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.