Tag Archives: cooking

The Ashes of my List

Got up later than I intended, had breakfast, drank tea, watched Lewis on TV. I didn’t see much of it originally and am enjoying watching the full run. I have watched 13 stories so far and have 20 more to go, though some are in two parts and I did watch a few of tha later episodes so, if I can remember them, I will skip them. The ability to catch up on Player like this is one of the few things i like about modern life. Along with anaesthetics and antibiotics I would name it as one of my top three favourite modern things.

I prefer Lewis to Morse. The title character is more human. So far I have only watched a few of Endeavour, the prequel, but will probably give them a go. Unfortunately it suffers from the presence of an overarching corruption/conspiracy plot line, and I’ve rarely found one that worked. Generally they annoy me, and strike me as a sign that the writers are running out of ideas. It’s just jumping the shark in another guise.

Unfortunately I didn’t have “watch Lewis” on my list, but I did, fortunately have “blog” so by answering my comments and writing this I have, at last, made a start. I’m going to make soup now and work out the recipe for tea. It will involve meatballs because I (lazily) bought some ready made meatballs on Saturday. This means that I don’t have to work out a tasty vegetarian meal, and that I don’t have to make meatballs, which are simple enough but just an extra task which I can do without. The ever-present danger is that I get to teatime, decide that I can’t be bothered, and get a takeaway. My healthy eating strategy is based on buying some convenient ready made things and avoiding takeaways.

That’s why I tend to buy meatballs, fish fingers, pizza bases and ready chopped onions. The first three are shortcuts and the fourth is out of consideration to my arthritic finger tips.

Despite this, it’s likely that I won’t be getting through much of my list today. Again.

Iranian Vegetable Stew

Good or Bad or simply Human?

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It’s about three weeks since I did any proper cooking. It was very tricky cutting veg, even with my big knife and various ingenious techniques. I hve confined myself to a few convenience meals and ringing for takeaways. I think I said that even the act of buttering bread or stirring cheese sauce was challenging – that’s how bad it’s been.

Today I am cooking roasted vegetables with belly pork. It’s so simple it’s hardly cooking but the cutting of vegetables makes it easy to compare with three weeks ago. It is so much easier I am cautiously forecasting a return to normality in the next few days. My main qualification for saying that is optimism rather than science, but what is faith without hope? Or charity?

Here’s a diversion for you. It’s always a surprise to think that the Gloster Gladiator what was basically a design from WW1 fought the Luftwaffe in WW2. For those of you who don’t follow links – this comes from Faith, Hope and Charity being the names given to three Gladiators that defended Malta. It was a bit more advanced than the Great War designs, but it really did belong to a different age, fighting with the RAF over France in 1939, in the Battle of Britain, Norway, Malta and the Mediterranean.

One of the pilots using the Gladiator, was Roald Dahl. I’m tempted to ask a serious question here, but I won’t. I will just mention that it just shows how complicated it can be to sit in judgement of people. Roald Dahl, anti-Semite and author i need of rewriting, as we are now told we must see him, was also Roald Dahl who risked his life many times to bring down the Nazi regime. Two of the earliest RAF casualties of WW2, by the way, were members of the British Union of Fascists.

Life is complex when you try to sort it out into good people and bad people.

“C’est la vie”, say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell.

I enclose the quote because you never can tell, and because you don’t often get a chance to quote Chuck Berry in a post about anti-Semitism and the BUF.

My Hibernation Plan

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Some days just don’t live up to their early promise. Today was one of them. I started reasonably early, and if staring at a blank screen had been on my list of activities, I would have nailed it. However, it didn’t, and I have to count it as a failure.

There is a pasta bake in the fridge ready for tomorrow, the washing up is done and the evening meal is about to go into the oven. It’s pie and roast vegetable. The gravy will be made by pouring boiling water onto gravy granules. It is, like me, simple.

Ironic that the Masterchef final is on to tonight. Watching it obviously does not improve my cookery skills.

I’m fairly sure that hibernating is not as easy as it looks, particularly as I get older. Waking up every few hours to use the bathroom seems to defeat the whole idea of hibernation. I want to sleep from November to 24th December and go back to sleep around 29th December until April. Based on my last stay in hospital, I may have an idea.

For those of you who don’t remember, that was the visit to hospital where the medical profession shoved a camera into a body orifice not designed to accommodate cameras, checked my bladder and sent me home with a plastic bag of urine attached to my leg for three months. Obviously not the same urine, I had to drain that, including, once, into my shoe after knocking the valve that controlled such things.

However, amusing as I find it in hindsight, it wasn’t fun at the time. The only good bit was that I spent three months sleeping through the night. At bedtime you detach the “day bag” and attach the extension pipe and “night bag”. You throw the bag on the floor, arrange the plastic tubing and go to sleep. Eight hours later you wake up, detach the night bag, dispose of the contents and attach the day bag.

I often dream of those carefree nights of sleep. The only problem is that when you are attached to a catheter you can’t help thinking about your own mortality. And then there’s the first night of non-catheterisation. After 12 weeks of urinating automatically, wherever you are and whatever you are doing (a bit like a mouse) it’s hard to fall asleep without worrying about whether you will wake up at the necessary times, or whether . . .

Perhaps I will stop there.

The top picture is to remind me it will be spring soon.

Day 98

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This morning my new office chair was delivered. Part of it was poking out of the box but it seemed to have escaped undamaged. Unfortunately when we opened the box another part was broken. The free next day delivery service seems to involve a lot of throwing things about and only a little padding.

To be fair, I got straight on the “live chat” section of their website and after ten minutes of chat and attaching photos it was all sorted. Packaging 0/10, customer service (so far) 10/10. However, I am waiting to see what happens before I become too optimistic. There’s a long way between promising something and delivering it.

In the evening I cooked roast veg, red cabbage, sausages and gravy and we had a healthy tea. I also cooked chickpea and sweet potato curry for Sunday. The plan is to make veggie burgers tomorrow as I had burger buns delivered tonight. Really we shouldn’t be eating all that bread but you can’t be good all the time.

This is my way of saving money and calories – if I have food and plans ready I am less likely to reach for a takeaway menu and the phone.

Chickpea and peanut butter thai red curry – almost chickpea and sweet potato

In between I put quite a lot of stuff on eBay for work and checked my medallion collection ready to start planning the talk. Miraculously, I found them all. They are in four different locations but they are all there. In size they vary from 16mm to 70mm so it’s not possible to house them all together. I’m thinking of ordering some new coin trays for one of my cases and in that case they might all go together, but that might just be an idle dream.

Top picture features vegetables that we were served at Carsington water in the days we used to go out.

Now, where was I?

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As far as the blog is concerned I’m eating cake in Derbyshire. In real life I am back in Nottingham, where I passed three increasingly unpleasant days at work and finally had a day of rest.

Today, Sunday, I had a lie in, read, shopped, snacked, snoozed and cooked.

As I speak, I am on the verge of serving ratatouille with Lincolnshire sausages, and also have a pan of vegetarian cottage pie filling simmering away. Tomorrow we will have the pie, with a topping of mash, and on Wednesday we will have the remains of the ratatouille, probably with a baked potato.

We used to serve Italian style sausages with the ratatouille (Italian style meaning British sausages with Italian flavoured fillings) but they cost more and didn’t taste as good as a Lincolnshire sausage.

They are also better for use in sandwiches, and tomorrow we will have sausage sandwiches for lunch.

And that, for the benefit of future researchers, is the way middle-aged men and their wives spent their winter Sundays in the early 21st Centuries. By the early 22nd Century you will probably need a license to own a sausage, or at least pay a punitive tax, and the use of plastic wrappings will be superseded by the use of potato-starch substitutes which can be composted or used as a topping on pies.

TESCO Top Valley – an hour later

While I was looking for a potato starch/plastic links I found this one. It’s one of my favourite subjects, but I wouldn’t advise reading it if you are eating. In the 22nd Century people will probably wonder why we ever thought cremation was a good idea.

Back to work.

On Thursday I was referred to as “disabled” by my co-worker. It’s funny what goes through people’s minds. We were discussing whether coin dealers would have made it to heaven in Egyptian times as we spend a lot of times destroying dreams when people ring up with a “valuable” coin. I checked this up – I think we’re OK. If you read this, it’s about doing good deeds, not necessarily about valuing coins.

We moved on to Christianity and he asked me if I thought I would still be disabled in Heaven or if all would be corrected. This was news to me, as I didn’t realise I was disabled. Anyway, as I pointed out, we don’t go to Heaven after we die, we have to wait for the general resurrection and, theologically, only need a skull and two femurs (the Skull and Crossbones) to gain eternal life, so I’m not sure a dodgy knee comes into play at any time.

I then asked him if he saw me as “disabled”. He changed the subject.

We then move on to a couple of days of him continually arguing with the shop owner about minor details of what we do. It’s like being in the middle of a divorcing couple. Fortunately I was given a set of ear plugs last week (the reason is too long and involved to explain) so on Saturday afternoon I put them in. It helped cut out some of the noise.

Wheels 2

Wheels 3

Wheels 1

Sometimes, when there is no other subject, I take pictures of wheels.

A Short Trip through a Shallow Mind

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So much to do, so little time.

I’ve just looked at my life, recoiled in horror, and tried to write a “to do” list.

Wash up

Cook tea

Clear my “desk” (which is a dining room table)

Watch TV and relax

Write a blog post

Write a poem

Dream up a way of making money

Start putting stuff on eBay

Cook the ratatouille for tomorrow

Wash up after cooking

Browse eBay

Do the photographs for my talk at the Numismatic Society (six weeks away!) Eeek!

Declutter

Organise my collection

Organise my underwear. Some of it is older than the kids. There is a definitely diaphonous quality to some of them, caused by the material wearing so thin a good sneeze might make them disintegrate. But I’m a married man, so I don’t need to impress anyone with the quality of my undergarments.

Read

Write another “to do” list – this one is getting too long

Read up on growing food from scraps as recommended by Higgledy Piggledy Mom

Visit Derrick and Tootlepedalto check on new developments in how to age disgracefully. A quick scan indicates that Derrick looks set to drown in pursuit of photography and TP has been watching a helicopter move a portable toilet. Jackie, the saint who is married to Derrick, has been photographing his antics, presumably for an entry in the Darwin Awards.

Write a list of all the other blogs I need to catch up with.

Lots of others.

Procrastinate. It’s not an entry you expect to see on a “to do” list but if I don’t procrastinate I’m going to have to start the washing up and make ratatouille.

Wrestle with conscience – Julia is out. If I ring for a Chinese takeaway she won’t know. I can wash away the evidence, mask the smell and…then I’ll tell her. I always do. I just don’t seem to be able to keep a secret. It means I lead a blameless life and never have anything on my conscience very long. I would make a dreadful criminal.

Ah well, washing up it is then…

The featured image is completely random.

Where does all the time go?

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Last night I came home, did the washing up I’d left to mature for a couple of days and prepared the evening meal. We had some leftover chicken, wrinkly carrots, bendy parsnips, over the hill mushrooms, softening onions and sprouting garlic. I then threw in some stock cubes, pearl barley and water.

I’m thinking of marketing a line of cookware with the motto “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here” featured on the logo.

With hindsight more water or less barley may have been better. And less cooking. I lost track of time and it ended up with a couple of hours on a very low heat. The result was a pearl barley risotto. I liked it, though I was surprised. Julia was equally surprised, and not quite so keen. She doesn’t always appreciate my deviations from the culinary norm, or the fact I hate wasting vegetables.

I watched TV with Julia, replied to comments on the blog, wrote 1,100 words in two parts, did the washing up again and made the sandwiches for today.

Then I fell asleep.

It really doesn’t sound like a lot of work when you consider it took the best part of eight hours. There was a slight nap involved (about thirty minutes – that’s all) and the TV probably took up two hours, so I suppose it becomes a bit more understandable.

Then there was today, which just seemed to fade away. I got Julia to work for 8.30, was at the shop for 9.00, bid on some ebay items by 9.30 and had several parcels packed by 10.00. After that it all became a blur and suddenly it was the end of another week – just one more day to go until Sunday.

Where do the days go, and the evenings and the weeks? In fact, where did this year go? Or my life, come to think about it. If the next twenty years go as fast as the last twenty I really don’t have time for naps.

Now I’m off to find photos for this post and to prepare myself for more postcode facts.

The picture is part of my collection that I found recently after some years in a dusty box – it’s a fund-raising flag used by the Foresters to raise money for their regimental war memorial at Crich.

New, but Not Improved

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Sorry about the lack of activity in the last few days. It seemed like I just went out like a light. I fell asleep in my chair on Friday night around 9 pm and didn’t waken until 3 am, despite the efforts of my family to wake me and make me go to bed. By that time I’d missed both my blogging deadline and my time for taking anticoagulants.

After that I developed a new snivelling cold, multiple aches in the joints and a need for more sleep. I managed to get to work on Saturday, including running the shop by myself on Saturday afternoon (as the other two sloped off for afternoon meeting of the Banknote Society) and slept all day Sunday.

I’m now re-launching the refreshed, but completely unimproved, new me.

It’s a modest relaunch because I’m also cooking roasted Mediterranean vegetables and, at 10.15, will be off to collect Number Two Son from work. This gives me twenty minutes to complete the cooking, serve it up, eat it (quickly) and get going.

It doesn’t give me much time for composing literary masterpieces.

Nickalls the fencer in action – we just sold his medals (as seen in the featured image) to a collector in China. He was the first fencer to win two titles in one year with the Universities Athletic Union – Foil and Sabre in 1935.

Quick Post

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We got stuck in traffic this morning and Number Two Son texted to say he’d seen us from the bus while he was on his way back from the night shift. Great use of technology!

Fourteen parcels to pack and a long slow queue at the post office. There was some light relief but I have no time to describe it.

A reasonable afternoon and some cooking.

A good talk at the Numismatic Society.

Chicken stew for tea. (Cooked earlier – good planning).

A fight with the new editor, which keeps throwing me out of the photographs.

Taking Number Two Son to work in the next few minutes.

I’m going to see what pictures it lets me use.

Crocuses

Loose Ends

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The header picture shows the bag of oats Julia bought from Heckington. They are produced at the Maud Foster Mill in Boston (yes, American readers, we have one too). She is determined that I am going to benefit from slow-release carbs and extra roughage in the coming year.

You’d have thought they would have stocked oats from their own mill, but it seems not.

I’m thinking of doing a series of posts on mills as there are plenty in Lincolnshire, and the surrounding counties, with many of them having tearooms attached. I’m trying to work a joke into posts/mills, or post mills but it’s not quite working yet. I’ll work on it as I think the world of mill blogs needs a joke or two.

Today’s work consisted mainly of washing windows and serving customers. This is a picture of the new shop, illuminated by sunlight streaming in through the newly cleaned windows. Once the building work is finished they are going to allow me to clean all the glass in counters and cabinets. As you can see, there will be a lot of work.

The new Collectors’ World in Nottingham

After work, we had roasted vegetables with belly pork and kale. It marks the start of my new healthy eating campaign. Well, healthyish. It’s a start.

Belly pork with roasted vegetables and kale

quercuscommunity

Life after the Care Farm