Tag Archives: brown sauce

Carrot & Ginger Soup

Carrot Recipes and Procrastination

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Vegetables – Carsington Water

I’ve just been looking up recipes for carrots as we have plenty (partly because of my faltering good intentions regarding soup) and because they are good for us. We have Pasties for tea because Julia spotted some on special offer and bought them. She does that. She also bought meatballs. We already had sausagemeat for me to make meatballs, so that had to go in the freezer. I don’t mind her buying stuff, but I do wish she would (a) cook it herself instead of expecting me to make something of her varied choices and (b) think about the food we already have in before she adds random ingredients. None of this applies to burgers. If she wants to bring burgers home, I’m all for it.

Carrot recipes on the internet fall into four main categories – carrot cake, orange soup, added to potatoes for rosti/fritters, and roasted. There is a subcategory of roasted – roasted with exotic names and ingredients. So tonight we are having roasted carrots with parsnips and asparagus. And you are correct, I didn’t need a recipe for that. I just wasted 20 minutes looking at useless recipes before deciding on what was already in my head.

Tonight we will be having Ginster’s Cornish Pasties on Special Offer with carrots and parsnips (oven roasted in a pretentious manner – or manière prétentieuse as we top chefs call it), seared asparagus spears (which means you can scorch them a bit without anyone complaining), and sauce brun. I like brown sauce on my pasties. I like brown sauce on nearly everything. The fact that brown sauce improves most of my cooking is, I fear, a comment on the quality of my cooking, rather than a compliment to the culinary qualities of brown sauce.

Pie, gravy and roasted veg

 

The Brown Sauce Solution

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Sorry if the header photo startled you, but I’m struggling for something suitable and thought I’d carry on the pink theme. I know it will be a controversial choice, particularly with Julia, but what is life without a little controversy to spice it up?

It’s the early hours of the morning, Storm Jorge is howling outside, though there is, as yet, no rain, and the internet is full of dire predictions of a “weather bomb”. This is good (in a way), as it means people have stopped talking about coronavirus. I suppose when you are faced with floods and gales the less immediate stuff, like the possibility of picking up an exotic illness, becomes even less important.

Fortunately, being on top of a hill, flooding is unlikely, though I am always a little wary of the wind. Being on top of a hill may be great as a preventative against flooding, but it does tend to be a bit breezy.

I keep thinking of that mystery researcher who will be using my blog in 100 years to do a PhD on Stupidity in the Early 21st Century. Or however an academic would dress it up.

The monarchy is crumbling. We have withdrawn from meaningful politics. Coronavirus is going to kill us all. Boris Johnson has started breeding again. And the weather is getting steadily worse.

But, they will say, despite this the subject seemed more upset at having to eat a bacon sandwich without brown sauce (a popular working class condiment of the time) than he was about the breakdown of society, world recession and global warming. And, dear reader, my future academic researcher would be correct.

You see, I can correct my bacon sandwich problem. I am not able to mend the Royal Family, reboot British politics, cure coronavirus, castrate Boris Johnson or put an end to the excess wind (see previous comment about politics). But I can go to the shop and buy a bottle of brown sauce.

I have decided that as from today I’m going to worry as little as possible and that when I do worry I’m going to worry only about the things I can change.

Global warming – recycle more, use less plastic, eat less meat.

Fossil Fuels – drive less, save up for an electric car.

Bacon Sandwich – buy some sauce.

Politics, the Royal Family and Boris Johnson’s wedding tackle are all problems for someone else.

 

 

A Disastrous Day

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The day started with me waking early and leaping from my bed, full of joy and ready for action. I’m not sure why, and I should have suspected it was too good to be true.

Breakfast was good – cold sausage sandwiches with brown sauce. Not to everyone’s taste, I know, but I like them.

The journey to work was fair and I managed to park outside the shop, though some idiot had parked so badly they had managed to use two spaces. I’ll skate over the next few hours. The shop was hot and airless, we’re having a few problems on eBay and I have a co-worker with the acquisitive habits of a pack rat. If I put anything down on the desk – pen, tape, ruler, stamps or scissors – it mysteriously disappears and reappears in his work space. It’s an annoyingly inefficient way of working.

This all paled into insignificance after the horror that was “doing the laundry”.  I managed to get out of doing it yesterday but Julia cornered me tonight and we ended up in the launderette. It was hot. Someone had three driers going. And the woman who looks after it came in halfway through kept moving us so she could clean.

This was bad enough, but when we started to unload the machine at the end we found we’d ruined two of my pens by putting them through the hot wash.

I was devastated. They cost me 99p each. However, I’m a happy-go-lucky sort of bloke and am trying not to let it upset me too much.

Julia, on the other hand, is taking it quite badly.

It seems that black spots on white work blouses and brown linen tops are Bad Things. Very Bad Things.

I am not popular.

I’ve used a picture of Tim Hunkin’s dog from Southwold Pier – if he had a house we’d be sharing it tonight.