Tag Archives: turkey

Ready for Christmas

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We now have a frozen turkey crown, and I have a feeling of foreboding. Julia keeps remarking how small it is  (despite it being a chunk of meat the size of her head which will serve six people). I wonder what she’s planning for Christmas.

Meanwhile, that’s Christmas done for me. If the shops closed tomorrow we have enough food to see us through to Christmas. Admittedly some of the stuff will be tinned beans of various sorts, but we could get through, and we could have turkey for Christmas dinner. Fortunately this won’t happen, but it could. As soon as the freezer door closes on the main meat, I always relax.

Not me.

Obviously, things will be better with a supply of fresh veg, but the pressure is off. There shouldn’t really be any pressure, but it always feels like it is. Ideally we should just eat normally through Christmas, but it doesn’t seem to happen. When i lived on my own, I just used to eat my standard menu, or eat my favourite food as a treat. This does not include either chicken or turkey, if I’m honest. I’d probably just have bacon sandwiches for Christmas Dinner, or beans on cheese on toast. Or soup with a nice cheese and pickle sandwich on the side. I’m not a gourmet.

Tonight’s shopping was not satisfactory. The cauliflower was the size of a tennis ball and there were no courgettes. This means the cauliflower cheese will make a poor main course and there will be no ratatouille, and no courgette in the pasta bake. It’s a minor inconvenience compared to being homeless or out of work, but most lives are made up of such minor inconveniences. And that’s before you get to the avocados, which are a touch riper than I would like. I am sure that the eighteen-year-old me would be staring at this strange elderly man in disbelief. Are cauliflowers, courgettes and avocados now my life? At that age I’m not sure I’d ever eaten a courgette and avocado was a shade of green used in bathroom suites, not a foodstuff.

Life is a strange journey.

And again – not me.

Pictures are of a variety of Santa volunteers who helped out at Christmas on the farm.

Be Nice to Your Turkey This Christmas

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1995 Robin stamp

A while ago I wrote that Henry Kissinger, Alistair Darling and Shane McGowan had died. Talking of which, The Pogues and Fairytale of New York look like they will be big this Christmas. It’s a Marmite sort of song – some people love it, some hate it. Whatever you think of it, you can’t deny it’s been successful in the UK. I’m told it’s not as popular elsewhere, but that’s their loss. It peaked at Number Two on its original lease. Some years ago, in a programme about the best singles that only made it to Number Two, it came second. However, it’s topped many other lists.

In the last few days Glenys Kinnock (politician, wife of a politician, mother of a politician), Denny Laine (Moody Blues and Wings) and Benjamin Zephaniah have all died. Lots of other people have died too, of course, but it’s human nature to harp on about celebrities and ignore wars.

Robin at Clumber, Nottinghamshire

Neil Kinnock, husband of Glenys, once had a speech plagiarised by Joe Biden. I didn’t know this until five minutes ago. It just shows the benefits of blogging.

Benjamin Zephaniah was three weeks older than me but more successful and better known. Eight weeks ago he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. This is a lesson on the fleeting nature of life, and why it may be a waste of time to do too much planning for my retirement.

He wrote a Christmas poem (what with him and The Pogues this is getting quite Festive, isn’t it?

It’s here if you want to read it. Now you can see where my title came from today.

Robin at Rufford Abbey

A note on Robins – they are a very festive bird, but unlike a turkey they won’t feed a family of four with some left over for sandwiches.

Turkey. That’s it really . . .

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My “Friends At WordPress” as they sign themselves, tell me that I can secure the use of my domain name for another year at the old rate if I act quickly. As it’s only two months since I last did it I have to decide whether the saving is worth paying 10 months in advance. I suspect not.

Today I start my clearance activities. I want to lift the burden of junk that lies heavy on my life. This feeling will last for a few minutes then gradually fade away. My ability to stick to plans has become much depleted over the years. I think about this immediately after the WordPress comment as the two organisations seem to have the same sort of ethic regarding pricing – “jack it up every year and sprinkle the announcement with bullshit”. Entry level is announcing that they will be introducing “new and improved” features, which usually means new features and a variety of teething troubles. Advanced level is not bothering to pretend you are introducing anything new – just put the price up and fail to fix the old faults.

Yes, I’m in one of those moods.

I went for a blood test today as the one from a fortnight ago had slightly missed target. Just like last time I had to sit in a waiting room whilst a maskless kid ran round the room spreading germs and a maskless parent ignored them in favour of their phone. Same nurse as last time, but this time she hit the vein and took the blood faultlessly, as she normally does. So at least something went right today.

We’ve just done a bit of shopping and bought a frozen turkey crown. We thought e’d get in before the panic buying started, as the press are stoking up a frenzy of hysteria about turkey being short for Christmas. I’m not really bothered, as I’d happily eat a boiled parsnip for Christmas dinner as long as we have stuffing. It’s the company and the tradition I like (including the 34-year-old Christmas Card) rather than the food. I like the food too, but it wouldn’t spoil Christmas if we didn’t have it.

Now I’m going to start clearing junk from the house. Later I will write about how successful I have been.

Planning

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I’ve just been reading LA in Waking up on the Wrong Side of 50. She is very organised and has all sorts of plans in prospect for next year. This is in contrast to me – I’m vaguely aiming for 100 submissions next year, reading 50 books and that’s it. The planning centres of my brain are not very developed. She has blogging subjects planned until April. I am, as you may have noticed, writing a blog post, but I’m not sure what I’m going to write about once I finish this paragraph.

End of paragraph. Pause. I could write about procrastination, or the amount of staring blankly that I end up doing when I’m supposed to be “writing”. I just drifted off to leave some feedback on eBay and look someone up on the internet. I’m like a small downy feather floating on the breeze – never quite settling.

We are steadily moving through the backlog of food I over-ordered fro Christmas, a situation not helped by  me ordering more for New Year. We have carved all the meat off the turkey crown and frozen it. Tomorrow we will be having turkey and bacon pie and apart from a couple of lots of sandwiches, that is the turkey done.

The planned Celery and Stilton soup[ has become Cauliflower and Stilton Soup as the cauli looked like it needed using, while the celery is still crisp.

Next, I will catalogue a few medallions for an article I’m planning and then will trawl my mind for five haiku I need for a deadline (tomorrow). It’s hard going at the moment, but I will get through. Then it’s just the quality that poses a problem.

I have shelved another submission I was planning for tomorrow and then start work on two submissions for 15th January. A target of 100 isn’t going to hit itself.

Four Day Holiday – Shopping for a Month

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I finally lost my self-control and added a large pork pie to the Christmas food  order. Well, I haven’t had one for months and Christmas seemed like the ideal excuse. I’m going to make up for it by having more soup. Tootlepedal suggested celery and Stilton cheese and it sounds like a good idea. All I need to  do is persuade Julia. She’s not keen on celery. I am.

It’s fair to say that despite all my efforts I have manged to buy enough food for ten days (apart from fresh bread), so it should last us for what is basically just a long weekend. It’s fortunate that I have been making soup because I’m likely to have plenty of turkey and vegetables to use up. That’s probably the best bit of Christmas. I like sitting round, and I like a good roast dinner, but most of all I like turkey sandwiches.

Goosanders

That’s one of the good things about a turkey crown – plenty of meat and not much skeleton. It used to be hard, in the old days of whole turkeys, to escape the impression that you were some sort of serial killer as you laboured over a big pot of bones and boiling water. Turkey soup and turkey curry are OK, but it’s far easier just to have cold meat or sandwiches without all that bother.

Marsh Tit, I think

Two days ago, I submitted a haibun, expecting an answer some time in the New Year. It’s the first real submission I’ve done since September (the October one was a bit of a mess) and I have been sitting here gradually  leaking confidence. When then answer came back, I wasn’t hopeful. Quick answers are usually bad news. This one, for a change, wasn’t. Not only am I accepted but the editor in question didn’t ask for any alterations. I’m already feeling much more positive about 2022.

Now all I need to do is sort out my submission schedule and set myself some targets.

Photographs are from Rufford Abbey in December 2016, in the days when I could walk and take photos.

Cormorant

A Simple Day for a Simple Man

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I’ve just spent a happy morning in front of the fire chatting, eating chocolate and watching compilations of Christmas songs on TV. I am a simple man and this is all I need. This expanded to a happy afternoon doing the same.

I just spent five minutes trying to delete a surplus full stop from that sentence. One of my resolutions for next year is to keep my computer screen cleaner, as it turned out to be a small mark on the screen that lined up perfectly. This isn’t the first time it’s happened, but it always fools me.

As I said, I am a simple man.

I have my wife by my side, my firstborn nearby and the spare child checked in by some mysterious process which allowed his face to appear on a computer screen and tell me I was looking older. He is looking uglier and tubbier than last time I saw him. It is good to have all this modern technology to hurl abuse at family members who are thousands of miles away, though I’m not sure that when I first came across a “video phone” in a science fiction story that I would ever use one for this purpose.

After that I rang my sister using 19th century technology and delayed her until she had to go, because her oven was emitting smoke. Her cooker has either elected a new pope or burned her Christmas dinner. I fear it is the latter.

I’m now going to stalk a few of my regular blogging companions and see how their day is going. After that it is turkey and more TV. I also intend drinking some of the tea I have been sent as presents and rounding the day off with biscuits.

1995 Robin stamp

 

A Fresh Start

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I was so full of ideas this morning that I filled two pages of my A4 notebook before I even got my trousers on. It’s maybe not the most dignified of mental pictures, but it shows the wisdom of always keeping a notebook close to hand.

Most of them will, of course, not develop much further. I could feel that from a few of them as they hit the page and scurried across the book. Some will not be good enough to develop, though a few will be merged with other ideas. Some will, I confess, be illegible by the time I have another look. My handwriting is truly, and embarrassingly, terrible.

That will still leave plenty. It’s quite likely that some will never be developed simply because I move on to other things before finishing the list from this morning. That is the life of a poem. Sometimes it soars, but it, more often it staggers or simply slumps.

Sunset over Wilford, Notts

Sunset over Wilford, Notts

I really must get a grip. I have some haiku to finish, because they need to be submitted tomorrow. I also need to arrange my buildings insurance (which just means remembering to pay for it) and order the Christmas food. It’s only ten days to Christmas and I am not at all prepared. I’ve ordered Julia’s main present (which probably won’t get here until after Christmas) and a supplementary present which I hope will get here before Christmas. The post is unfortunately very random. In my defence, she didn’t tell me what she wanted until last night, so it’s not entirely my fault. However, we don’t currently have a turkey. I’m not that bothered myself, I’d be happy with a tin of corned beef and a sprig of holly, but everybody else expects turkey.

At the moment my only proper preparations for Christmas are two tubes of cheese footballs I bought several months ago, a Christmas pudding and a packet of stuffing. As preparations go, it’s not impressive.

Sunset over Wilford, Notts

Sunset over Wilford, Notts

These area few sunset photos I took last week. I’m not sure they were successful, looking at them in this size, but at least they are new.

 

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.

Panic, Sprouts and Parsnips

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I toyed with the idea of not posting today, but it’s a difficult habit to break. The only drawback to posting on Christmas Day is that people might think I’m a miserable, anti-social misanthrope with no friends, but if you’ve read the blog before you’ll know that’s a fair description.

We’ve had a reasonable Christmas. There was a minor panic yesterday when I realised that I had mis-calculated the cooking times. We have had a fresh turkey crown for so many years that, having bought a frozen one this year, I’d completely forgotten about thawing times. Buying a frozen crown made it easier to buy everything in advance but it did mean I should have started thawing the crown several hours before I actually thought of it.

I dropped Julia off at the shops and the way to work and she rang soon after to tell me that she had been able to buy a fresh turkey crown.

Panic averted.

Today, after a late start and a bacon sandwich, we opened presents, ate chocolate and watched TV before I started on the lunch.

This was turkey, stuffing, redcurrant jelly, pigs in blankets, Hasselback potatoes (done with goose fat), roast potatoes (ditto), roast carrots and parsnips (with cumin), stir-fried sprouts with chestnuts, Yorkshire pudding and gravy. The potatoes, when cooked with goose fat, were better than with olive oil, and made a good centre-piece for the meal.

After a number of successful quizzes on the net we are now watching TV again and eating Turkish Delight. It’s one of the things that defines Christmas, the only time we have Turkish Delight.

Tomorrow we will have another of those defining moments – the only time of the year we have turkey sandwiches.

Our casual Christmas was slightly disturbed by Number Two Son ringing to wish us a Happy Christmas. He is currently the facilities supervisor in a budget Toronto hotel, and spent the night dealing with rambling junkies before returning home to microwave a leftover McMuffin. Travel, as they say, certainly broadens the mind.

Finally, the report on last night’s Brussels Sprouts in batter. After a pleasant interlude consuming the nutty-tasting knobby greens, I can confirm that nothing untoward happened and I remained socially acceptable at all times. Apart from the fact that they are breeding less sulphrous sprouts these days, it appears that their famous capacity for inducing wind occurs mostly when they are over-boiled.

Recycled photos again I’m afraid – I didn’t think of photos until I was looking at an empty gravy-stained plate…

 

Mission Accomplished

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I went shopping this afternoon, with the outline of a plan in mind.

We now have a turkey crown in the freezer which claims to serve 6-8. It should do for three plus sandwiches. The pigs in blankets are next to it.

The gammon and smoked salmon are in the fridge with sufficient shelf life to last until Christmas.

We have stollen, we have nuts and we have seaweed crackers.

I already, as reported, have the cheese footballs.

That is it.

Christmas is in the bag. There are a few things left, but the essentials are in place and we are ready to go. I’m beyond worrying about the quality of the turkey – all I want is a stress-free Christmas and now we have the essentials there is no stress. It won’t be the best turkey we’ve ever had, but it’s in the freezer and Christmas dinner is guaranteed. It might be badly cooked, or burned, but it will be a traditional turkey disaster, and I will have done my job.

At one time I used to shop for a siege, but the shops will be open on Boxing Day so there really is no need to stock up. I may put some bread in the freezer, but that’s the limit of my extra buying.

Cards are delivered or in the post and a few small gifts for my co-workers are in place.

It is now 9.00 and Julia has just come back from seeing a neighbour. I am going to serve the evening meal now and bask in the smug satisfaction of knowing that if Christmas were to be moved forward, I am ready.

And as I write that I realise I haven’t bought the cheese…

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Edward Lear Stamps (1988)
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The pictures are minisheets of stamps – an extra way of making collectors buy more. They are buses, the Royal Family, Industrial Archaeology and Edward Lear. If we have room we just stick them on envelopes complete. Yesterdays’s collection is today’s postage, just as yesterday’s news is today’s chip wrapper.

Today’s poem is a cheery number that repeats that thought, though more elegantly, and with much more Latin than is usual in one of my posts.

Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam

Ernest Dowson

 

The brief sum of life forbids us the hope of enduring long. –Horace

 

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.