Oat Crackers

I was sure I'd written about Bill's oat crackers before, but apparently not. This is another bit of baking he's done recently. Mainly because I complained about having scones hanging around the house and I don't care much for oat crackers. He loves them. In fact he got upset with me last month when I ordered two boxes of Nairn's oat crackers for him...because he ate them.

His latest favourite is peanut butter on oat crackers. I doubt he noticed the jars of PNB in the cupboard for the past ?10 years? but now it's his favourite. 

Never mind, I'm not fussed what he eats carbohydrate-wise, it all gets burned off. This past weekend he set himself a 50 mile challenge, walking 25+ miles on Saturday and on Sunday. Of course he was weary and sore after this, but he gets no sympathy for self-inflicted wounds. Heartless of me, I know.

A Proper WI Home

I wrote earlier about wishing for fresh flowers in our house during lockdown. (And regardless of what this government decides about lifting restrictions for the sake of the economy, the fact remains that Bill and I are high risk for a bad outcome if infected and so will continue practising safety measures).

I was amused at reading this month's letter from the "Chairman" (a woman) of our WI Federation in which she wrote:

I recently discovered in a book 69 things that "No English home should be without". I have definitely got 43 of them but in the spirit of being in the WI I thought I would share 6 of them that would possibly be in every WI home: A TEAPOT, STRING, A SET OF PLAYING CARDS, BEST CHINA, SPARE BIRTHDAY CARDS AND FRESH FLOWERS."

We are invited to send suggestions about the other 63 items, which I look forward to reading about next month. I should think it would include a hat of some sort, at least one unfinished craft project, some gardening gloves, a map of the region in which they live, family photos, a pet (or mementos of a previous pet), some wellington type boots. Those are the things that just came to mind now.  I hope she'll also reveal the title of her book, as my searches on Google and Amazon (they make no money off my searches or wishlist) have not revealed it.

We have several tea pots, lots of string (and even more yarn), I have spare birthday cards, but we use our best china most days at breakfast and dinner and my playing cards are almost never used as Bill doesn't care for playing, which is sad; the paper cards are in the motor home but I still have Grandma and Grandpa's Kem cards (plastic, in a nice bakelite box; last time I looked they were worth something like £40).

My peonies have been blooming the past couple of weeks, always a glorious display. On one of our walks I spotted something vaguely like baby's breath that I thought might make a good filler. Turned out there was some on my own street never mind down at the park, so I marched out of my front gate with secateurs. 

The flowers lasted on our dining table for over a week, longer than I expected. And then one morning I came down to breakfast and Bill pointed out that we'd had an 'event', pointing to the floral arrangement. Sure enough one of the peonies had dumped its petals all at once, just like the tree in the Harry Potter film when autumn arrived. 

So I shall have to cast around to figure out something else for the next few days. I know I will get flowers on my birthday this weekend, because I gave Bill a specific list of things I wanted (steak from Nicholson's, a book about a cutting garden and a Lord Peter Wimsey novel we'd overlooked, flowers from a florist who happens to be married to our fruit and veg man and the last bottle of beaujolais wine from the Brexit stash.)

After that, if I can't figure out something from my garden or the wilds around us, I shall be calling on Pansy's in North Shields. 

What do you think are the essential items found in every proper English / Scottish / Irish / Welsh / American / Australian / etc. home?

Nicholson's

On one of our walks we passed Nicholson's butchers in Whitley Bay. We've never shopped there as theirs are premium prices but they are, I gather, doing a roaring trade in this time of lockdown. I'm glad to hear they will pull through. 

I'd never noticed the very instructive signs outside their shop. I've some times wondered if the US and Britain label their animal parts differently.  Do you know?

Bill's Scones

Can't say I've done any 'Quar Baking' as they say in the New York Times, but Bill has. He's made a couple batches of scones, which is good and bad. Good because they are delicious, bad because I eat them. 

He got the recipe from this book he picked up last year at one of the many National Trust properties we visited.

I was going to type out the recipe, but then you'd be in the same fix that I am.

Paris to Versailles 1996

A friend of ours found time in lockdown to go through some old photos and came up with these, from September 1996, my first ever visit to France. I went with the running club I'd joined just a few months previous to run a race between the Eiffel tower and the Palace of Versailles, a distance of about 15 km, or a little over nine miles. One of the the best weekends I've ever had cost me about £200 if I remember right.

We took a train from Newcastle to London, then got the brand new Eurostar to Paris. A lot of the trip is a blur for a number of reasons. I know we had to register for the race but I don't remember doing this. I vaguely remember the cheap hotel rooms we had. 

This was the first big race I'd ever done. The race began under the Eiffel Tower and (as they said) typical of the French, it began about an hour late. This meant a lot of people needed to pee, having intended to begin fully hydrated. I remember loads of plastic bottles filled with urine along the start. Also trees draped with discarded clothing and plastic bags, worn to keep warm at the start. I was pleased to know that race organisers would collect the debris and donate the clothes to charity.

Bill ran along side me as I wasn't experienced at races. I remember a lot of forests and him making me walk up the hills, to be sure I'd manage the distance. We arrived at the finish after who knows how long. My main recollection is of tall wrought iron fences in front of grand buildings. 

Somewhere I have more photos from the finish. Everyone was very pleased to be at Versailles. Kath was especially pleased because she had traded her club t-shirt with a guy who gave her his French Foreign Legion t-shirt. She felt she'd definitely come out ahead.

I'm guessing a bus must have returned us all to Paris. As soon as we'd showered and changed Jane, who was familiar with Paris, took us to an amazing restaurant, Le Bouillion Chartier.  The queue was long, but worth the wait in the ind. The food was great, but one thing that stuck in my mind was that the waiter scribbled your order on your paper table cloth in a very nonchalant fashion. Also, the men's loo was in a corner with only a waist-high door, a big surprise. Fortunately, the ladies room had more cover.

The next time Bill and I went to Paris, we went back to Chartier and it didn't disappoint. I remember on that trip an elegant older woman in a fur stole, heels and what looked like an alligator bag walked past with such a slow, deliberate walk one couldn't not watch her. The whole restaurant stopped to watch her. 

After our group of 10-12 runners finished eating, we hit the town. Jane was our tour guide and we walked everywhere. Nothing was open, but we went and gawked at it anyhow. I remember the Seine and the Louvre and Notre Dame. I remember being really tired after the race and full of food and red wine. I think this anaesthetic was the only reason I could continue walking until 3 am. 

Somewhere near Notre Dame cathedral there was a mime who caught our attention. He appeared to be a very short gentleman standing on a trash can. He was very engaging and pulled all sorts of stunts to amuse us. Somehow I ended up standing near him for a photo and he signalled that he wanted a kiss on his cheek. After much insistence on his part, I stretched up to peck his cheek and he turned his face at the last second, surprising all of us. That got the biggest laugh. The only Frenchman I've ever kissed.

At one point in our wanderings I was desperate for a loo and everyone told me to just squat between two parked cars; they said everyone in Paris did that. I argued that I might be in Paris but I was still an American and I just couldn't do that. Fortunately Jane knew where there was a 24-hour McDonald's and it turned out I wasn't the only one.

We travelled back the next day on the train and celebrated Jane's birthday. We had the train car to ourselves. I stayed awake long enough to have some cake and toast her birthday and then I was out for the rest of the train journey. Somewhere there are some dreadful photos of me unconscious, with my head down on the table. I don't care, I had such a great time.

Dandelion on the Dining Table

I know most folks detest dandelions, but I've come to really appreciate them. I transplant the best looking ones to a rectangular planter we have in the back yard. Bill tolerates this so long as I don't let the seed heads scatter. I've been adding dandelion leaves to my spinach salad at lunch. They are slightly bitter, but nowhere near as bitter as mizuna, which I gather is popular with some folks. 

I was also collecting some red lettuce leaves from the garden one day when I spotted this enormous flower. 

I put it in an old bottle I bought at a brocante in Bourdeaux village a few years ago and added some fern that I love. Mom had bunches of something very like it in her back garden and she called it asparagus fern, though I know it wasn't asparagus. I've never been able to work out what she had. This comes from a bronze fennel plant. No idea if it actually grows fennel, don't care, don't like it. But I do love this fern.

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Can't say Bill was very impressed, but it gave me lots of pleasure for a couple of days. When it wilted I replaced it with this lovely white flower. Bill says it's either a geranium or a pelargonium, but I've no idea which it is. It needed a shorter bottle to get water, I'm guessing it is one of several Vivien gave me one of the last times I saw her.

Vegetable Stock, Flour and Salt

I'm not sure if the ingredients in the title would combine to make anything tasty but, for this post, they are two separate topics.

One

You may or may not remember the bottom drawer of my kitchen freezer, mentioned in the post on using up orange peels, but on a recent Friday I made a batch of vegetable stock from a few cups of compiled ends, peels and bits of vegetables: tomatoes, cucumbers, celery, carrots, onions, red peppers, etc. I'd not made veggie stock before so I consulted Love Your Leftovers, by Hugh Fernley-Whittenstall. I was a bit disappointed that he said to grate a carrot, an onion and rib of celery to cook in a tablespoon of oil, nothing to do with leftovers. So I did this and added a few cups of scraps and a liter, I think, of water. I forgot to take photos - not that it was particularly photogenic. I froze two smaller jars and left the larger jar in the fridge. I cooked rice in it that evening, since it's not really soup weather - or it wasn't that Friday. 

Two

Reading a Treehugger article about measuring ingredients to the side of rather than over a bowl (basic cooking) I got a picture in my mind of my salt jar. Because poring salt into a spoon is too fiddly and wasteful. So I put it in a jar into which I could dip a measuring spoon. This also allows me the space to level the top with a knife and push the extra salt back into the jar. 

For this same reason I put plain flour into an old yogurt bucket. The messes I've made trying to level a cup of flour over a flour bag don't bear thinking about. I've come to realise that measures by weight are far more efficient, but no American cookbook has them.

Mind, this old fashioned kitchen design with a flour bin and all sort of other clever conveniences is my dream. 

Death by Water

I've been re-reading our Phyrne Fisher collection (by Kerry Greenwood). Comfort reading at its best in spite of involving plenty of murder, theft and other crimes. I'm not aware of being stressed, though on some level I probably am, however when stressed my brain seeks familiar territory. In the past I've read the print off Mom's and my Dick Francis collection. I'm now so familiar with the Harry Potter books the words don't make a movie in my head anymore. But I haven't got every plot of the Phryne books memorised yet. 

At the back of Death by Water I found not only a recipe for a 'Perfect Champagne Cocktail' but some post-it notes where I'd scribbled passages I particularly enjoyed - or had no idea about - in a previous reading. If you're like me you read through all sorts of things you don't know exactly what they are about but just guess from the context. It was rather satisfying to look these things up. 

Description of their cruise ship:

"...screens by Tiffany, furnishing by Liberty and William Morris, light fixtures by LaFarge..."

Illustrations on the Tiffany screens:

"...flowering gum and... a pohutukawa" (a New Zealand tree)

Bedspread:

"dark blue morocain" - A fabric; so far as I can tell this is another spelling for Moroccan and may refer to a distinctive print.

Terminology:

"So what were the on-dits?" Definition of on-dit: a piece of gossip or vague rumour.

"Fribble": Noun - a trifle, a frivolity; Verb - to waste something away, to fritter; to waste time.

"Keas" (a New Zealand bird - a very smart parrot) 

a Sou'wester

Chicken Veronique

References:

"Phyrne was in complete agreement with Oscar Wilde about people who were witty before breakfast."

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

                                                               - Oscar Wilde


"She may look like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth but as they said in the eighteenth century, I'll warrant that she wouldn't choke on cheese".  - 'butter wouldn't melt in her mouth' refers to someone who is very cool in their demeanor. Couldn't find any reference to choking on cheese other than literally.

And now, what you've been waiting for:

The Perfect Champagne Cocktail

1. Chill a bottle of dry champagne. It doesn't have to be expensive - in fact this is a great way to dress up cheap champage - but it must not be sweet.

2. Take a big glass and swill about a teaspoonful of Cointreau around to coat the inside. 

3. Drop a cube of sugar in, place three drops of bitters onto the sugar. If you like sweet tastes, put in two sugar cubes but don't add any more bitters.

4. Very gently pour in champagne and fill the glass. Garnish with a thin strip of orange peel.

5. This is the only champagne which can be drunk through a straw. To make a champagne cup, dilute this half and half with Schweppes lemonade. It's worth getting all hot and tired playing deck tennis if there is champagne cocktail in prospect.

Garden

I've been busy making a map of the gardens here, front and back. The back was easy, being rectangular. The front isn't a rectangle and the brick walks are irregular, there was the problem of how to measure the arc of the bay window and the semi-circular (more or less) south facing garden space.

I've been reading a book on garden design and I know I like a cottage style, nothing formal or regimented. I've made a list of plants I'd like to grow and the colour scheme I have in mind for the front. I'm certain that we haven't enough space to do all I'd like, but one has to dream big, right?

Then I contacted the local (ish) garden centre I knew were delivering. I ask for a great number of bedding plants (having looked up the definition) and for potting compost and a picture of any trellis they had. She rang back a week later, the time frame I expected. She thought I was asking for too many plants and she asked for some photos of my garden.

So that was another project, to send photos and explain what they were. Waiting to hear from her again. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the thing we already have in place.

Cole Slaw

These posts are in no particular order. Rightfully this should come a bit closer to the Hillheads fruit and veg delivery. Admittedly I did leave the cabbage til near the end of the veggies to use. I used half to steam and serve with corned beef hash (half a tin of corned beef, fried onions and boiled potatoes all mixed together). Bill thought it an odd combination - not the hash but the cabbage with it - but to an American 'corned beef and cabbage' rolls off the tongue like 'peanut butter and jelly' or 'biscuits and gravy', but those too are American. Perhaps I should say like 'bangers and mash' or 'beans and toast'. Never mind, this is about cole slaw.


Which I think I may have made once before in my lifetime, though I think Mom made it a quite a bit most summers to eat with our weekend barbeques in the back garden, with Grandma and Grandpa and our next door neighbour over the fence, Chris and her Yorkshire Terrier, Laurie. Since including Laurie I suppose I should mention Debbie, Cookie or Duchess, whichever of our dogs we had at the time.

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Anyhow, Bill found a recipe for me, perhaps from his mother's cookbook, I don't know. Translated it says 6 grated carrots, 1 small cabbage shredded, a pinch of caster sugar, 3 tablespoons cider vinegar, 1 tablespoon mustard, 200 g mayonnaise. Mix the carrots and cabbage, season with salt. Add sugar and vinegar and toss, let sit for 20 minutes then add mustard and mayonnaise. I halved this recipe and used regular sugar.

I found the result a bit dry and added more mayo until I liked the consistency better. I expected Bill would be eating more of this than I would, him being able to afford so many more calories.

Gosh that bowl looks close to falling off the counter!

Still, I enjoyed the little I had. And we used up some more of our zillion carrots. Not to mention the cabbage we wouldn't normally buy.

How to Get 81 Squash Plants

I started my first batch of seedlings back in February, working my way through all my ancient seed packets which said 'sow indoors February' plus some flower seeds that were Christmas gifts, to grow edible flowers. Some herbs came up nicely, as did chrysanthemums (which I don't remember if they're edible or not, so don't risk it without some research). There were rows of oldish seeds that didn't produce and one day when I was clearing out the fridge, I found a box of squash seeds. 

I'd put the seeds in the fridge after eating the squash thinking I would roast them, but they had gone a bit slimy, so I thought not. On a whim I stuffed the seeds into the vacant rows on the windowsill and put sticky labels over the previous names (stuck on sticks cut from a plastic milk carton or a plastic file folder). I think it was an acorn squash but for some reason I had 'butternut' on the brain and that's what I wrote on the new labels.

I had moved most of the seedlings of flowers or herbs to other pots and nearly ditched the squash plants quietly growing under the soil but being a procrastinator they were saved. All the sudden I had row after row of little plants. When I pulled one out to re-pot it, two more appeared!  I spent an afternoon moving these things to new pots and finding sunny places to put them. 

The next day I asked Bill to move the rickety old book case in the back porch (full of pots, gardening gloves and his muddy shoes from walking and cross-country) to the potting table under the south facing window in the garage. When that was done I continued re-potting and then he found the old plastic stacking bookcase from the 1980s and put parts of it in the west facing bay window and the front porch. 

I kept wondering where to put these in soil in our garden without sacrificing our chance of growing anything but squash; Bill thinks we have room for maybe 10-12. I keep telling myself he lacks imagination. Also asking myself why on earth I rescued every single one of those plants? 

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I've decided it was because initially they have two leaves sticking up from the soil and those two leaves made me think of baby birds begging to be fed. Sometimes the shell of the seed would stick to one of the leaves for a while and that reminded me of the old cartoons of newly hatched birds with an egg-shell 'hat'. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. So we have more plants than we can possibly use. How many actual squashes they produce is of course yet to be seen, but any squashes they do will be eaten with pleasure - and the seeds definitely roasted!

Anyone want a squash plant?

Shortage of Toilet Paper

In the early months of 2019, in preparation for the first Brexit date, I stocked up on toilet paper, food staples and wine (which was distributed with each of our three Christmas visits to each of Bill's children). I will likely do so again in the months before December 31st this year when the 'transition' phase ends. Given the way this government has managed personal protective equipment and testing for coronavirus, not the mention the shortage of farm labour to pick crops, I feel this practice is fully vindicated. I would recommend you do the same, even start now with a couple of tins with each store trip / delivery.

My upstairs bathroom has very little storage space, so I've long used an old tote bag (a freebie from my most favourite ever magazine, Eve, alas now out of publication) to contain spare rolls nearby their point of use. I keep one one the window sill next to the toilet.

Because of the width of the tote bag I noticed right away when Aldi's TP shrank. When I sent Bill shopping in the loft for the next batch, I thought it was a convenient way to show you the evidence.

Marmalade Cheat

Once upon a time long, long ago we had toast for breakfast each morning, made with store bought bread. I had honey on mine, Bill ate his with margarine spread and marmalade. 

• Before we had a bread making machine and Bill always had marmalade on his toast; 
• Before we gave up toast for cereal (except at weekends);
• Before we put aside spreads for real butter;
• Before the pandemic when we ran low on butter and Bill decided to try his toast with just jam and pronounced it fine. 

But not before I had started experimenting with making jam.

Dead easy to mix the jam in with the Seville oranges.

When shopping for food I'm inclined to choose the cheapest brand first and if that disappoints to then work my way up until the quality is sufficient. I discovered that Bill didn't care for the cheapest marmalade, it was too sweet, so I bought him the special low-sugar brand at 3-4 times the price. Then I discovered Lakeland carried tins of Seville oranges and found that combining a jar of cheap sugary marmalade with a tin of Seville oranges made several jars of just-right marmalade at just under the price of the special brand. This was probably my first foray into jam making. Supermarkets also began carrying tins of Seville oranges.

I don't know about your cupboards now but mine are being whittled down to the out-of-date, I'll-figure-out-what-to-do-with-that-later stuff. Amongst which was two said tins of Seville oranges and a single jar of sugary marmalade. Since the tins have shrunk since the olden days I thought I'd risk it.

I didn't taste it until the whole process was nearly finished as I hate marmalade, with or without sugar. I worried that it might be too bitter but Bill pronounced it as perfect, which was a relief. I got four and a half jars from this, which will mean the jam I like will last longer since Bill will go for the marmalade first as he always did when we had store bought jam. At least that's the plan.

I did express some concern that the low sugar content might allow the jars of this mix to spoil, but Bill seemed confident that since the dimples in the lids had all popped, it would be fine. Hopefully any spoilage will be obvious with green or white growth on the top. This would of course mean that we had four less jars of marmalade. And I wouldn't care a whit.