Boiling vegetables
Take vegetables. Cube them. I use carrot, parsnip, leek, onion, turnip, swede, sweet potato and potato. Sometimes I use garlic. This, when boiled, possibly with a stock cube, is “Vegetable Stew” and is served into bowls with a ladle. I sometimes add red lentils or pearl barley and also sometimes add shredded greens. If I transfer it to a wok and added fried onions and perhaps shredded greens and corned beef and season it with Henderson’s Relish it becomes “Hash”. If you give it a day and hit it with a hand blender it becomes “Vegetable Soup”. If you tweak the vegetables slightly (I’m not convinced of the merit of turnip or swede in curry, for instance, and parsnips can be disconcertingly sweet, it becomes “Curry”.
Liquidise
In days gone by it would probably have been called “pottage” and would have been the staple food of much of the population. Looking back down my family tree, it’s clear to see that I am just the latest in a long tradition of peasants. Fortunately I have not yet been reduced to gruel.
Yesterday, as I believe I mentioned, we had mixed vegetable soup. It was the surplus veg from the hash with added black pepper and a cheese and tomato sandwich. A posh meal for peasants, but simple compared to the things you see on cookery programmes.
Serve. Just like yesterday and the day before . . .
In the evening we had a variation on the stew theme – Sweet Potato and Chickpea Curry. I often use a can of tomatoes in it, but this time I used the leftover tomato soup from a couple of days ago. We also use vegetable soup for the same thing when we have it. Not sure if I’m brave enough to use broccoli soup or not. Probably not, it just doesn’t seem right.
I use bags of ready chopped onions – my hands aren’t what they were and buying like this avoids much frustration and cutting of finger tips
I was reminded last night, whilst watching TV, that writing things by hand engages different parts of the brain than typing. I was also reminded that it’s important, when checking things up, to avoid reading technical papers on the subject. I just spent ten minutes going through one paragraph. It turns out that writing with a western alphabet is different from writing in hieroglyphics or Chinese. I didn’t want to know that, or bend my head around so much Latin, and I know if I see “et al.” I have taken a wrong turn down the rabbit hole. It is written by a man with much knowledge and very little control of his words. They form paragraphs of brick wall proportions and clusters of words like thickets of thorns, holding me back rather than helping me on my way.
Cursive handwriting is better than writing in block letters for a number of reasons (which I skimmed. My decision on those two forms of writing is based on whether I want people to be able to read what I have written. Even I have trouble reading my own handwriting after a few hours, as I forget what I wrote and the squiggles that remain are of little help.
Inions and sweet potatoes – the suspense continues . . .
I’m going to have to look for a simpler version. I know handwriting is better than typing and want to go back to it (even though I hate typing my notes afterwards) but I can only vaguely remember what was said on the subject and can’t take much of any use from the paper I’m currently reading. I am feeling very stupid as I admit that, but that’s just the way it is. Think of Brave New World, we don’t all pop out of our test tubes as academics, some of us have to operate machinery.
I just found a simpler version. Writing by hand enhances memory and learning. The control of the pen, and sensory involvement, contribute to elaborate brain patterns which enhance memory and learning. It is important to include writing by hand in education, using pens and pencils instead of digital devices.
Add chickpeas and garlic paste as the sense of jeopardy escalates . . .
That is my sort of academic – knows stuff, connects it to real life and helps people learn. I feel more intelligent now. I am also going to make notes my hand rather than typing or cutting and pasting.
Add leftover tomato soup and simmer as tension reaches breaking point . . .
It’s a small step forward but a journey of a thousand miles etc. . . .
The final result – brownish food on brownish rice, with beige naan bread. I feel the end result may not have lived up to the sense of tension I tried to create.
