Monthly Archives: June 2024

A Post with No Soup

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Guinea Fowl on guard

There has been a lot of food in my last few posts, and a lot of soup pictures. Soup is a good subject for photography as it is not given to sudden movements and there are no problems of perspective. Buildings are good subjects for their lack of movement, but they do tend to look strange from certain angles. However, easy as it may be as a subject there are still challenges, even with soup. This is mainly the way lenses mist up as the steam rises. professionals will, of course do it all differently.

A Cricket on the cabbage

If I wanted a perfect shot I would let the soup cool down, decant it into a gleaming new pan (if you notice, all my shots tend to be a bit messy as a result of the blending) and I would add an artistic swirl of cream and a scatter of croutons.

I remember reading an article of food photography once. To get a good picture of cheese the photographer hollowed out a block of cheese and then illuminated it from inside. It seemed a lot of hassle just to photograph a block of cheese. I suppose the pursuit of excellence is its own reward. I merely pursue adequacy, and often struggle to achieve it.

Pizza with egg and nettles

As this is a blog post with no soup, I won’t tell you want we’re about to have for lunch – let’s just say that it’s a lot easier to make soup than it is to eat it. a pan of soup takes minutes to make, but can last for three meals. I really must develop the habit of storing some for later, but whenever I think of it, the freezer always seems full.

Californian Poppies

We keep saying we are going to eat out of the freezer instead of ordering more groceries. We have several part bags of seafood and frozen veg, with several store cupboard items such as veggie burgers and others that were thrown in there in a panic as their final day approached (sausages and fish pie mix to be specific). Ween we move I think we must clear the freezer and then develop  system before we start ramming the new one with rubbish.

Dog rose

Photos are from June 2016. My life was so much more interesting then.

 

Bad Start to the Day but Things are Looking Up

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I unwillingly made my way downstairs this morning. Though I had an ambition to do some work, I had a conflicting ambition – I would have quite liked to stay warm in bed. It was a chilly night. This summer is taking me back to the summers of the late 60s and early 70s. I remember that some of them were quite poor, and all the talk at that time was about climate cycles and a new Ice Age. How things change.

It started badly in the kitchen when I tore a pair of  teabags apart to make myself a cup of tea. One tore and released a cloud of tea powder all over the floor. This is doubly depressing – a whole teabag wasted, and its contents revealed to be a long way from the lovely tea leaves of my youth. I always joke about the contents of teabags being low quality floor sweepings, but what I saw today seems to confirm that.

Broccoli Soup taken on “Food” setting

I’m probably wrong. I’m sure that tea merchants across the world will tell me they use the best ingredients in their teabags, but it just looked depressing.

I have just made broccoli soup, as you can probably guess from the pictures. It came out quite green compared to the yellowing florets that actually went into the pot. The Food setting on the camera didn’t do it justice this time, I had to use the Landscape setting. That enhances green but the soup is still actually greener in real life than it is in the pictures. I may go back to photographing flowers. At least the colour rendition is accurate.

I used a stock cube today, as Julia complained about the lack of seasoning in last night’s pasta bake. As a result, the soup tastes quite salty. This is annoying. After 30 years of not using salt in cooking I have grown quite sensitive to salt in things like this. In general though, it tastes quite good and I am about to have it for lunch.

Pale grey version

 

Almost off white

Once again, the camera fails to render the colour accurately.

 

A Day Brimming with Promise (Part 2)

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Before blending

Sub title – Cameras Do Lie

It’s just after 11am and the soup is bubbling away. I will blend it in a few minutes and add the whole beans. While I was preparing it I realised I’d forgotten to put garlic in the Italian vegetables I’d made earlier. Fortunately, we are English and probably won’t notice. It’s not a very English ingredient, despite the fact you can sometimes smell wild garlic when you walk in the woods.

I became diverted by Facebook. I was looking at the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire page when I drifted off and started searching for other coin sites. I wandered into a strange world where spelling and intelligence seem to be optional.

After blending, using the “Food” setting 

It’s like a hellish version of WP. WP has writing and pictures and comments, just like Facebook but WP also has people of wit, intelligence and interest. And they can all spell. Or they can at least use a spellchecker, as I do. FB just has people.  And even then I’d have to compare them to the generally accepted definition of “people” just to be sure.

One of them, commenting on a picture of Nottingham in the 1950s, rambled on about the good old days when everything was British made by British people etc . . . For “British” I think we can probably substitute “white”. Of course, if you think about it we have never grown tea, coffee, sugar or chocolate in this country. The reason we needed rationing in 1939 was because we imported so much of our food. The days of self-sufficiency probably came to an end some time in the reign of George III. I really must look that up.

The moral is don’t go on Facebook if you want to get some work done.

Or simply don’t go on Facebook.

And if you are really determined to get some work done, don’t keep chatting on WP – it’s just a way of delaying things.

Here are some soup pictures taken using different camera settings. All the same soup. All taken within a couple of minutes. The brightest is actually the most accurate. The greyish and beige ones are typical of all my cameras – they really seem to hate colour.

Beige

Greyish

Proper colour

 

A Day Brimming with Promise

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All those lovely vegetables

I’m hoping it’s going to be an industrious day today. I dropped Julia off at work and was home by 9.00. It’s 9.53 now. I have made an Italian style vegetable mix to use in a pasta bake for tonight. I have also had a cup of tea, watched my computer upgrade itself, read my emails, looked at the Numismatic Society Facebook page and read the comments on the blog.

I’m hoping the rest of the day is going to be as productive, but I doubt it. These things have a habit of either petering out or just coming to a full stop as I watch a bit of TV and fall asleep. However, I will try.

The next thing is to stir the Italian vegetables and check they are cooked. Then I will make tomato soup. I’m torn between tomato soup or bean soup, in fact. As I have quite a few small peppers this week, and because I fancy a change I may well go for bean soup. I will still use celery, which I have been using in the tomato soup, because we have some that needs using, so it will be tomatoes, peppers, beans, celery and onions. It’s strange to think that when I started cooking I used to follow recipes as if my life depended on it. Now I just throw in whatever I find in the fridge.

I will be making yellow broccoli soup tomorrow, because I found a head of yellow broccoli in the fridge when sourcing the ingredients for the pasta bake.  No, it’s not a new variety, it’s just the colour that broccoli turns if your wife puts it in the back of the fridge and piles stuff in front of it.

I used to run the vaccine fridge at work. Millions of doses of vaccine that cost a lot of money, and which needed using before it expired. It teaches you about stock control and how to stack a fridge. Unfortunately Julia never had a job like that . . .

Bubbling away and steaming up my lens

 

 

 

The Cod’s Scallops

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The Cod’s Scallops is a prize-winning local chain of fish & chip shops (and restaurants). We have been meaning to go to one for years, but with one thing and another, have only just got round to it.

I once read an article on The Cod’s Scallops and the attention to detail they needed to win. It was a matter of professional curiosity, as we were involved in the kitchen at the Ecocentre at that time. The inspectors do things like checking under appliances using a mirror on a stick. It would, I thought, be a good time to start applying some attention to the details of the way I live.

This is a new leaf I intend to turn over. We have hardly been out since lockdown, and only eaten out a handful of times. Now I am retiring I need to extend my horizons and interact with people – sitting at home turning into a vegetable is not an option. We also took a bag of books to the charity shop and when we returned home I started the process of tidying up my administrative affairs. I have  lot of things I need to do and need to get on with them.

As an aside here – those of you who read Derrick Knight’s blog may know that he calls gherkins “wallies”. I always assumed it was some sort of regional term, as I had never heard it before. You can order a “wally” from the menu we used today, though at £1.70 (or £1.20 if you use the takeaway service) I decided not to bother. It would need to be the size of a cucumber to make me want to pay that amount for a pickle.

They also have a selection of other seafood available, and Julia is keen to try some on our next visit. So am I, but first we went for fish and chips just to see how the quality compares.

Now, back to the main subject. It’s clearly a very popular venue, because on our first attempt we could only find a cramped corner table. I’m not good in cramped conditions as I am built along generous lines and am not designed to fit in a small space.

So we had a drive round and returned later. In between we went to find a pizza restaurant we used to go to, but it has shut and it is now a Burger King. That was depressing, but at least it spurred us on to return to our original choice which, by 2pm, was almost empty.

We had the Special. However, the name may be over doing it a bit. It was very nice  but featured a small piece of cod (very tasty, but clearly the price had been kept down by trimming the fish portion size), nice chips, adequate mushy peas tangy homemade tartare sauce and a mug of tea. It was good, but whether it achieved the level of being special is debatable, particularly as it had no bread and butter. I expect a fish special in a fish & chip restaurant to have bread and butter.

It cost £10. My ribs on Saturday night cost nearly twice as much. They featured a rack of ribs, lots of chemical sauce, moderate chips, OK coleslaw and a half boiled corn cob. In terms of health, freshness and quality the Special wins hands down. Size, the ribs win. But you can’t argue with the value. Two of us ate for the price of one person on Saturday, and though I didn’t exactly feel full at the end of it, I did feel it was good value. Anyway, I eat too much and they say it’s good to feel a little hungry at the end of a meal. I suppose it’s about time that, as a pensioner, I should start picking at my food instead of enjoying a big plateful.

This is my first food review in a while, so I’m feeling rusty, but it’s a start and I will gradually get better. One of the things I must do is start taking notes. I think the special is actually called the Daytime Special but I forgot, and when I looked it up online I couldn’t find it listed.

Something else I’ve noticed is that both Harvester and The Cod’s Scallops, though having their menus online, aren’t so keen on putting their prices online. This is a bit irritating when trying to check facts, though I suppose it does save a lot of work every time prices change.

 

There are signs that the attention to detail isn’t what it used to be. They have, for instance, model sailboats on the tables with numbers painted on the sails. When Julia (who did the photos today) wanted to picture one she used one off the table next to us, as ours was covered in food debris and had a splash of ketchup on the sail. It makes you wonder what the rest cleaning regime is like. We had much the same thing when we had the tea room on the farm and the tables were invaded by pot plants. The words “form over function” are currently circling in my thoughts like a dream sequence from a film.

Talking of ketchup, where their tartare sauce is tangy and top notch (unlike some of the homemade tartar sauces I have had in other restaurants), the own brand tomato sauce was a bit bland. It had a nice tomato taste, but lacked the tang of something acidic.

If I’m being picky, there are a few other things that could be attended to. The chairs look like the seats could do with a sand and revarnish, and the toilet wasn’t quite as clean as the rest of the place. There is also just the one toilet for “Buoys” and “Gulls”, the disabled (yes, that’s me) and baby changing. I imagine that you could get a bit of a queue at times when it is busy. As a man who can find himself needing the toilet urgently at times, I’m not sure I’m keen on this. It could be tricky.

All in all, it’s a pleasant place to eat (this was the one on Wilford Lane, by the way – they have several branches round Nottingham). Food was good and value was good. However, we’ve been to a lot of fish and chip restaurants around the country and may of them are equally as good. The main difference between them and The Cod’s Scallops would seem to be the seafood selection and the number of awards that they have accumulated. However, winning awards is a different skill to cooking, and it pays not to get them confused.

All Change

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In the end, I didn’t go to the numismatic Society Committee meeting last night. i just didn’t feel confident about taking my troublesome tubing half-way across town in the late rush hour traffic and sitting in a pub for most of the evening. By 3pm I decided to call off. As luck would have it, I then improved a little. this marks a positive shift in health status as most trends have been downward in the last week or two.

This morning I got up and took Julia in to work for the first time in two weeks then when to visit friends. I was a bit nervous,but it all worked out OK. Things seem to be improving and it looks like I am finally healing.

That is the health news and in years to come I will be able to look at tghis as if leafing through a diary and will be able to depress myself by remembering the times I was confined to the house by my bladder.

That’s even worse than being confined to the house by my fear of going out and being infected with something.

Sausage Pie – Carsington Water

Which reminds me, I need to get my Covid booster done. They keep sending me reminders and it seems rude not to have it after all the trouble they have taken.

I’m cooking tea at the moment. Or, to put it another way, I’m making potato wedges, heating up a quiche and throwing a green salad together. It’s not food preparation at the highest level, but it will keep us going. The salad is done, the wedges are part cooked and the quiche is ready to go in the oven.  I’m on a roll with some articles I’m writing so I begrudge the time I have to spend stopping and cooking. In fact I’m not happy about stopping to eat, but sometimes you have to. I’m hoping to send one article off for the Numismatic Society and preapre a short one for a magazine tonight. Tomorrow I start on the Miniature Medal presentation which is due in September. That’s only about 12 weeks away, which isn’t long.

Cheese and pickle sandwiches – Carsington Water

The food illustrated is far better than the food I will be serving up tonight.

Ideas

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I’ve been thinking of ideas today.

It all started when I was thinking about committee meetings this morning. In a career spanning several different clubs and societies I have always taken the view that I will volunteer within reason, and I will go on committees if I think I can contribute. The “within reason” is important as people will work you to death if you let them, whilst offering little apart from encouragement.

We once had someone tell us, when we were forming a Management Committee at the Ecocentre, “I see my strength as having ideas. If you want any I have hundreds, just ask id you want one.”

I looked at Julia. Julia looked at me. neither of us rolled our eyes, but we both knew what the other was thinking. That woman was the first to leap into volunteering when TV crew came out to film our activities, using my recipe and system for running a pizza making session with kids. It didn’t worry me, because i have a face for radio, but it did amuse me, particularly when they got it wrong.

They used the wrong sort of pen for writing the names of the kids on the greaseproof paper by the side of their pizzas (this avoids arguments when kids lay claim to the best looking pizza rather than the monstrosity they actually produced). Use the wrong sort of pen and the cooking process makes it fade away  . . .

Yes, I allowed myself a little smile.

Some people see ideas as the gold standard in terms of contributions to committees.They are generally people who didn’t hve to produce results in whatever career they have followed during their pampered lives.

Ideas are like poetry and dust – spectral, ephemeral and intangible. As I’ve said before, when talking about poetry, if an editor rejects a poem he is only rejecting a jumble of words. I can easily rearrange them, or pluck a whole new batch from the interior of my head.

When doing writing exercises I often write down 100 ideas for poems. I then cross out 20 because they are almost the same as others on the list, then another 20 I don’t like. I have never, ever, written the other 60 because by the time I’ve done ten or a dozen I have new ideas that seem better than the old ones. Even the ones I do finish are often discarded until I have just one or two left.

Ideas are disposable.

The real gold standard is the volunteer who wants to do something. It doesn’t actually need to be much, because ten volunteers doing a little bit can shift a lot of work. One volunteer trying to do it all is just a breakdown waiting to happen.

If you want to see what volunteers can do when everyone works at an idea look at this link. It’s a big ambitious project, and it’s been accomplished by quiet volunteers who, unlike some well known TV naturalists, do it for the environment rather than personal glory. Even so, it takes a lot of volunteers to do things in order to bring an idea to life. Look here for an example.

The Distant Blue Sky

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It is currently dark, windy and wet. It is also chilly. This is not what I expect from June, and it is very disappointing.

I can see some bright blue in the distance, so it might lift a little. However, June 2024 will definitely be going down in the book as “could do better”. That’s a chilling phrase isn’t it? Or it was, when it used to appear in my school reports and initiate discussions with my father about my levels of industry at school.

After two false starts, and cutting out 3-400 words, I am no further forward than I was when i began. Some days are like that. That’s the problem, I often have so much to write about that I can’t write anything. And just because I write something doesn’t mean that it’s going to be interesting or suitable.

We are having a committee meeting of the Numismatic Society tonight, and it is probably going to be dull. I’m in limbo – I’d like to start a recruiting drive and reinvigorate the  medal section, but I’m not going to be here to carry it through so it seems pointless starting it. It’s always struck me as being unfair to set something going then back out and leave the work to someone else. That’s happened to me before and I don’t want to do it to anyone else.

It’s strange how many times you come across people who have plenty of ideas, which they present as a rare and precious gift. They have no idea how common ideas are. even good ideas are ten a penny. What is the rare and precious gift is the time that is needed to turn the idea into something useful.  The people with ideas are usually the people who don’t have time to do anything.

I’ve seen it so many times. The man who wanted us to go recruiting in schools, but was aghast, and acted as if we had insulted him, when we told him we would support him wholeheartedly.

“What?” he said, “You expect me to do it? Where do you expect me to find the time?”

Probably, we suggested, in the same place we did, with the time we already spent on running the club.

He retreated, muttering, and suggesting that our attitude was poor. The word “insulting” actually floated back to us as he left.

It’s raining again, and although I have finished the blog post I have done no actual work, so I had better get on.

There is, I see, another strip of blue sky in the offing. This is good, even though experience suggests that it will be followed by more rain.

That, I suppose, is a metaphor for life, as well as the inspiration for the title.

 

Chips and Disappointment

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The chips were from last night. Number One Son and his partner were up in Nottingham and we went out for a meal in the evening. I had a rack of ribs and chips, plus corn on the cob, coleslaw and a visit to the salad bar. I like to think, particularly as I stuck to the small portion of chips, that it was a reasonably healthy meal.

It was the Harvester restaurant I have written about before, sometimes in complimentary fashion, sometimes less so. The food was good this time, the salad was fresh, appetising and even interesting, though the bread rolls weren’t particularly inspiring.

What I didn’t like on this visit was the notice from a parking company telling us that we had to key our car registration into the terminal in the restaurant or we would be fined £100. This sort of thing is becoming very common, as are tales of people being fined. It sets the whole evening off on a negative footing. We had something similar when we went to Tim Horton’s in Mansfield. After eating we found there was a barely visible notice in the car park telling us there was a time limit on parking. It  It was long enough and we hadn’t overstayed. On the other hand, if we had been wanting a relaxed and leisurely breakfast, the limit would have been enough to make it less relaxed.

Sticky Toffee Cake – Tagg Lane Dairy

We haven’t been back.

There are other eating places we can use that are of a similar quality and price to Harvester, and as a result of the car parking notice we will be more likely to use them in the future.

However, that wasn’t the disappointment. I thought of a book title while we were out at the garden centre today. It just came to me. Breakfast at Wetherspoons. For those of you overseas, it’s a national pub chain with a variable reputation, well known carpets and a place in British life. No, I’ve never been in one, but I thought it made a good title. Someone, disappointingly, has already used it.

Tch!

Toasted Teacakes

I thought I’d go for food as today’s photo theme.

D Day – 80th Anniversary

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US Navy Sweetheart Brooches

It’s the 80th Anniversary of D-Day today and lots of war veterans have been out on parade – the youngest is 98. It’s a sobering thought because when I started work I worked with several veterans of the Normandy campaign when they were middle-aged men. Now, when you see one they are positively ancient.

There are so many ways to develop the blog post from here- discussing modern generations and whether we would be able to step up like the WW2 generation, discussing whether we should also commemorate other WW2 anniversaries, or even discussing veterans of other wars.

Military sweetheart brooch

When I first started doing military research in local papers I was surprised to find that in 1914 it was quite common to see reports of the funerals of veterans who had served in the Crimean War (1853-56) or the Indian Mutiny ( 1857-58). Until then it hadn’t occurred to me that they were still alive at that point.

Then last Crimean War veteran we know of, died in 1939, as did the last Mutiny Veteran. A man who died in 1940 was probably the last participant, but as he was nine years old when he was at the Siege of Lucknow, he was not really a veteran.

Going further back, the last veterans of the Napoleonic Wars, died in the 1890s, apart for a lone Polish veteran who lived until 1903. These included the last British survivor of the War of 1812, who died in 1895.

In my lifetime I’ve seen the last Boer War veterans and the last WW1 veterans, and now I’m watching the last of the WW2 veterans. It’s quite possible that the last of them, as they are likely to live to be 110 or more, might still be alive after I am dead. I will do my best to outlast them but it will be close.

Lancashire Fusiliers Sweetheart

Watching occasions like this is always a sobering experience. However, it’s important to see it in perspective. The men of 1944 are just part of a line of veterans stretching back into history, just as some of the Pipe Majors remembering the exploits of Piper Bill Millin on D Day, are wearing medals given for service in Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, I think it’s important to remember that although D Day was important, there were many soldiers fighting their way up Italy or in the Far East at the time, and they don’t get this attention or thanks for their efforts. It’s good to think of them too at times like this.

WW2 Sweetheart Brooch – RAF Eagle carved from perspex (Lucite). Generally said to be from broken aircraft windows.