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Here’s a thing: last weekend we had a food-related party, swapping jams, chutneys and so on. Yesterday I caught up with some newspapers from a few weeks ago, and found an article relating to people living in the country, with ‘any social occasion’ (including meeting at the school gates) resulting in frenzied jam swapping.
The part of the paper this was in has two regular columns - one is a country perspective (written from someone who seems to have started living in the country more recently, and at times is rather bemused by it), another a very townie perspective (particularly that week’s one, where life anywhere other than in London is treated with a certain suspicion).
Nothing new, eh, but given that most of us swapping jams etc live in or near cities, I wondered if that makes us city bumpkins? Perhaps there’s a lot of us in that situation - we may have grown up in smaller places, have come to the city to study or work. Several years on, here we still are, enjoying a lot of the benefits of the larger place but hankering after some of the aspects of smaller places, such as being a bit closer to nature.
Maybe instead those of us who got together are foodies, or environmentalists, or both, responding to this particular economic phase: looking at the recession, natural resources reducing and so on, and having a spot of home production to go with it. Or it may be a stage in life, if trying to feed growing families. (Maybe we can get a group grant from Good Housekeeping, or the Guardian, if we feel particularly self-righteous about it…)
Maybe it’s part of (early?) middle age - enjoying the little things in life, simple pleasures like watching the colour of elderberries as they’re cooking away; doing a task that allows you to slow your brain down a bit. Maybe it’s the belated fun of the pick ‘n mix - swapping things means that I get to try other people’s food that maybe I wouldn’t have thought to make, or to sample something new amid the other familiar items.
For my part, it’s also part of a growing desire to be creative - to make things, have fun doing so, and share a bit of that with others, particularly if they enjoy that too. Yes, I’m doing it in part to avoid too much Christmas present shopping later, but also because I like the process of making things - particularly food-related things.
All of the above. But what matters this weekend is that the apple chutney I made in September is now tasing very good with cheese…
October 11th, 2009
Only one more this evening, I promise…that’s the trouble with writing about food, you always think you can fit another one in…in this case, one more blog post for the night.
One reason for blog absence in the last few months has been because of doing more stuff to our flat: this time, taking out the lovely fake fireplace in our bedroom (70s brickwork, anyone?), getting the wall replastered, plus new paint and carpet. A variant on the kind of things we had done last year, but with the added satisfaction of gaining a tool called a gorilla, for levering under bricks (and in the process worrying a few people who were trying to work out what on earth we were talking about on Facebook).
With the best of intentions, building projects don’t always finish when you intend…and some don’t quite get finished. But yesterday, we got some pictures back up on the walls, and had a sense of things being nearly done. Sometimes the list of DIY tasks sits unaltered for months, looking back at me reproachfully when I check in my useful notebook. But it’s great not just to tick them off the list - but enjoy the benefit of them as well.
One of the big gains, although not so much in feet and inches (or metric, for that matter), is some extra space in our bedroom where the fireplace and corner unit used to be. Now we can fit an armchair in, and start using the room for being somewhere quiet during the daytime or evening - in fact, I am writing from there. Sofas are quite fun for blogging from, but for now, armchairs are even better - particularly when I get a nice view of the sky when getting home from work early enough.
New rooms for old.
September 8th, 2009
I thought I’d write a food related post, just to flex the blogging muscles a little further. What I really meant to write about was starting making things again: jam, pickles, that sort of stuff. But that title just slipped in there…so I’d better try to incorporate it.
Seeing some friends recently, one spoke of the Economy Gastronomy series and book: encouraging us to get more meals out of our ingredients, as it were. Others have written on this before, under ‘100 ways with mince’ and other such inspiring terms (see, I knew I could make the connection sooner or later). But it’s quite fun not just to use free ingredients for cooking (last year’s stock of brambles in the freezer, for example), but to look at how to use what I’ve got in already, in different ways.
I don’t really want extra uses for mince, I suppose. But turning a rice and veg set of leftovers into little savoury burgers - that might be different. Or making things that I might otherwise have bought, such as flavoured oils. (I’d better not mention too many, or there will be no surprises left for my family at Christmas.)
I know it probably sounds too ‘knit your own yoghurt’ for some, but I have decided to make food related presents for family this year. Partly I think I’ve used up most of my good present ideas for them already; for some, they are not really looking for Things at this point, but Useful Presents of a food nature might just slip in under the wire.
What’s more, it’s been fun. Making maybe one thing a weekend, I’m trying some new things, or making extra of others that I already like, and know others like too. I’m not yet doing the bumper batch of Lebkuchen - I’ll wait until nearer Christmas for that - but this way, if something doesn’t work out, I’ve got time in hand to try something else.
So, hopefully if the rain lets up a bit, might be a chance to try picking this year’s crop of brambles, and putting them to work…
September 8th, 2009
We’ve all heard it - London grinds to a halt. The Midlands gets snow, and Edinburgh…not a lot.
What we do get is ice crystals on bus stops that look like Jack Frost is a grafitti artist. A girl goes past a bus stop in a woolly hat - bonnet style, strings underneath, but with a woollen mohican incorporated. And our pond freezes over…well, the dip in the back garden that fills up with water every now and then.
It’s not as fun at the chinchilla pushing a snowball on the BBC site. Or the harbour freezing over at Padstow. But then we do promise that you can access the blog without the site crashing…or the buses coming to a halt.
February 5th, 2009
It’s a children’s classic in the making, I just have to work out how to write it. Socks are making a reappearance as a welcome Christmas gift, if only on for fuel economy reasons. (Or maybe early onset circulation options. Take your pick.)
It’s interesting seeing the Saturday supplements reinventing present giving for tough times. Evidently you can give cheap gifts if you buy them in multiples. So buying lots of groovy socks for someone is acceptable, particularly because they are Useful. (Unlike many of the options available in Saturday supplements.)
I had thought it one of the unwritten rules of life that not only do the meek inherit the earth, a wife can inherit her husband’s socks. Oddly, this seems to work even if the husband’s feet are quite a lot larger than the wife’s. At any rate, it’s got me through several years of marriage and much foot pounding up and down the Royal Mile to work and back.
So it was a nice surprise for Dan to come home from the sales with socks for him and for her. After years of black socks that eventually turn grey, I have some jazzy ones with stripes. Dan has ones with matching heels and toes, in a range of colours, so you can do the conformist turn while shoes are on, while secretly aware that your socks are much more fun than anyone might suspect.
Sadly, there’s not a lot more I can write about socks without jokes about smelly feet. That didn’t stop Spike Milligan coming up with an idea for a sound effect of hitting the wall with a sock full of custard. He actually went to the BBC canteen to get custard to try it out, but evidently it didn’t sound as good in real life.
Shame. But maybe if you are still looking for a use for leftover stuffing, this could be just the thing…
December 29th, 2008
Christmas tree a go go. After a few years of being in London at Christmas time, the fixture is back to Scotland, and we’ve got ourselves a tree again. I can peer at it happily over my laptop as I type.
The nice ‘green’ feature writer in the Times made me very happy recently when she confirmed that it’s better to get a real tree than an artificial one - real trees put oxygen into the atmosphere while growing, can be pulped down afterwards (should your council be so obliging) and can of course be replanted if you buy one with a root one. My family tried this one year, but the tree lasted until November, and then went yellow, which was particularly sad with only a month to go.
The whole point of real trees, it seems to me, is the smell. For others, scent of pine is reduced to male bath products (or possibly loo cleaners), unless you’re out walking in the woods on a regular basis. But if you are prepared to sit under the tree for a while, preferably when it’s already dark and the only light in the room comes from the tree, then it’s nigh on perfect. (The second scent of Christmas, incidentally, is the citrus of satsuma. You can sit under the tree to consume your satsuma - and if it’s come from your Christmas stocking, so much the better.)
I’ve written before on knowing I can’t go back to earlier experiences. But somehow, scent always gives you that hope that, in fact, you have, even if the rest of you is saying something different. Yesterday, Dan only had to bring the tree into the house, and I knew, before I had even seen it, because of the scent of it, stealing ahead into the sitting room, working out where it was going to be placed.
It’s in our study, in fact, and because there’s no door between that and the sitting room, you can sit on the sofa and see the tree. I’m quite pleased with that, as the thing of being by the tree seems to be one of being quiet, even on your own, and putting the tree into the study seems to allow for that. We went and sat under it last night, just for a while.
So is it real? It’s a ‘real’ tree. It’s a real memory. And it’s a real tree in the here and now, evoking this set of responses right now, as well as triggering memories. Some may be unhappy at the symbolism of the Christmas tree, but I think we are all hoping for a little mystery at this time of year, something that pulls us beyond our surroundings, and our immediate thoughts, into other notions of how to view this strange and wonderful time of year.
Merry Christmas.
December 24th, 2008
You know it’s Christmas when the fridge is full of cheese (a slight exaggeration, but happily, only slightly) and Aardman has decided to issue a new Wallace and Gromit. My cup, mulled or otherwise, runneth over.
We’ve got rather used to Wallace and Gromit now, but what the animators achieve, painstakingly, lovingly, is indeed a present of great proportions. Yes, they’ve done a film, but really, it’s in the half-hour special that they truly come into their own.
Flicking through the TV section in the bumper two-week listing (more on that later), I discovered that I had shared a ‘Wal and Grom’ moment with Russell T. Davies, no less (a chap also somewhat linked to Christmas, what with Dr Who specials).
It’s the moment in the second animation - the one with the dastardly penguin - when Gromit is chasing the penguin on a model railway, runs out of track, grabs the box and starts to lay new track. I too remember that delighted ‘no!’ moment, when you don’t know what is coming next but you know that it is going to be amazing…
Part of the enjoyment is an opportunity to rediscover my inner Yorkshirewoman, and soak up all the deadpan jokes. Wallace allows us to remember how British the slightly potty inventor is - British too the elevation of pets to equal, if not greater, characters.
We’ve become used to televisual sweetmeats, TV treats at Christmas time. But amid all the reruns - and reissues of previous comedy programmes - Wallace and Gromit are, like cheeses at Christmastime, something you can always take a little more of.
December 21st, 2008
I suspect it won’t become a hit single. But after fairly relentless wind and rain (both of us ended yesterday with broken umbrellas), a spot of sunshine today needs a mention, if only for how it changes your view on life.
Tomorrow is the shortest day, and after that, even where it’s not quite believable, let alone visible at that point, we’ll start to get more light again. I read a Monty Don book on gardening one time, where he talked about the time between the clocks going back, and the shortest day, as the hardest point in the year. Forget whatever date in January is meant to herald mass depression, being low on daylight makes it harder to add joy to whatever seasonal comfort you may be indulging in in December.
Last year, I felt very aware of looking out for this change, perceiving the creeping extension of daylight during January. This year, I know about it, but that doesn’t always bring the acceptance of it that I’d hope for. Different features of it seem to affect different people: some hate it being pitch black when the alarm goes off in the morning, others find the darkness so early in the afternoon a difficulty.
In my gap year, I spent the first half waitressing, and realised how easy it was in the winter not to really see the sun at all, especially where you are facing in from a shop window rather than looking out. In an office with large windows, or a home with a good amount of light, it’s a bit easier, but not that much. I should probably try to go out at lunchtime, while it is genuinely light, but that requires a bit of energy, which is also harder in the winter.
Somehow, when you’ve closed the curtains and settled in to lower levels of light for longer, it becomes easier. One of my friends referred to the season of ‘candles and snuggly blankets’ returning, and that helps it seem a cosier prospect.
What I’m trying to suggest is that this is a time of year for needing a little encouragement. Whether that’s enjoying a spot of sun, an extra slice of stollen, or a longer letter from a friend you’ve not heard from for a while, it makes it possible to go on living in the dark for a little longer, with some indication that there is light still to come.
December 20th, 2008
Star Wars Monopoly…The festive season is now complete - or at least, the activity while hanging around indoors with people bit. Following Dan’s brainwave for a present for his cousin, who at a tender age has embraced the excitement that is Star Wars, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get a set for ourselves too.
So it was lovingly unwrapped and put to use yesterday, having a social for our church small group yesterday. We knew that one of the others was well set for board games, having seen her in action on our June holiday, but were waiting to see what happened for the other group member…who promptly walked off as the highroller of the evening.
Having ticked the review category, I feel I should give you an overview of what it’s like. You get nice little figures as pieces to move round the board, ie familiar characters from the films. Dan noticed that there are five goodies to three baddies, but then I think that’s as it should be, really. You also get currency in credits (I think), rather than pounds, and instead of building houses or hotels, you build colonies (small space ship pieces), working up to star ports (larger space ships - in this case, a Millenium Falcon).
You also get to swap the familiar destinations of London for Star Wars ones. It doesn’t take a lot of thinking through to agree that Yoda’s swamp is the least attractive (or rather, cheapest) location on the board, with the heart of the Empire, Coruscant, as the most expensive. A few elements of the board could have been jazzed up a little, in line with the theme - why not go to a penal colony, rather than jail? Or use a star ship motif, rather than a car, in Free Parking?
But aside from this, there is of course great opportunity to a) listen to Star Wars soundtracks while playing (check), b) swap Star Wars viewing stories (check), c) make noises like the characters when doing well or thwarted (no we didn’t do this, but I’m sure it should be mandatory from now on), etc.
And of course, you can mortgage all your properties, all too swiftly, in keeping with this year’s financial theme, sadly. But if you lose, hey, it’s all in a galaxy far far away…
December 18th, 2008
The season of hibernation continues. Do habits set in more quickly when it’s dark all the time? At any rate, we’re back to a reading aloud at the end of the day habit, and the book we’re on, “Full Tilt”, seems worth a mention, particularly when it contains descriptions of blue skies and heat.
We’re both keen on travel books, in this case the kind where someone else does the travelling and writes about it in a witty way. We have a few stacked up to read, and finally started this one, written by an Irish woman, Dervla Murphy, who decides to cycle to India. As you do. Or in fact, as she planned to do from the age of 10. But, unlike many of us and our early-stated ambitions, she actually sets off to do it, once in her 30s, and with a suitably heroic bike which becomes a second leading lady in the story.
She writes in the 1960s, when the Soviets are being seen to be gathering in around Afghanistan, one of her countries on route, but have not yet got going fully. The Shah is still in place in Iran (or rather, Persia, as she calls it), and hitchhiking is still an option - all to the good for Dervla, if her bike breaks down or the road gets impassable.
Rather nicely, she includes an equipment list in the back of the book, so you can work out how many tubes of sun lotion to take on your next intercontinental trek. She also packs a pistol, literally, and writes about the uses of it in amazingly understated ways (let’s just say, there are still wolves in the woods of central Europe at the time she is passing through).
In some ways, we are happily ploughing through the next set of adventures; at points, we look at each other and say ‘Nutter!’ at the general endeavour. People are often saying how it’s difficult to do travels that others haven’t done - but you would have to ask yourself how many lone women would set out to do that kind of journey now, only a few decades later, even if she’s had the sense to send spare tyres and inner tubes ahead to a certain set of international organisation’s offices.
We have just reached the point where she is entering Afghanistan, and it will be interesting to see how the descriptions compare with the images we have from news stories of recent years. And in our current midwinter torpor, reading about someone casually knocking off 80 mile cycle rides, day after day, brings only admiration.
Meanwhile, Dan looked up Dervla’s name online, and found that she is still trying to do epic cycle rides now, in her 70s, though somewhat hampered by hips and knees not behaving themselves. Once an adventurer, always an adventurer? I suspect we will be looking out for sequels.
December 9th, 2008
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