Tag Archives: red cabbage

Reflections on Knitwear, Quinoa and Ice Hockey

It’s been a mixed day, but at least I’m back on the blog and feeling enthusiastic. I even took some video of clothes going round in the washing machine. It’s not very exciting – the excitement came later when I emptied the machine containing six of Julia’s jumpers. It turned out that the spin cycle wasn’t up to much on that machine and I ended up with seven wet jumpers (my contribution being a modest single item), a pool of water on the floor and, it later turned out, a drier that wasn’t up to the job.

I won’t bore you with the video. Partly out of consideration for my valued readers, but mainly because I can’t get it to download properly.

The damp jumpers are currently draped over a variety of convenient items in the bathroom.

I think we need to have a talk about knitwear. Why one small woman needs her own bodyweight in knitted garments I really don’t know.

I’m going to start going to the laundry later – it can be quite hectic at 8am as we all try to get in before the rush, but at 10am it was empty again and quite relaxing. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to rush, despite all the talk of eating frogs.

You can take pictures when nobody is there.

After writing a menu for the week, which is going to be healthier and better structured than I’ve been managing recently, I then went shopping.  It was a special day today, with everything set up to make it difficult for a man having a bad joint day.

One of the doors is still jammed, people seemed to be targeting me like something in a chariot race and then the trolley wouldn’t release the £1 coin. I’m seriously thinking of writing a letter so TESCO can ignore me.

I also noted some unusual items in the bins they use for collecting for the Food Bank. Quinoa and Couscous?

Don’t get me wrong – people using food banks deserve good food, but I’m a little sceptical that there are many eaters of Quinoa and Couscous amongst the typical users of food banks. Some collection points specify the types of goods they want, and I’ve never seen either of these on the list. They aren’t generally on my list either, but this week I happened to buy both as I’m going to be eating healthier lunches.

By the time I finished shopping the light had gone so I went home to prepare red cabbage and put the gammon joint in the oven.

Finally, on looking at some internet pages relating to the Winter Olympics, I ended up looking at our medallists for the first Winter Olympics at Chamonix in 1924. We aren’t particularly good at winter sports and it took us from then until Sochi in 2014 to win four medals again – a gold, a silver and two bronzes. We’re currently on four again, a gold and three bronzes, so people are getting excited. My experience of British sport indicates we’re heading for disappointment yet again, but you never know, I may be wrong. Perhaps our famously unlucky speed skater might stay upright until the end of a race. Or perhaps not…

If she does, we will have to make a film of it. Disqualified three times at Sochi, crashed twice at Pyeongchang and has one last chance to fulfil her destiny. It would be brilliant if she did.

It would make a better story than the British Ice Hockey team at Chamonix. At least eight of the ten were Canadian, Wiki is silent on the place of birth of the remaining two, though I suspect they were probably Canadian too. Several of them had interesting careers, particularly Blaine Sexton. It’s an interesting link, particularly the picture of him in the uniform of the Windsor Swastikas, in the days when they were one of three teams using the name, and Swastikas were merely seen as interesting good luck charms.

I’ve always thought of  people swapping between nations as a symptom of the moral bankruptcy of modern sport. Looks like I was wrong.

 

 

 

Simple Cookery from a Simple Man

My soup recipe just got even lazier because TESCO are now doing vegetable packs specifically for soup, with everything cut small and mixed with onions and chilli. Add water, a stock cube and a hand blender and you have soup. I put garlic in this one too. And a few extra onions.

At this time of year our kitchen is so cold you can leave it in a pan on top of the cooker with no need to use the fridge. We’ve had it for tea once and I’ve had it for lunch three times. The rest will go in the vegetable curry tomorrow.

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Sweet potato, butternut squash, onion, garlic and chilli soup

We also had the lazy pie this week.

Chop leeks, celery, chicken, mushrooms and tarragon.

Soften the veg and brown the chicken, Stir in some flour and milk to make a sauce bit and bung it in a pie dish.  We had a gammon joint this week too, so I cubed some of it to make this a chicken and ham pie. This is optional.

Then unroll a sheet of ready-made puff pastry, cut off a bit about the size of the pie dish.

Argue about who had the pastry brush last.

Pour a little milk on top of the pie and rub it round lightly with your finger tips.

Add “pastry brush” to the shopping list.

Cook until it”s brown on top. This takes about 40 minutes if you put it in the oven cold but I really don’t see the point in heating up an empty oven first.

Serve with whatever veg you have. We had brussels and red cabbage (which I make in quantity and eat all week).  With hindsight I could have selected a less environmentally damaging combination. Think methane.

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Chicken Pie and vegetables – sorry about the smudge on the lens

I know ready-made pastry and “parachute pies” (ones with just a top and no bottom) are all frowned on on serious pie circles, but ask me if I’m bothered. It’s crispy, it’s flaky and it tastes good. You don’t need all that stuff underneath.

This cooking stuff really is quite simple. I can’t really see how so many people seem to be able to make a career out of it with TV and cookery books and  such. As for Delia Smith being made a Companion of Honour “for services to cookery”, well I am, for once, speechless…

Why have my hands turned purple?

Well, we’ve wrapped presents for the bran tub on Saturday, sorted out the Santa presents, put up more decorations, eaten sweets, fed the animals and chased a duck in the half-light to get it back in the barn. Turned out to be a wild duck attracted by the duck noise, and duck food, of our resident group.

I had a go at photographing the poultry, but as you can see, they have a sixth sense for spoiling a photo – almost like the auto-focus alerts them. Then it’s head down, turn round or do something else unsuitable.  I gave up after these shots. That’s why I’ll never be a top wildlife photographer. That and the lack of lions in the Screveton area.

 

I now have enough red cabbage in the oven to feed a large group of visitors, and by good fortune I also have a large group of visitors booked in for tomorrow. They are planting trees and having lunch. There will also be sausages on the menu (including vegetarian and gluten free options), baked potatoes and those posh little carrots I can never remember the name of.

The words “red cabbage” will have alerted you to the answer to the title question I suppose. It was simple, but I am, as ever, short of inspiration for titles.

The Woodland Trust sent us copies of their report with pictures of the Quercus group in it, which will cause some excitement on Wednesday when we hand them out. They would have caused some excitement today but the postman delivered them to the wrong address and we didn’t get them until after they had left. There were only 60 houses in the village at the end of the 19th century and I’m willing to bet there aren’t many more now. What are the chances of a wrongly delivered letter?

Apart from speculating on that all that is left to do is clear up and do some last minute shopping for tomorrow.

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