Tag Archives: stuffing

The Second Week of the Rest of My Life

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I took Julia to work this morning, shopped at Lidl despite what I said about them last week (it’s the lure of the bakery counter!) and came home. I did a bit of writing, replied to comments and read a few blog posts. I spoke to my sister, washed up and generally had what Julia will consider a lazy morning. It’s still better than it was, so I’m quietly pleased with myself.

I have downloaded Apache Open Office and am looking at it as a way of replacing Microsoft Office. It doesn’t have all the features of Office 365, but it doesn’t have the complexity or the cost. Refreshingly it doesn’t claim to be new and improved either. And so far it hasn’t lost any of my work. Office 365 has lost two pieces that I was working on yesterday. It’s the idiot/computer interface that’s the problem, rather than the inanimate software, but I can’t help thinking that I never had this problem with previous versions and that this isn’t Microsoft’s finest hour. I want to have my files on my computer, not squirrelled away in a cloud that I need an internet connection to access.

Yes, I know there are plenty of upsides to the system, but there are some big downsides too.

Open Office isn’t the most sophisticated of programmes, which suits me fine, but it’s nice to feel like you are in control, rather than in thrall to Microsoft.

Time for lunch now, and it’s a turkey sandwich for me. While we were clearing the freezer to make room for Christmas shopping we found a turkey crown.  This does not reflect well on our standards of housekeeping, or our memories. How do you forget something like that?

We decided it was better to eat it rather than save it as we didn’t want to spoil Christmas with ropey meat that had been in the freezer too long.

We had a roast dinner last night, with potatoes, parsnips, carrots, brussels, stuffing and gravy. It was very good, and even better because it was made for me. After tea I made sandwiches from the turkey on nice brown seeded bread with mayonnaise, cucumber, redcurrant jelly and stuffing. I’m going now, my sandwich is calling…

Header picture is a still life of a bored man waiting for his wife.

Some Thoughts on Sandwiches

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The high point of the day so far has been my lunchtime chicken sandwich. I sliced the meat from some chicken drumsticks we had in the fridge last night, added bread, mayonnaise and redcurrant jelly and ended up with sandwiches. They turned out to be rather nice. Even Julia said so, and she’s usually my sternest critic in the matter of sandwiches.

I would have liked stuffing on the sandwich too, but forgot all about cooking it until it was too late. I just checked what the Americans call stuffing, as it seemed a likely word for causing confusion. It seems that Americans call it stuffing if it’s cooked inside the bird and dressing if it’s cooked outside.

I know a local hotelier who calls it seasoning. I once asked him why.

“Well,” he said, “I have a three star hotel and provide a fine dining experience. I don’t want any of my staff asking a customer if they’d like stuffing.”

It’s back to cheese and pickle tomorrow. I like cheese and pickle.

I suppose this makes me appear both shallow and unadventurous compared to the sophisticated, cosmopolitan crowd that reads the blog so perhaps I should have pickled onions instead.