Saturday 31 January 2009

Goin' fishin'


DAVE C is off on his fishing holiday shortly. Deep sea fishing is his passion, even if he hardly ever catches anything. (His wife went with him on one occasion and she caught more than he. Beginners luck, no doubt, but he's never offered to take her again!) Unfortunately, he's off to the Gulf of Mexico, where sea fishing is out of season. He never thought to check the worldwide fishing calendar before he booked his trip. "I'm not paying sixty quid a day for a boat and crew if I can't catch anything," he tells us, grumpily. Poor Dave. At least he'll get some sunshine, though.

Our own holiday plans are on hold at the moment, until this kitchen business is sorted out. My Good Lady is still keen on a trip to Borneo, to revisit the place of her birth and early childhood. If we do go, though, it's more likely to be towards the end of the year than the beginning. Maybe we can squeeze in a short sojourn in Italy. I quite fancy that. We shall see...

I'm not sorry it's the weekend. It's been a tiring week, this. I'm looking forward to just loafing around the house, and enjoying the chicken we're planning for Saturday's roast.



Wednesday 28 January 2009

Kitchen men


THE FIRST kitchen designer was here for only about half an hour; the second, today, stayed for over two hours. The first gave a cursory measurement of the room, asked what we wanted, and promptly left. The second gave us the full spiel, about the virtues of this kind of cooker as opposed to that, this type of work surface rather than that, the suitability of these units instead of those. If the first chap was a little glib, the second was exhaustive – and a little exhausting. We’re expecting the third man on Thursday and I’m hoping he’s something in between the two.


For my experimental cook today I do us a lamb hotpot, using some condensed Scotch Broth soup as a base for it. I serve it up with Lyonnaises potatoes – sliced spuds sautéed with onions. It’s pretty good, if a bit oily.

Later, My Good Lady and I watch a recorded old movie, Night Train to Munich, starring a very youthful Rex Harrison, and directed by Carol Reed in his pre-Third Man days. It’s an amusing little romp, very English and quite undemanding.

After I tuck MGL up in bed, I think over our plans for the kitchen. The trouble with both designers it that they specialise in the minimalist styles of kitchen, which I’m still not entirely convinced about. The Thursday man is much more in the English traditional style, so maybe he’ll prove to be the winner. Hope so. I’m beginning to find my own indecision a bore.

Monday 26 January 2009

Lethargic Sunday


THE LAST few days seem to have been sleep catch-up time for me. I go through these phases. For long periods I sleep for about five hours a night, with little top-up naps to help me along. But then I go through periods when I need to sleep the clock round – almost for twelve hours at a stretch. The trouble is, far from feeling refreshed by these lengthy snoozes, I seem to end up more lethargic than ever.


And that’s me today. I drag myself through the housework. I dust and vac the kitchen, wash down the bathroom, even shift the sofa in the lounge in order to vacuum underneath it. By the time I finish I’m flagging badly. And I’ve still got dinner to do. It’s still a little too early to start on that, though. I suggest to My Good Lady that we pop out to our village local for an hour’s relaxation, and to my relief, she agrees. We both seem in need of a little pepping-up.

Luckily, dinner this evening is one of my quick veg and prawn stir-frys. I just use up whatever spare vegetables we have in the fridge, plus a little chilli and a handful of prawns. Nice and easy, and very tasty. We wash it down with a wonderful Australian Semillon, Maria’s Block 2006, crafted by one of our all-time favourite winemakers, Bob Berton. Feeling a little brighter now we watch a recorded episode of Numb3rs, but then MGL decides to call it an early night herself. I put her to bed, then go about my regular evening chores – washing up, then shower and finally coming on here. Tired, though, I still am, I know there’s no point in my going to bed yet, I simply won’t sleep.

Friday 23 January 2009

Another Thursday


FOR MY experimental cook day, today, I do us a hearty beef casserole in a red wine stock with chestnut mushrooms. And even if I say so myself, it’s very good, very comforting and tasty. Just the sort of food you need to warm the old cockles on a cold winter’s day.

And cold it certainly is – one of the coldest winters we’ve experienced in many a year. We visit the farmers’ market to stock up on provisions, and only a couple of hardy souls have stalls up outside in the yard. Everybody else has sensibly gone indoors, into the church hall. Even inside, though, only half the stalls are manned – the first market of the year is evidently a quiet one. Still, we manage to get most of our shopping – a pork joint for roasting on Saturday, and some diced veal for another casserole, later in the month.

We go home for a spot of lunch and I prepare the casserole for this evening. It’s to cook for about two and a half hours in a very slow oven, so we’ve plenty of time. To escape the tantalising aromas issuing out of the kitchen, we pop along to our local for an hour or so. There, unfortunately, we bump into an old acquaintance.

How can I describe A? A man in his late forties, who has spent his whole adult life obsessing about money. Somehow, business success is his raison d’être, and he feels he needs to constantly justify himself – endlessly justify himself. His spate of patter is unending, and he’s able to persuade himself of the truth of everything that comes out of his mouth. He’d make a really great used car salesman, because I think he truly believes the things he says, even if, a moment later, he’s arguing the exact opposite. I’m tempted to say he’s a sad case, but that would be unfair. In his own eyes, at least, he’s prospering very nicely thank you – as the competition goes to the wall, he’s making money hand over fist. At least that’s what he claims. And it may even be true, who knows. But he doesn’t exactly make for the most stimulating of companions.

We finish our drinks and hastily make our excuses to get away. “I have something in the oven,” I tell him, honestly. As My Good Lady and I walk away we breathe a sigh of relief. There’s no malice to the man, but dear, oh dear, he can be a bore!

Wednesday 21 January 2009

The great kitchen hunt


THIS KITCHEN planning business is more complicated than I first realised. Not only do you have to choose the kind of finish you want – and some cabinet ranges run to some 2,000 plus finishes – you also have to select everything from the kind of lighting you need to what you’ll lay on the floor.


Over the last couple of weeks we’ve seen a bewildering range of kitchens and kitchen appliances, from the cheap and cheerful – fully fitted kitchens from under £600 – to the glossy, ultra modern (and mainly German) kind which run to more than £10,000.

And I may say I’ve found fault with nearly all of them!

At best none of them has given me that wow-factor that I’m looking for. At worst, I’d think I was cooking in some weird, futuristic, sci-fi kitchen – something so clinically sterile that I’d want to use it only once and then throw it away.

So, the great kitchen hunt goes on. We’ve one more shop to visit on our shortlist, and if it’s still no-go we’ll have to broaden our search area.

And there was I thinking it was going to be easy!

Friday 16 January 2009

Thursday - and mainly of food things


I LIMP along as we visit the butcher – the damp weather seems to have set off the arthritis in my foot. Anyhow we buy the meat for the weekend: some kidney to go into a hotpot for tomorrow, and a joint of well-hung rib of beef for our Saturday roast. We flinch a little at the cost, though; I tell the butcher that my wallet has just had a heart attack.


“Just as well that you weren’t buying lamb, then,” he says. “It’s nearly doubled in price over the last three months.”

Puzzled, I ask him why.

“Oh, it’s to do with the weak pound. The French and that are coming to the south of England to buy up all our meat, especially the lamb. It’s dead cheap for them now.” And he adds, with a smirk, “The beef’s gone up a bit too, but they’re not so keen on that! They’re still a bit suspicious about mad cows I think.”

We swing by the Pub, then. Only our second visit this week. Little B enquires about any plans for our last-Monday-of-the-month meal out, but nobody’s mentioned anything yet. And maybe nobody will. It’s still all a bit too close to Christmas for comfort. Even the Pub has had to cancel its Burns’ Night, tonight, for lack of bookings. We’re still a bit shell-shocked ourselves, and we know others in the group are in no better a state. Everything from finance problems to family health concerns seems to be our lot at the moment. We shall see, we tell him.

Evening. And old favourite dish for dinner this evening, Floddies - rosti-like mini pancakes with bacon and onions, served with baked beans. Very tasty! Later still, though, I find myself almost aching with tiredness. Nearly a week of broken, sleepless nights has taken their toll on me. An early night is definitely in order.

Wednesday 14 January 2009

Musical form


I’M SOMETHING of a musical freak, in that I don’t have a loyalty to any one musical form. In any given week, you might find me listening, say, to Berlioz’s
Symphonie Fantastique, and then to the Beatles’ 1967 masterpiece, Sergeant Pepper. At the moment, I’m listening to French pop from the 1960 onwards on internet radio.

If I have to pin myself down, though, to any one musical form, I suppose it has to be jazz. My great musical hero is not Mozart or Beethoven, but Miles Davis – and I make no apology for putting him into the same sentence as the Classical/Romantic masters. To me he’s right up there with them.

But that’s not quite what I want to talk about. Today, I listen to a couple of radio programmes, from which I derive great pleasure. One is about the fascinating relationship of blues singer Billie Holiday and brilliant jazz saxophonist Lester Young. Something about the way these two greats fired off each other to produce work which, really, transcends conventional definitions of musical form. Their recordings together are simply sublime.

The other programme (both on the excellent BBC Radio 4) is the story of two iconic works: Kurt Weill’s
Mack the Knife and Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Both controversial in their day, both – even today – makes purists grind their teeth with disapproval. I don’t know why, but this very fact alone fills me with glee. I’ve always been fascinated by people who push out the boundaries, who, by daring to risk ridicule and disapprobation, force us to re-evaluate our lives and our values, and to challenge us in our complacent sense of what we consider normal. They don’t necessarily make us feel comfortable, but my goodness, how dull would life be without them!

Monday 12 January 2009

Dishwasher-safe?


IT’S A PESKY nuisance, our old dishwasher. It came with the house. I suspect the previous owners knew it was on its last legs, and hence made us a present of it. In the eight years we’ve owned it, we’ve used it maybe half a dozen times. With only the two of us, we rarely generate sufficient washing-up to justify its use. The wash cycle takes around three hours, and from the sound of the water slooshing around in it, it clearly takes more than the bowlful that I require when I do the job by hand.



An acquaintance of ours suggested we fill the dishwasher with several days’ worth of plates and things, and that way, by running it with full loads it will be more worthwhile. I decide to give this suggestion a try. So, since Friday, I’ve put all our dirty plates and cutlery into the machine. After the Saturday roast, in go as many of the utensils as I can manage. The trouble is, though, a lot of our stuff is of a pre-dishwasher age and so needs the tender loving care of a hand wash, anyhow. Moreover, we don’t have so many items going spare that we can leave them lying around for days on end, so we’re constantly diving into the machine to retrieve, say, the Pyrex measuring jug or the butter knife.


After this evening’s dinner I have no choice but to use the machine, otherwise, tomorrow, we’ll be dining off the tablecloth with our fingers. I try to fill the powder compartment with appropriate detergent only to find it has turned to lumps of rock in the bottle. I dig the stuff out as best I can, then I pound it back into powder form and pray that it will still work. Finally, I shut the door and turn on the power. Much groaning and rattling issues forth from the inside of the machine. The whole thing looks as if it is shaking itself to pieces. It settles down to a washy-sounding hum. All’s well, I hope. I go off and watch some telly while the machine in the kitchen goes through fits of noisiness and splashing. Finally, all goes silent. I venture in to inspect the results of the wash – and that’s when I discover that the powder compartment cover, which should spring open automatically, is tightly shut. All our plates and glasses and cutlery and pots have just had a three-hour soak in clean water! Some people should definitely not be let loose near machinery of any kind.


The only good thing is, after that soaking, the plates etc. are a breeze to wash by hand!

Sunday 11 January 2009

Memories of "Van"

I’M IDLY flicking through various websites, as you do. I glace at some of the weather sites for Vancouver, British Columbia - when we were out there last May, the mountains behind the city still had several feet of snow on them. Surely, in view of the weather we’ve been experiencing, here in dear old Blighty, it must be even worse out there. But no, it seems not, it’s much the same really – rain and freezing temperatures, by turns. I recall we had quite a bit of rain during our stay, too, although these wet days alternated with blisteringly hot ones.

Memories of Vancouver – “Van” the locals call it – led me to look up the hotel where we stayed, and I’m pleased to see it’s still there and appears to be thriving. The Wedgewood Hotel on Hornby Street, in downtown Van, really is a grand old place, full of overstuffed, comfortable furniture and with original oil paintings on the dark, wood-panelled walls. The bar and restaurant, there, are definitely two of the city’s “in” places, where on any given evening the well-dressed like to be seen wining and dining; on the other hand, there was nothing snobbish about the location, nothing that made My Good Lady and I feel uncomfortable or out of place, notwithstanding the pair of scruffs that we usually are. Maybe it’s a testament to the warmth and friendliness of Vancouverites, and of the west coast Canadians generally (I can’t speak about other parts of that vast country.

Other abiding memories of Van include the city art gallery, where we first discovered the work of Emily Carr, of historic and slightly sinister Gastown and the oriental splendours of Chinatown, and my long day of pushing MGL in her chair around the full circuit of Stanley Park – about eight miles in all! (I definitely earned my pint of beer in the hotel bar on that day!)

The one criticism I have of the city is the number of tramps that you encounter, and who loiter in considerable numbers in the vicinity of the posh, very expensive, designer shops and restaurants in and around Robson. I saw one literally on bended knees, hands together in supplication, begging passers-by to drop something into his upturned cap. The aggression with which some of these vagrants approached people was a little alarming compared with our own politer-seeming down-and-outs. I know you are advised, as a visitor to a foreign country, not to give money to beggars, but had one of them actually approached us, I’m not sure I could have obeyed this injunction.

This aside, we really enjoyed our visit to Van, especially when we recognised scenes from TV series like The X Files and Highlander. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll get the opportunity to go back there.

Thursday 8 January 2009

A small culinary success

ONCE A week, at least once a week, I have an experimental cook day. This entails my trying out something I haven’t done before – a new recipe, perhaps, or a novel culinary skill. Maybe it’s just like today’s, a different way to prepare a chicken casserole.


I take a couple of chicken breasts – purchased for the purpose the other day from our excellent butcher – and I make sure they are skinless and have as little fat as possible. Both breasts are then buttered all over and placed in a casserole dish, along with some generous seasoning, a handful of roughly cubed mushrooms and a good sprinkling of chopped fennel from the garden. I then pour in lemonade – yes, ordinary lemonade! – and cover the dish with foil before popping it into moderate oven for fifty minutes. I serve these with sautéed potatoes and minty garden peas, and I must say I’m inordinately chuffed with the result. Very tasty indeed! Happily, too, is My Good Lady’s choice of wine, a delicate Sicilian Pinot Grigio, which compliments the meal perfectly.



One of my modest culinary triumphs!

Tuesday 6 January 2009

Packing away and starting over

SO, OUR little tree comes down for another year. Away go the fairy lights and the baubles and the Christmas cards are packed off for recycling. The end of another season of festivities, and a long one it’s been, too. My Good Lady is still snuffling and spluttering a bit, although, admittedly, not as badly as over the last two weeks. I seem to be suffering from a persistent, niggling sore throat, which doesn’t exactly bode well – it’s frequently like this with us, as soon as she recovers from one of her bouts I end up going down with it. At least I’ve managed to catch up with my Sunday household chores, and today we’ve done the first big supermarket shop of the year – hopefully, this should keep us going for a while, even if I go down poorly.

Sunday 4 January 2009

Plans and resolutions

WE'RE IN the process of making some New Year plans and resolutions. Amongst them are the discussions of what we require for our new kitchen. Some of the old units are falling apart, literally! Moreover, the room is in dire need of a redecorate; the carpet tiles are filthy and starting to curl at the corners, while the wallpaper hasn't been changed since we had the house rewired, about four years ago. As soon as My Good Lady has fully recovered from her cold, we're off to the January sales to see what we can find.

Our other resolution concerns the Pub. How on earth have we ended up going there quite so frequently? If we miss a single day we seem to be on the receiving end of phone calls demanding to know if we're still alive, and if so where are we. Somehow, the assumption is that we'll be there, ready to give such assistance and companionship as is required. And yet, I get the feeling that we're not regarded as proper "locals" at all, at least not by some of folk we know. There was a Christmas party held at the Pub, meant for all the regulars, and nobody even thought to mention it to us! Similarly with some of the Christmas and New Year parties - not that we would have actually attended any of them, our days of such gallivanting are well and truly over - but the thought would have been nice. The result is a rather hurtful feeling that we're being taken for granted. "Oh, the Fox and his Lady, they'll be here, they'll do it, they'll help, they'll give us a lift, no question!" We do have some good friends at the Pub, people whose company we cherish, but others are going to have to look elsewhere to find a pair of such helpful muggins.

Friday 2 January 2009

Greetings and apologies

NEW YEAR GREETINGS TO EVERYBODY!

We start off the New Year in traditional style, with a cold, on My Good Lady's part, and with me being frustrated by the ever more complicated business of Information Technology. MGL's colds, of course, are as seasonally traditional as turkey, so nothing new there. But it means that I'm in charge of dinner today, and for my first culinary effort I do us a Hampton Pie - a thing using leftover gammon and topped with mashed spuds. I serve it simply, with some Heinz baked beans. Very tasty it is, too, and quite filling, and on the whole, in these credit crunch days, fairly cheap.

I must also offer readers my apology for not have posted any blogs - or anything else for that matter - for nearly two weeks, but this was due to circumstances beyond my control. We initiated the process of changing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the run up to Christmas, and of course the change-over took place bang on the Eve of the festivities. Unfortunately, the old router was dedicated to the old ISP and simply would have no truck with the new one, so there we were, left high and dry, cut off from the cyber world. A dismal experience it proved to be, too, without a voice, without a window, without radio even...

Yesterday I finally managed to locate the young genius who tends to our computing needs. He came along with a whole new bag of tricks for us to play with, some of which I'm only just beginning to explore. Anyhow, both our machines are up and running - it seems they can communicate with one another wirelessly, chatter boxes that they are. Needless to say, though, I feel as if I'm back in the dunce's class at school, trying to figure out how this bit of kit fits in with that bit. It's always the same, as soon as I begin to half-understand it all, they go and change it and I'm back to square one. C'est la guerre!

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