. 2) Heat a griddle or frying pan and butter. Drop batter onto the pan in two tablespoon dollops. Allow to cook at medium heat on the first side until little bubbles come to the surface and the pancake lifts away from the pan easily, then flip and cook for another minute. 3) Alternatively, if you want to deep fry them, make sure the oil in your pan is shimmering and hot. Drop the batter in in dollops and wait until they turn golden brown, turning once mid-way through. These came out really well, especially for a mistake! It had never occurred to me to put nigella seeds and turmeric in pancakes before, but they worked both with the onion rings and mayo and baked veg that I was originally making that night, and also for breakfast with butter and jam. definitely a win! Let me know what you think if you try them! When I made these (and perhaps a small amount of distraction from the cooking to focus on my book instead explains the mistake that led to their creation) I was listening to The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse. I found it absolutely absorbing. Told as a biography of a brilliant man, set in an undefined future, it presents a beautiful picture of the society the narrative is set in, as well as pointing out its cracks... and those of our society too. I absolutely loved this book! My favourite by Hesse so far, but then I haven't yet read Narcissus and Goldmund,

In the new cookbook I got for Christmas, Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat, there is a double page of 10 vegetable soup recommendations with topping suggestions, but no recipes (or I'm simply blind and missed them). One of the suggestions was Aubergine Soup with Harissa. As Aubergines were on sale and we seemed to have an endless supply of them, and because it sounded good, I decided to try it. Somewhere along the way I wasn't sure I would be able to get what I needed for the Harissa though and noticed that I had a jar of frozen nettles, so I thought of trying to make a spicy nettle sauce to top the soup. I did end up finding what I needed for the Harissa in the end, but still added the nettles. And then I remembered that I had Queso Blanco left over from my cheese making efforts. I decided I would top the soup with some of this too, and at the last minute added some of this to the harissa too - although at this point I don't think it can any longer be called harissa, but I don't know what else to call it. The soup came out beautifully with a deep, rich flavour, offset but a dash of lemon and the not-too-spicy Nettle Harissa. I found that the queso blanco certainly added something to the soup, but it would have worked well without for anyone wanting to make it vegan or keto friendly. Ingredients: For the soup: 4 aubergines 1 tbsp olive oil 1 onion, chopped 1/2 head garlic, minced 2 - 3 c vegetable stock 1 tsp sumac Juice of 1 lemon Salt and pepper to taste Queso Blanco (or other fresh cheese) to serve For the Harissa: 3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped 3 dried chilis, chopped 3 - 4 sundried tomatoes 2 tsp cumin seeds 2 tsp coriander seeds 3 - 4 tbsp olive oil 3 - 4 tbsp nettles (mine were briefly steamed then frozen) 1 tbsp queso blanco juice of 1 lemon 1) Roast the aubergines in the oven under the broil setting at 200°C, turning regularly, until they are soft on the inside and browning on the outside (you could even let them get some char marks) - about 45 minutes to an hour. Cool and then chop. 2) Heat oil in a heavy bottomed soup pot. Sauté onions and garlic until soft and translucent. 3) Add the aubergine and the remaining soup ingredients except the cheese and cook for about 10 minutes. Blitz until smooth and set aside. 4) In a small frying pan, dry roast the cumin and coriander seeds until the first few begin to pop. Stir the pan around a few times to ensure even roasting. Remove from the heat. 5) In a blender, combine all the ingredients except the nettles and the queso blanco. Taste test, then add the nettles and blend again. Taste test, then add the cheese. 6) To serve, ladle soup into bowls. place dollops of the queso blanco around the perimeter of the soup then place briefly in a warm oven (100°C roughly) for a few minutes to encourage the cheese to melt a little. Remove and place a dollop of the harissa in the centre of the bowl. I loved this and will certainly be coming back to it! Hubby and Little Bit liked it too. Little Bit is getting better at using a spoon, but after a few spoonfuls he gave up and started stuffing soup into his mouth by the fistful. Not a bad endorsement! On a different note, I noticed recently that all of my cooking happens either while wrangling Little Bit, or while listening to and Audiobook. When linking the Broccoli and Cheese Scone recipe to the post about making mascarpone to pair with sweet scones, I suddenly had a vivid image in my head of a sedan chair being carried through rice paddies. It took me a second to place it, but then I realised that it was from WS Maugham's The Painted Veil which I had been listening to when I made the scones. After realising this, I scrolled back through older posts and for a fair number of the recipes I could effortlessly conjure up which part of which book I was listening to while making that recipe. This being the case, I have decided to start including a note on what I was listening to at the time on some posts. While making this soup, I was listening to an early part of The Bridge of Sighs by Olen Steinhauer. It is a gritty muder/spy mystery taking place in the late '40s in Eastern Europe. While playing around with my nettles and aubergines, our young beleaguered inspector is following clues in a prominent murder case which he realises he has been given to fail... It's been a while since my last crime book and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

I have decided to add something a little different to my posts from now on as an addendum, combining my two great loves of cooking (and eating) and reading. I noticed recently that all of my cooking happens either while wrangling Little Bit, or while listening to an Audiobook. When linking the Broccoli and Cheese Scone recipe to the post about making mascarpone to pair with sweet scones, I suddenly had a vivid image in my head of a sedan chair being carried through rice paddies. It took me a second to place it, but then I realised that it was from WS Maugham's The Painted Veil which I had been listening to when I made the scones. After realising this, I scrolled back through older posts and for a fair number of the recipes I could effortlessly conjure up which part of which book I was listening to while making that recipe. This being the case, I have decided to start including a note on what I was listening to at the time on some posts. Going forward, I will simply include a note on the books on the recipe I am typing up, either at the top or the bottom. For older posts though where something in particular stands out, I am going to go back and add a note to recipes. Feel free to go take a look! I will tag recipes with a book note with the label "book" so you can search for them, otherwise, just scroll! Any book recommendations or comments are welcome! I will also add an Amazon.co.uk link to the books so you can read them for yourself if you want! These are affiliate links, but you pay no extra for the books. I may (still not entirely sure how this works) just get a commission on the book.

I had heard of but never had Jerusalem artichokes (and had never even heard the French name for them, topinambours) until very recently when one of my neighbours gave me some. One of his colleagues had planted them and then had more than he knew what to do with. Historically, they were the survival food of France during rationing during WWII. Reading up on it, it turns out that it is the tuber of a relative of the sunflower and not related to artichokes at all. They are also not from Jerusalem but originally introduced to the Old World from the New in the 17th Century. The English name comes from a corruption of the Italian sunflower, "girasole". The French name, also a little strange, comes from the name of a Brazilian tribe who were part of an exposition in France at the same time as the introduction of the vegetable. They were also called "poires de terre", that is earth pears, in French early on, interesting as potatoes are earth apples. To look at they resemble ginger, and the bag I got of them was covered, unsurprisingly, in dirt. They are starchy and quite bland, but with an interesting tingle to their taste. We tried experimenting with them. This recipe, as conceived by Hubby and I together and carried out by Hubby, worked very well and was very tasty. The soup we made with the rest of them, a cream of Topinambours soup, needs a little work. It was good but... Ingredients: 4 Jerusalem artichokes, sliced 6-8 potatoes, sliced 1 onion, sliced 1 leek, sliced 1 c milk 1 c cream 2 - 3 tbsp breadcrumbs 100g cheese, grated (we used L'Etivaz) 2 tbsp chives Salt and pepper 1) Combine all veggie ingredients and chives with salt and pepper to taste, roughly layered in an oven proof dish. Pour the milk and cream over them to about the midline of the dish. Place on the hob and simmer gently for 10-15 minutes until the veg is beginning to cook. 2) Sprinkle cheese and breadcrumbs over the top, and grind extra pepper over it all. Bake eat 180°C for 20-25 minutes until golden brown. This was very tasty and it would be worth getting Jerusalem artichokes again if only for this! I need to work on the soup recipe a little, and also want to explore the Topinambours properties and possibilities further. If anyone has suggestions, let me know! It was sweet and creamy and savoury and rich all at once, with just that little extra tingle which sets aside the Jerusalem artichoke from the potato. A good comfort food, and a very nice variant on a regular gratin.

This is a very basic element in the pantry, and one which I have always taken for granted. Growing up, turkey carcasses and often chicken bones, ham bone or other inedibles were boiled for stock. I assumed this was the general way of things, but then when I went off to university, friends found it rather odd that I boiled bones for stock, so I thought that it might be worth including. Stock is very simple to make a tremendously versatile. Veggie stock I have only started making recently but I am finding it very enjoyable. Stock cubes are useful, but I always find them over salted, and using them I give up some of my own autonomy of flavour. Meat stocks I tend to keep very simple so that I can have the greatest freedom of flavour when using it. At most I will add a bay leaf or two. Vegetable stock though is always different as it depends entirely on what vegetable off cuts I have on hand. The different flavour notes of the fresh stock on the stove have prompted a few meals recently, as when Hubby tasted a vegetable stock that had some ginger peel and off cuts as part of its base, paused and declared that it needed something. "Hmm. Oh, I know, miso!" Based on that diagnosis he decided to use the fresh stock for ramen with a tea stained egg. Using our own veggie stock adds an additional layer to dishes. Method: For meat stock: Boil bones in water for 1-2 hours until they have given up their flavour. You can boil them with a bay leaf, onion or celery too for added flavour. Once the stock is fully steeped, fish out the bits. If there was still meat on the bone, you can pick it off the bones and leave it in the stock. For vegetable stock: Save the off cuts of vegetables in a container in the fridge (not too long or they will spoil!). I use almost anything: onion peels, carrot tops and tails, celery leaves, ginger peel, pepper tops and seeds. The only thing I have found which really doesn't work is citrus peel. It makes the stock very bitter.

This is very basic, and hardly deserves to be called a recipe, but so very tasty and filling and the ultimate comfort food. Rather peasanty and a very good use for stale bread. It can easily be either vegetarian or meaty. This particular version is vegetarian, but the addition of either sausage or bacon (or bits of chicken, or you name it) could work very well. It is a cheesy, eggy, bready mess. Add any veg you want and just give it all enough time to soak, then bake it until the top is crispy and the inside is moist and messy. Ingredients: 1 loaf of bread, cubed (you can use any bread you want, but personally I like character in my bread, with seeds and dark flour and things) 1 leek, chopped 1 onion, sliced 2-3 tbsp butter 3 eggs, beaten 1 1/2 - 2 c milk 1 tbsp chives A handful of mushrooms, chopped 50-100 g Gruyère, cubed 2 - 3 tbsp parmesan (or other aged cheese), grated Pepper to taste 1) On the stove, melt the butter in an oven proof dish. Sauté the leek and onion. When they soften, add the mushrooms and then the bread, allowing some of the cubes to brown a little. 2) Beat the eggs and milk together and pour them over the bread and veg. Mix in the chives and the cheese. Leave it all to soak for at least an hour. 3) Sprinkle parmesan and freshly ground pepper over the top. Bake at 180° for 30-35 minutes until golden brown on top. This also works well with slices of bread, laid out like a savoury bread pudding. I haven't had it in a while and it was so satisfying on a cold evening. No fancy flavours, no fancy ingredients but honest and tasty.

Porridge, oatmeal, call it what you will, it is one of my favourite foods. Rich and creamy, it is endlessly variable and simple yet satisfying. We've recently started having baked oats for breakfast instead of our regular oatmeal. Wrangling a toddler, it is easier to have something we can prep the night before and simply pop in the oven in the morning without having to stand at the stove and stir. A lot of recipes I've seen seem to use blended oats, essentially oat flour, but I have continued using our regular oats (usually the coarsest available) and enjoy the texture. I've also been using this as an excuse to use up more of the whey I am getting in ample quantities from my cheese making fun. I find that overnight or baked oats using milk are sometimes too rich and sweet for me. Whey I find strikes the right balance, and if need be, if it is particularly sour, adding a tsp of honey usually solves the issue without them becoming overly sweet. Similarly if I am craving a little more richness at breakfast, a little butter or cream solves that without the whole dish being too rich. I've also found that I need to use less oats cooking them this way for all of our breakfasts than I do for regular oatmeal for some reason. Beyond that, I've been playing with different ingredients and flavours in our oats including coconut, vanilla, nuts, mint, spices and more. Here are some of our favourites: Ingredients: For the basic oats: 1 c oats 2 c whey / milk 1/2 c raisins (or more. you can never have too many raisins) For spiced oats, add: 1 tsp cinnamon 1/2 tsp tumeric 1/2 tsp ginger 1/4 tsp cloves 1 tsp orange peel (walnuts, optional) For almond oats, add: 2 tbsp ground almonds 1/2 tsp almond extract (optional: 1-2 tsp orange peel 1 tsp cinnamon and /or Aloha Spiced Cacao) For chocolate hazelnut oats, add: 2 tbsp cocoa powder 1 tsp Aloha Chilli Spiced Cacao 1 tbsp hazelnut butter (preferably unsweetened. We accidentally get sweetened...oops) 1 tsp vanilla extract 1 tsp cinnamon (optional extras of walnuts, orange, espresso chips, orange peel) For our simple oats: 1 tsp vanilla extract 1 tsp cinnamon 1-2 tsp orange peel For mint chocolate oats add: 1 - 2 tbsp crushed dried mint leaves (I'd like to try it with fresh but my balcony garden was still snowy at this point) 2 tsp Aloha Mint Spiced Cacao, or cacao powder of your choice. For ginger oats add: 1/4 c dried ginger, chopped (I use unsweetened ginger pieces) 1 tsp cinnamon 1/4 tsp cloves (optionally, add either diced pear or 1 tsp fenugreek powder) For banana baked oats add: 1 banana, mashed 1 tbsp ground almond 1 tsp vanilla extract For baked tapioca: 1/2 c tapioca 2 c whey/milk 1 tsp vanilla extract 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp cinnamon 1/2 tsp Aloha Spiced Cacao 1) Mix all ingredients in an oven proof dish for use immediately, or allow to sit over night. 2) Place in the oven at 180°C for 20- 30 minutes until firm but not dry - think pudding. Having baked oats (almost) every morning has made mornings a bit easier for us with Little Bit to watch, but exploring the variety of them has also been a lot of fun. The texture isn't far off that of our regular porridge, but allowing everything to soak overnight makes the fruit or raisins puff up, gives everything a natural sweetness and makes the oats a little more tender. Sometimes baking the oats there is a slight crust on top. My favourite is when this happens and we still have a moist, gooey mess underneath. We've trialled a few other grains too. The baked tapioca was delicious. Baked polenta tasted good, but the texture was oddly lumpy and it requires a little more work. Baked bulgur wheat worked, sort of, but it was like eating cinnamon couscous for breakfast. It didn't come together at all and perhaps also needs a bit more playing around with.

This is a dish which I first saw in a video by Chef John a few months ago, and then I saw pop up on the internet and Instagram in the mean time. With left over tomato sauce on hand from making pizzas, and extra cacik (Turkish tzatziki) in the fridge, I decided that my own version of this would make a perfect lunch on a cold windy March day. Fast and easy, it came together in 10 minutes from start to finish. It was tasty and had a pleasing variety of colours and textures, and I found it easy to modify the heat level for Little Bit's palate and our own. Normally cacik also has cucumber but mine didn't this time. You can use a variety of different herbs in it too, but this time I opted for thyme which is one of my favourites. Ingredients: For the cacik: 2 c yogurt 2 c blanc battu (a fresh cheese, the consistency of very thick yogurt. If you don't have any available, simply use only yogurt) 1 head garlic, crushed 1 - 2 tsp thyme 1 - 2 tbsp olive oil Salt and pepper to taste 1/2 - 3/4 c tomato sauce per person 1 -2 eggs per person enough oil to shallow crispy fry the eggs 1tbsp jalapeño peppers (I used pickled ones as fresh weren't available) 1 tbsp (ish) coriander leaves 1 tsp olive oil Stale bread, toasted 1 tsp sumac Salt and pepper to taste 1) To prepare the cacik, mix together the yogurt and blanc battu until smooth and creamy. Add other ingredients and mix well. Taste test. 2) For the jalapeño and coriander sauce, place them and a little olive oil in a bowl and blitz. 3) In a deep frying pan, heat about 2 cm of oil. When it is shimmering, crack two eggs in, not too close to each other. Using two wooden spoons, as the eggs fry, fold them back over themselves. Cook for 4 minutes then remove and drain. 4) To serve, place some tomato sauce on a place and spread. Into the middle of this, spoon some cacik, then place a poached egg with the yolk still runny on top. Drizzle the green sauce around and over the rest, and sprinkle some sumac salt and pepper over the whole. Serve with toasted sliced of bread. This was really tasty! The biggest issue was convincing Little Bit that, despite his love of eggs, he could not have my egg as well as his own. I can't believe that it took me this long to try this, but I'm glad that the stars (or at least the ingredients and left overs in my fridge) all finally aligned for me to make this! Book Pairing: Not an audiobook, so this is cheating a little, but my association in my mind with cooking this dish is overwhelmingly of reading The Wolf's Secret by Miriam Dahman and Nicolas Digard, illustrated by Julia Sarda, to Little Bit. It was cold and windy and he was just in from a chilly walk, so we curled up under the covers to read this while the tomato sauce warmed up. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

After my last mozzarella attempt, I feel I have just about reached the end of the possibilities offered me by my cheese making kit, and so I am now moving on to working through the book I have, borrowed from my dad, Artisan Cheese Making at Home by Mary Carlin. The first recipe is for mascarpone, and while I'd like to compare the methods and resulting mascarpone from the book and the kit, making them side by side at some point, now isn't the time. The next recipe is paneer, which I will try, but with black beans soaking to make my Aunt's Cuban black beans, I thought Queso Blanco, the third recipe, was a good place to start. I have never had Queso Blanco, which maybe made knowing what I was aiming for a little difficult. The cheese making in itself went well though and I believe I got an end product similar to what was described. The hardest bit about the process was figuring out where to hang my draining sack. In the end I hung it from a kitchen cabinet and that worked quite well. I also came to the conclusion that I need a bigger strainer. Trying to drain 4 litres of fluid through a 1 litre strainer is a slow, frustrating process. The cheese came out pretty well, but I find it a little bland. Maybe it needed more vinegar? Or salt? I might try herbing it if I make it again. I used it in Purple Sweet Potato Frittatas, on the side with Cuban Black Beans and baked Sweet Potato, As a topping for Roast Aubergine Soup and still have some left over. As it is a fresh cheese which is supposed to be eaten relatively quickly after production, I think I might make only half the recipe at a time in future. I also tried making whey ricotta for the first time, also from the book. My previous ricotta attempts have been from the kit and were from a whole milk ricotta recipe. This was at once a different recipe and also a change in style and ingredients. I saved my whey from the queso blanco therefore and tried it today. I only did half of the amounts called for as, for one thing I don't have a pot big enough to take 8 litres (4 of whey and 4 of milk), and for another I only had just shy of 3 litres of whey. This recipe called for vinegar rather than citric acid, which was another shift. I followed the instructions (almost) to the letter (I only heated the milk to 185°F and not 192°F because time was running short. I don't know if it was because of this or because I used regular white cooking vinegar and not distilled vinegar, but I didn't get nearly as much ricotta as I should have. I only got about 2/3 c and not the 1 1/2 c that the recipe predicted. The whey also looked very milky still, and the curds were more gel-like than formed cheese curds (making draining very complicated). When it was clear that I wasn't getting as much as I should have I added more vinegar but it didn't appear to have much of an effect. The failure of this to produce enough cheese messed me up a bit as I had planned on making pasta with pesto and ricotta for dinner. I used the last of the queso blanco instead, and then reheated the curds to the required 95°C and added 1 tsp citric acid and this time I have more and firmer curds. Curiously, in fact, I have more curds from this second pass than I was supposed to have at all. This is a recipe I may have to try again to figure out where I went wrong... The suggestion from this and from my last attempt at ricotta where I used lemon juice rather than citric acid is that insufficient acid causes looser more gel-like curds. This might be something to attempt to achieve on purpose. I wonder if this is the method behind Blanc Battu for example. A hypothesis to be tested at some point. Or it may be that in both instances of the looser curd I failed to heat my milk fully to the prescribed temperature. I don't know. Something to be looked out for in any case.

This is an adaptation of a friend's fenugreek chicken recipe. His fenugreek chicken, back when we were living in South Africa, was the first time I ever had fenugreek and the memory of it is what then pushed me, back in Switzerland, to try to get a hold of some for myself. I knew so little about ti at that point though that I wasn't even aware that there were fenugreek leaves, seeds and ground fenugreek. When the friend who eventually sourced it for me and picked it up asked me which I wanted, I had no idea, so she got me all three. I made the chicken again and then launched into my own exploration of the spice. This recipe is more or less faithful to his original recipe for the chicken but simply vegetarian, replacing the chicken with sweet potato and carrot (I do have his permission to post). The substitution worked well but obviously altered the end result. Both vegetables are quite sweet, so the emphasised the cinnamon in the recipe and the sweetness and warmth of the flavours. It also ended up a little different as I used rehydrated Kashmiri chilis instead of green chilis for the simple reason that my local grocery store didn't have any chilis available, so I used what I had on hand. This resulted in a warmer, less acidic heat. Both of these made for an excellent new dish, but I would change at least one of the vegetables and cut down on the cinnamon a little next time if I wanted something closer to the original dish but that is still vegetarian. I am sticking with my friend's units of measurement here, firstly because they are excellent, and secondly as a tribute. Ingredients: 2 sweet potatoes, chopped 3 carrots, chopped 1/2 head of garlic, grated medium chunk of ginger, grated (my friend's recipe specifies 1.2 inches) 4-6 green chilis, finely diced 1 - 1 1/2 medium onions, chopped 40% tsp of turmeric 40% tsp chili powder (I used tandoori powder as my other chili powder is too hot for Little Bit) 1 1/5 tsp salt 3/5 c dried fenugreek leaves, rehydrated in enough boiling water to cover them for 30 minutes prior to use) 30-50g butter 1 tbsp vegetable oil 1 1/5 - 2 bay leaves 1 1/5 tsp cumin, heaped, like Everest 1 tsp coriander, heaped, like Mauna Kea 30% tsp cinnamon (I think I accidentally did closer to 50% tsp this time. oops!) 1 tsp dried thyme, optional Drizzle of cream 1) Heat oil in a deep frying pan over medium heat. Throw in onions, salt, and bay leaves and sweat until just beyond golden, stirring occasionally. Add ginger, garlic and chili. Stir for another minutes. 2) Add remaining spices and stir. Add the fenugreek leaves and some of the rehydration water. Stir. 3) Spread the onion and spice mix out over the base of the pan then place the sweet potatoes and carrots on top and stir. Add butter and thyme. Add a little more tumeric if it all looks a little pale. (the original directions were to do so if the chicken looked like a polar bear, but even under-turmericked sweet potatoes don't look very polar bear-esque...) 4) Once the sweet potato and carrot have had a chance to sauté a bit, add the rest of the water and let it reduce to only a thin coating. Cover, and stir every few minutes. 5) Once the sweet potato and carrot are tender, add black pepper until you can taste it and drizzle over the cream. 6) Serve over rice, and cover when not dishing. If the dish dries out it is nowhere near as tasty. Add more water, butter or pepper as needed. This was a very tasty dish in its own right, but quite different to the original (which I will have to make again soon). This one will stick around as a veggie alternative I think, but they are quite different dishes at the end of the day. A simple substitution this wasn't in the end, but still thoroughly worth doing. The remnants in the pan which didn't get packed away immediately quietly disappeared of their own accord, which is always a good sign...