Monthly Archives: April 2020

Not My Best Day

It’s been another flattish sort of day. I spoke to a nurse practitioner from Rheumatology again today. She was not the same one that I spoke to last week and didn’t have any notes relating to what had been discussed last week.

This was disappointing and inefficient, but it’s happened before. I’m trying my best to be nice to NHS staff during this time of stress. Actually, I try to be nice to NHS staff all the time, but they sometimes make it very difficult.

This proved to be the high point of the discussion, which went rapidly downhill. In the end all the points I’d agreed with the other nurse last week were reversed. She did not like me pointing this out.

She also contradicted the advice given by the doctor a few weeks ago – that I should stay indoors and avoid shops – by telling me I was ‘not special’ and could use public transport.

I’m going to carry on being nice to NHS staff, by not covering the whole conversation and not giving my views. She has, she said, come out of retirement to help out during the crisis. Though I am grateful to her for her efforts, I can’t help reflecting that she was trained in the days when the NHS was less concerned with the dignity of the patient, as it is now called.

An example is how they used to administer spinal anaesthetics. I went in about 16 years ago. They made me sit naked on a bed in a room full of staff while they stabbed me in the spine with needles. Last time I went in they allowed me to wear pants and a gown while they stabbed me in the spine through a gap in the back of the gown. Same stabbing, more dignity.

But they still used the same undignified method of inserting a camera into my bladder…

Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

Plenty of Time to Think

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First, an apology. Last night I seem to have sent some comments to trash by accident. I managed to track them down and think I have replied to all of them, but I can’t get them back onto the main site. I hope you have all had replies, but if you haven’t let me know. If you have been ignored it’s down to stupidity rather than bad manners.

Earlier today I was watching Walker, Texas Ranger. It comes on after Perry Mason, which follows Matlock. With the best will in the world, it isn’t a particularly demanding schedule. However, whilst watching Walker, I did pay some attention to the plot, if you can call it that.

The villain was a violent criminal and fraudster who had started his own church after purchasing his ordination certificate online, or possibly some sort of forerunner of the internet.

Now, what you may not know about me was that I once planned a career as a fraudster, having formed the idea for a postal business college. In those days it was legal to offer meaningless qualifications through the post and you could get £1,000 for a PhD – all the candidate needed to was send a cheque and write an essay, which was a lot easier than taking a proper PhD. I had it all ready to launch, including the name Carlton Business College, when the government changed the law and out a stop to it. Fortunately I had not incurred any financial costs so all I lost was my time and my dreams.

Before you ask, no, I didn’t have any qualms about it. I had just done a post-graduate diploma course as a mature student, and had learned several interesting things about “proper” academic institutions. One was that several of the overseas students on the course were intending to sell copies of their certificates on completion of the course. The second was that not everyone on the course had to go through the same selection process.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I, having applied for the course without having a degree, had to undergo a stringent interview and written test. Some of the overseas students, who paid many times the fees we were paying, had managed to get on the course without qualifications, without a written test and without the ability to write intelligible English.

Julia, who is much more intellectually accomplished than I am, noted the same when she did her Master’s degree.

So there you are, even today “proper” universities are allowed to peddle substandard qualifications to overseas students in return for cash, but I am not.

Anyway, enough of my lack of morals, and back to today. It seems, when I checked up, that you can become an ordained minister for $29. It is priced in dollars, because the “church” is American. I’m fascinated by the American marriage laws, where a$29 dollar minister is allowed to conduct legally binding marriages in 48 states.

Then I wandered onto this site, and wasted more of my day.

By the time I write my next post I may well be the Reverend Quercus. Julia says we have enough trouble without me attracting any Divine Wrath, but I’m seriously thinking of it. Well, it’s not like I’m doing anything else for the next three weeks, is it?

Photo by Vlad Chețan on Pexels.com

When I searched the free photo library for “dog collar” this wasn’t actually what I was hoping for.

Notes for Posterity

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Yesterday was probably rock bottom. I simply sat round doing very little and, just after midnight, I realised that I’d failed to post. In fact, I’d failed to do anything much.

I say it’s probably rock bottom, but I can’t guarantee this – there is always the chance it could be worse. At least I was still wearing trousers. I have a couple of pairs of jogging bottoms upstairs, so there is still potential to sink further.

Today I am wearing trousers and have already accomplished more than I had done by this time yesterday.

We did pop out yesterday afternoon, going to TESCO for our Click & Collect order. The system was slightly different from the one last week. We had to travel to Toton last week. They have a small building, two men and you load your own shopping. We went to Top Valley yesterday – they have a canopy with a van parked under it, one man and he puts it in the boot for you while you sit in the car.

Click & Collect Top Vally TESCO Nottingham

Click & Collect Top Valley TESCO Nottingham

It only took 20 minutes and we only had contact with one man. It’s not a bad method of shopping. However, it did have one drawback as there were several items lacking. They take your money, they confirm they have it, they clearly have it in stock, but they don’t have a system for turning this into reality.

There was no flour. There was no bread kit. There was no marmalade. I have no clue why there should be a shortage of marmalade. There was plenty last time I shopped, and plenty of variety when I shopped online. I think we are looking at a failure in substitution rather than a failure in supply.

I bought white rolls, to make bacon cobs, which arrived squashed, which was disappointing. Even worse, the Belgian buns arrived crushed. I’d bought them as a special, sticky treat and was much put out when they arrived with the icing spread all over the packaging.

It’s yet another downside of shopping by remote control.

Despite this I still checked for a delivery slot on the internet. It’s become a habit, possibly even a fixation. And, again, after several disappointments, I managed to find a delivery slot at ASDA. It’s for 5th May, which is only 5 days after my previous slot, but beggars can’t be choosers. I could, in theory, have left it for someone else, and waited to see if I could get one for the 7th. However, nobody seems to have bothered leaving one for me over the last month, and they have been buying all the flour, so I pressed the button.

It’s nice to think that the current difficulties will make us all better people but I’m not sure this is going to be the case with me. The fact that I avoided panic-buying and bought modestly for the first few weeks of the shortages did not leave me with a good feeling. I should have felt good about my self-restraint, or at least felt neutral about the whole thing. But I didn’t. I felt vulnerable, short of food, and that all the smug, well-stocked panic-buyers, were, as usual, nicely placed while the rest of us suffered. At that point, if someone had suggested a re-run of the French Revolution, I would happily have joined in.

I’m not sure, after several weeks of stocking up, we actually need any more food. The fridge is rammed, we have tins balanced on shelves and I’m struggling to use carrots quickly enough.

As I said to Julia, it’s like shopping for Christmas. Over the years I have managed to hold things back so I only buy twice the food we need for the two days, but the last few weeks have weakened my self-discipline and I have bought too much of some things. I have too many vegetables and too many tins of things like Spam, haggis and corned beef, but I don’t have enough bread or marmalade, and I ran out of English mustard last night. I forgot all about ordering more so unless I find some in the back of a cupboard I’ll have to eke out the last quarter jar of Dijon, which is OK, but doesn’t make your eyes water. Mustard isn’t as much fun without the danger.

The pictures below are basically just weeds in what passes as a front garden – a poppy that had already started to fall apart by 2pm, red valerian that is budding up, and a dandelion. When the best flowers in the garden are dandelions you realise quite how much you have let things slip.

Poppy – already falling apart

Dandelion

Red Valerian

Lockdown Cookery

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There are, I’m pleased to say, signs that the grocery situation is easing.

I managed to book a Click & Collect slot at ASDA on Saturday afternoon. It’s for April 30th, which left me with a trip to the shops this week.

Or did it?

Browsing the TESCO site revealed some Click & Collect slots for Monday. I suspect they are putting them on at random to spread them round a bit. Or to annoy me. It could be either.

I will be collecting an order tomorrow afternoon, which is awkward because it leaves a 10 day gap, but is handy because it avoids a walk round the shop. After what happened last time I can do without people invading my personal space. I’m not saying that isolation is bad for me, but I’m turning into a recluse. I nearly said “Howard Hughes” there, but didn’t want people to get confused and think I was building an aeroplane in the back garden, craving banana nut ice cream or storing my urine in bottles.

You still can’t get ordinary flour or various random vegetables. Calabrese seems to be off the shelves for the second time in three weeks (that’s purple sprouting brocolli on the plates in the pictures), though courgettes are back.

The problem with flour is that although we have plenty, and the mills are running round the clock, it takes so long to bag it up in small bags that they can’t keep up with demand.

Ah well, I haven’t baked for the last three years, so I can probably survive without flour a bit longer.

Cauliflower Steaks

I cooked cauliflower steaks for tea – not a vegetable disguised as meat, just a cauliflower cut in a slab.

First trim the leaves and stalk, then cut it half. From each side, cut a piece about an inch to inch and a half wide. If it’s a big enough cauli, and you aren’t bothered about your fingertips, you can possibly get another steak out of each side. I didn’t. Tomorrow we will be having cauliflower cheese.

Oil a roasting tray, put the steaks in it, oil and season the top (I used a reasonably conservative sprinkle of cumin and black pepper) cover the tray with foil and cook in a high oven (250° C) for 10 or 15 minutes. This steams it. Then remove the cover, turn it over, season and cook for about 8-10 minutes a side. You might be able to get away with turning it once, when you uncover it, but the recipe left room for doubt so I turned it twice. It needs to be seared to look the part.

We served it with nut cutlets from the freezer, which were very pleasant. Julia thought the meal might be a bit bland without the cutlets, but I thought the cauli was OK as the main item. I served it with cheese/mustard sauce, though there are other sauces and flavourings. I may experiment with other seasoning in future, though it’s a big chunk of vegetable, and my digestive system is currently gurgling hard.

Cauliflower Steak with vegetables and Nut Cutlets

Adventures with a Pan

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We had smoked mackerel pate for lunch yesterday. That involved the use of the food processor, so, for me, was a real technical challenge. I had to ask Julia to dismantle it at the end, because I can never work the catch that releases the bowl. You would have thought that in the 21st Century they would have thought of making this obvious.

Smoked Mackerel Pate

It was a simple recipe, involving two bits of smoked mackerel (about 200 g) and half a pack of cream cheese. I pulled the fish off the skin and broke it up, added the green bits from a large spring onion, a big spoonful of wholegrain mustard, some black pepper and then gave it a whizz in the food processor. Then I opened it up and pushed the big bits of fish down into the mix before having another go. I think that if I’d broken the fish up more I could have omitted that last step. I will aim for pieces about the size of a finger top joint next time – some of the ones I tried were nearly the size of my thumb and managed to ride up to avoid the blades. People often use horseradish, as it is traditional with mackerel, but I didn’t have any so I tried mustard and it seems to have worked.

I’m saving the last lime to make an avocado dip, so didn’t use any citrus, but it didn’t seem to make a difference – the mustard and spring onion gave the mix a good, fresh taste without citrus.

We ate it with toast. There was plenty of pate for four thickly spread rounds of toast.

Smoked Mackerel Pate with Toast

Today’s lunch was vegetable soup with warm rolls and smoked mackerel pate. The rolls were Paul Hollywood part baked rolls and there was enough pate left to be generous, though the rolls weren’t exactly huge.

The soup recipe was four manky carrots (though I suppose good clean ones would be just as good), a chunk of swede (rutabaga) that was starting to change colour at the back of the fridge, the potato offcuts from the oven-baked chips (keep reading for details of them) and some leftover peas. Boil it up with water and a stock cube, reduce to soup with a hand-blender, season, eat. It probably needed onions but we only have enough to last until the next shopping trip so I left them out. I also added garlic from a jar, but should have put more in as we couldn’t really taste it.

Vegetable Soup with Rolls and Smoked Mackerel Pate

Yesterday’s tea (sorry to wander about so much), was chunky oven-baked paprika chips, with fish fingers and mushy peas. It’s not great food, but it is a change as we haven’t had fish fingers for a month. I arranged them like something off Masterchef for the photo. I’m not sure it looks any better than throwing a pile of food together. It just looks like an idiot has been playing with his food.

Paprika Potatoes, Fish Fingers and Mushy Peas – Gourmet Fodder

As they were cooking, I made a pot of curry (chickpea and sweet potato – using a base of last night’s chilli) and the previously mentioned soup.

Tomorrow I will use the rest of the cream cheese in a charred red pepper dip and we will also have an avocado dip using the lime I saved by not using it in the pate. It can be quite tricky cooking when you can’t nip out to the shops.

Burnt Aubergine Vegetarian Chilli

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We had Burnt Aubergine Chilli tonight. It’s not the first time that the word “burnt” has entered the conversation about my cookery, along with its synonyms – charred, scorched, over-cooked, cremated, incinerated and inedible. It is, however, the first time I’ve it’s been a deliberate choice.

The recipe is ‘low fat and four of your five a day,’ according to the website.

I didn’t quite follow the recipe – life is too short to cut carrots into tiny cubes, but I did use tinned tomatoes, red kidney beans, green lentils, onions and aubergine. As I recall, you can only count the beans and lentils as one portion, and it’s possible we have to discount the onions as not being a full portion. Call it 3½ portions, even without the carrots.

It wasn’t great, but to be fair to the recipe, I used it as a guide rather than a recipe.

I missed out the carrots because I’m lazy and some of the soy sauce because I’m an idiot (I forgot that a tablespoon is the really big one, not a dessert spoon – I’m always doing that). To be honest, I’m not sure that missing out a few mls of soy sauce was the main problem.

I also missed out the red lentils (replaced with extra green ones), the coriander and the cinnamon because I didn’t have any. (It turns out we did actually have cinnamon but ‘men can never see anything even when it’s straight in front of them’). Again, I’m not sure that missing out a few sprinkles of spice was a major problem.

The major problem may well have been that I was hungry, so I omitted the 800 ml of stock and most of the cooking time. I was using tinned lentils so it wasn’t as if they needed a lot of cooking. This may have deprived us of a great deal of flavour and texture. Or it may just have meant we ate sooner.

It was, as I say, not great. The spicing was quite hot, though acceptable by our modest standards, and the flavour was not as good as I would have liked. On the other hand, it wasn’t bad either. In truth, I’ve never really rated vegetarian chilli so I wasn’t particularly disappointed by the result. I will try it again and see how it goes.

Burnt Aubergine Chilli with brown rice

The scorching of the aubergine skin, done using the garden flamethrower, did not produce the smoky flavour I was hoping for, though the discarded skin smelt reasonably smoky as it went into the compost. I was hoping for something spectacular for the photographs, but the camera seemed to filter the flame out.

Another problem is the chocolate. I used some of Julia’s hoard of 80% dark chocolate, thinking that if something is doing it is worth doing properly. It didn’t add anything to the taste, but when I mentioned it, it did add something to the conversation. I won’t go over the entire discussion, but Julia isn’t happy about the idea of me throwing her decent chocolate into a chilli. From the note of indignation in her voice you’d have thought I’d been using puppies, not chocolate.

Working from Home and Aimless Chatter

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Julia is busy on a conference call at the moment. People are taking it in turns to talk about their “case load” on a poor connection. I use the word ‘load’ with my tongue firmly in my cheek – talking to people on the phone is not hard work. It isn’t very interesting for an eavesdropper and is far less detailed than the reports she submits each week. In fact, it’s useless, but I suppose, like weekly meetings, it makes management feel like they are doing things,

There are, according to the manager running it, three more people to report in, and then they will move to “something else”. Julia rolled her eyes at that announcement.

One of the manager’s kids is now being told to be quiet because mummy is talking to people at work.

Such are the pleasures of working from home.

One of them is currently answering questions from his wife about his lunchtime ham sandwich.

I’m glad I don’t have to do it, I’d probably end up being rude to someone. Instead of that I’m being rude about them on my blog.

I just had my telephone appointment with the rheumatology nurse about my new medication. It involves side effects and a lot more blood testing. They have, they tell me, reorganised the phlebotomy department to allow for social distancing. I’m dubious about this, as true social distancing would involve a three foot needle.

woman in gray sweater sitting on wooden floor typing on portable computer

Photo by bongkarn thanyakij on Pexels.com

Somebody on the conference call has a dog barking in the background.

The telephone appointment was eventful.

First, they rang me early. I didn’t have my phone with me and they disconnected after four rings. Eventually they rang back. I had my phone with me. Unfortunately I had it with me in the toilet. We had to break that one off when they had a fire alarm. Finally we reconnected and discussed the new medication. Side effects may include loss of appetite, which would be quite useful. Two of the others are drowsiness and hair loss. I told Julia this and she just laughed.

The conference call is now suggesting weekly calls as a way of keeping in touch.

I can hardly wait…

The photos are from the free photo library – the reality is not quite so attractive and organised.

These are the Scones

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Yes, they don’t look like scones, but they are.

The original recipe for these came from the Home Grown Cereals Authority (HGCA) and seemed to be just the sort of recipe I was looking for, as it included some teaching points and was an easy recipe for a class to do.

I can’t find the original recipe on the internet as I can’t get a working link to the HGCA, but this link seems to have the same recipe as I remember it. I have a vague feeling that the HGCA recipe might have had mustard powder in it to accentuate the taste of the cheese.

And I probably used self-raising flour because it’s easier than using baking powder.

Seeds, flour, cheese – at one time I had aspirations to write a book on food

They use rapeseed oil instead of butter, which makes it a quicker and easier recipe, and allows discussion of oilseed rape as a crop, the perils of monoculture, EU grants (at the time), self-sufficiency in food production and plant breeding. It’s also sold as vegetable oil in supermarkets as the word rape isn’t seen as being particularly positive from a marketing point of view, and Canola oil in the USA. IT also makes it easier to make if you have arthritic fingers. I was just starting to develop arthritis in the final year on the farm and my fingers would ache after a long baking session.

The recipe, with seeds and cheese is quite pleasant and always went down well. I used to cook them for the group when we were on the farm because everyone likes to tear off a warm scone. From a practical point of view it is easier to do them this way than to use a cutter as a scone cutter won’t cut seeds and things get a bit messy. If you go for a rustic tear and share look nobody notices that they are messy.

With a different selection of seeds

I have used the recipe to make successful fruit scones and developed the recipe for date and Stilton scones. It’s a bit fiddly because you have to cut the dates into smaller pieces and crumble the Stilton, but it worked quite well. Initially I halved the quantity of cheese when using Stilton, because it’s a strong tasting cheese. That strength of flavour doesn’t really come through in a scone and we ended up going back to using the full amount.

Before batching – Date and Stilton Scones

I seem to have used flax seed in the mix. I don’t honestly remember doing that but the camera doesn’t lie. It also seems that I cut the narrow end of the cheese off for cookery, which is frowned on. You are supposed to cut it along the length of the wedge so that everyone gets a bit of the outer edge and a bit of the central part of the cheese, which is supposedly riper than the outer edge. .

Despite this, I remember that they tasted good and that I thought this was the start of me becoming a cook and food blogger. In hindsight, life can be very cruel.

Date and Stilton scone with at least one pumpkin seed in it.

If I can get any flour I’m feeling inspired to make these again.

Yes, a single pumpkin seed. Worrying. It suggests I didn’t clean the bowl properly between mixes.

The plates were part of a set my mother got as a promotional offer from Boots. She didn’t use them much and passed them on to us. We didn’t use them much and passed them on the the farm. I once put one in the microwave – the silver line around the rim produced some alarming sparks. At that point I remembered my mother telling me not to use them in the microwave. I didn’t forget again.

Baking brings back a lot of memories.

Some Photos from the Archives

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I had a look through a few old photos on an SD card last night. I’m having to use one of the cameras as a card reader now the reader on the computer is bust. None of my plug in card readers work because they never seem to last long. It’s very frustrating.

The first ones are a few photos from the days when I used to cook wheatsheaf loaves at harvest time. The farmer’s mother used to like to take one to church for the harvest festival and we used to display them at the local show. They aren’t particularly artistic, and nothing like as good as one produced by a professional, but it does show what you can do with dough and patience.

I’ve shown these before, so sorry about the repetition, but it’s a nice reminder of the days when we could get flour.

Wheatsheaf Loaf – Raw

Wheatsheaf Loaf – Baked

This is a pair I made using leftover pizza dough. They were about eight inches high and we handed them round to visiting school parties until they fell apart. I’m told that if you dry them properly whilst baking you can make a loaf that will last for years. I never found that, mine always seemed to crack and fall apart. It may have been the way I constructed them as they seemed to fracture along fault lines as if there was an internal problem. One did last a couple of years but these small ones, like the larger ones, lasted a couple of months before the faults developed. It’s long enough – as harvest ends and autumn begins everyone wants to move on to apple juice and jam.

Mouse on Wheatsheaf Loaf

These are a couple of mice from different loaves. You make an egg shaped piece of dough, poke two eyes in the sharp end, make two scissor snips for ears and then stick it on the stalks before applying a tail. It’s actually what you are judged on.

Nobody remarks on the 30 stalks you laboriously roll out, or the 100 ears of wheat (and the hundreds of snips you make to give them texture) – they just want to point at the mouse.

It’s like peering at the Mona Lisa for ten minutes before saying ‘Nice frame.’

Wheatsheaf Loaf (with mouse)

I can’t remember the exact instructions, but you make a dough with less yeast than usual and divide it into three. One third becomes the base, which is a keyhole shaped piece of flat dough you use as a base – it’s important to get that in the right proportion if the finished loaf is to look right – it took me several goes to get this right. One third becomes the ears and one third becomes stalks and extras.

Do the stalks and position them, do the ears. A piece of dough about the size of the top finger joint will be OK – give it a few snips for texture and that’s a good enough impression of an ear of wheat – nobody ever criticised. Make a decent width of plait to act as the binding – it also serves to cover the raggedy join between stalks and ears.

Then finish off with a mouse. The previous tedious hour of shaping and snipping means nothing if the mouse isn’t right.

Glaze it, remembering not to clog the detail, bake it, try to dry it out as much as possible then cool it and stand back to receive compliments from people who don’t really understand how simple it is.

Remember that although the traditional ones were often two or three feet long that is because they were made by commercial bakers with big ovens – in a domestic oven you can do one about eighteen inches high.

If you feel inspired to try one, here are some better instructions.

Tomorrow I have some pictures of scones.

All is Right with the World

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I had a great night’s sleep last night, and woke ready for my weekly shopping trip. We travelled across town, past the empty university and arrived at the supermarket at 8.15. There was already a queue.

Fortunately we had ordered the shopping via Click & Collect and there was only one car in front of us. As we finished packing, another car drew up behind us. Annoying as it is that I can’t get another slot, you have to admit that they are working to capacity. It looks like I will be having to queue with the oldies again next week.

Government advice is that the best thing to stop coronavirus is your front door. Next best, I suppose, is collecting your shopping from a Click & Collect bay where the two staff on duty stay well away from you. Shopping, even once a week, is a very poor third in the list – despite the limits on entry, the one-way system and the supposed social distancing. Last week I estimate I had around 20 people getting far too close, which defeats the point of staying isolated all week.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I have just finished breakfast (bacon, mushroom and black pudding in white cobs). It’s not a healthy breakfast but as long as I don’t eat it every day I don’t suppose it will do me too much harm. I could have eaten high fibre cereal and brown toast (again) but there is little point in being the fittest corpse in the coronavirus ward.

The best thing is that I was so hungry I could eat it all again. There’s something that always seems so virtuous about finishing a meal and still leaving room for more. I really ought to try it more often.

I’m considering beans on toast for lunch, possibly with tomatoes and eggs, which will mean I have managed a Full English Breakfast by installments.

The picture is a much-missed Little Chef breakfast. I would have been better off photographing my own breakfast but, let’s be honest, it never seems to last long enough to give me time to fetch the camera.

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Life after the Care Farm