I was out in the car for the first time since Sat 21st, doing a pick up and drop off for a locked-in friend. On a fairly short drive I came across joggers running down the middle of the road, two sets of people standing in the middle of the road talking to someone standing on a doorstep, and a large pile of horse dung, evidence that there had been a horse in the middle of the road. I was glad to get home without killing anybody!
I was out in the car for the first time since Sat 21st, doing a pick up and drop off for a locked-in friend.
Eldest child is in the process of learning to drive. Clearly, lessons have been suspended for the duration, but driving Mum or Dad on an essential shopping trip is still OK.
Being in a car controlled by eldest child is a somewhat fraught experience at the bets of times, but these days? On our way home from a short trip to the pharmacy (less than 5 minutes on residential streets) we passed three separate sets of pedestrians that leaped (without looking) into the middle of the road in order to maintain distance from an oncoming pedestrian on the footpath, two teenage boys riding skateboards down the middle of the road, and a couple of boys throwing a football in the road. (I hope the boys were brothers, because although they were well separated, chucking something back and forth between you rather negates that.)
Eldest child is appropriately cautious of erratic pedestrians, but it was an interesting experience nonetheless.
In the event you are fasting from cocktails/G&T etc nevertheless add a slice or spritz to whatever you are drinking.
Post Easter I could give you a shedload of recipes - Lemon Chicken! Lamb casseroled in lemon and paprika. Tagines (which reminds me, preserving lemons in brine is dead simple and will equip you for no end of middle-eastern dishes).
I hear you, but I don't drink GIN (not a very good Anglican/Episcopalian). More seriously, you folk are brilliant.
I have eggs, and the Avgolemono sounds intriuging. The lemon pasta also sounds wonderful (no cream but I guess you could substitute yoghurt or crème fraiche or at a pinch quark). I do have a small Kilner jar, so I suspect I may go down the preserved lemon route.
I am however drooling at the thought of lamb casseroled in lemon & paprika (or even chicken/turkey) so I will want to hear about that. And I've never investigated lemon chicken, so that's another I shall be considering post Easter ( I think it's a reasonable chance that lemons will be in the box)
I have tried tripe, but not again, Mr Dragon likes it though, so like liver it is reserved for the vanishingly rare occasions I'm eating out without him.
I must admit my preserved lemons came in a jar from the middle eastern supermarket.
I must also remind him to actually get some beer in for the weekend.
Lemonade. And can sliced lemons be frozen? That way, you could take out a slice as needed.
I keep sliced frozen lemons in the freezer all the time. First I slice, then freeze on a tray, then bag. I had a glut from my organic box several months ago and I believe someone on the ship suggested this. Works well.
Mr Image new to one line banking tried and failed to get on line today. Not his fault I am guessing they crashed with overload of new one line bankers. He had to go into town to our branch to transfer some money from saving to checking. Low and behold they told him next time he just had to call the branch answer a couple of security questions and they could make the transfer for him. I am sure I will never get him to return to the net now. No problem if he can continue to do this. I on the other hand I went to make bank to make a deposit, this was new to me, most often my stuff it automatic deposit. The glare from the sun made it very hard to see. I spoke to the manager who was getting out of his car. Why not have the auto-teller on the side of the building in the shade? He said, "I know it can be a real problem in the morning." I don't see a change coming. If this happens again I will change my banking hours to early evening.
New dance craze - the Shoppers' Shuffle. Performed at a stately pace in your local Tesco - advance down aisle, twirl and scan, advance/retreat in response to your nearest partners. Occasionally skip sideways into next aisle. Repeat.
I remembered that if you have a use for the juice but not the zest, you could always make some limoncello (or orangecello - apparently that is a thing too)...
[Pondering: if you replaced the sugar in the recipe with honey, maybe it could be a standby for hot honey & lemon, for ordinary colds & coughs?]
Of course, this does require a supply of vodka for which you have no other immediate intentions
That reminds me of one of my teacher's of French tangents in lessons. She would hold forth in French on random subjects, which my brain has conveniently translated while I wasn't looking.
To prepare escargots:
First collect your snails from the garden, and put them in an old but clean biscuit tin - the sort which grocers used to use, as deep as they were square in section, into which you have put some flour, and put the lid, into which you have punched a few small holes on.
After a day, move them into a second such tin, with clean flour, and wash and dry the first tin, ready for the third day.
Continue changing the tins and flour for a week. You will then be sure that you know what the snails have been eating, and have flushed out their digestive system.
Prepare a pan with melted butter by frying garlic cloves until thy have caramelised, and then add the snails. (My brain seems to have lost any reference to killing them first.) When suitably cooked, serve.
They will then taste like pencil erasers coated with garlic butter.
Warning - Do Not Try This At Home (whether in English, or French)!
Of course, Sagacious Shipmates will appreciate the fact that it is far easier - and kinder to wildlife, especially Snails - to simply obtain some pencil erasers from the appropriate Emporium, and cook them in garlic butter.
I love escargot. If you've made them like pencil erasers you've done something wrong. They should be as tender as a snail out of its shell.
That doesn’t make them sound appetizing, I’m afraid.
How do you feel about shrimp? crab? lobster? Same diff.
Having tried them all, I can safely say I find shrimp and lobster delicious and crab divine. Snails not so much. However much you dress it up, it’s still a snail, which is basically a slug with a shell.
Rejoice that some of us don’t like them. That leaves more for you.
All of the mid-level restaurants that sell them died in the 2008 recession, and I can't afford the high-class joints that still serve them. It may be a while.
@Amanda B Reckondwyth your diet has obviously been more varied and ‘interesting’ than mine.
I must remember, if I’m ever offered severed fingers that they’d be fine cooked and served cold with a Marie Rose dressing and crisp lettuce. (Presumably they should be filleted.)
You can make quite good severed finger canapés with half a frankfurter, a piece of unfried prawn cracker for the nail, and a tasteful dollop of ketchup.
@Amanda B Reckondwyth your diet has obviously been more varied and ‘interesting’ than mine.
I must remember, if I’m ever offered severed fingers that they’d be fine cooked and served cold with a Marie Rose dressing and crisp lettuce. (Presumably they should be filleted.)
I find myself imagining severed fingers and grits.
My reverend friend is getting out more. He says he takes long strolls in the cemetery where he doesn't have to worry about being closer than six feet to any body.
That looks far less horrid than I think it should - I thought grits was (were?) just like porridge but with a different kind of grain instead of oats, but that looks almost like a risotto.
Grits are the Southern American version of polenta. Like polenta, grits are made from cornmeal, but cornmeal for grits are prepared differently from the cornmeal for polenta.
Properly cooked grits are very creamy and tasty. At breakfast, they are often served with country ham and red-eye gravy. But for other meals they may be served with a fancier gravy, as with shrimp and grits. Or they may just be served with butter, and may have cheese mixed in. Sausages and grits is a common Sunday night supper at our house.
As with polenta, grits can also be baked.
And as with many foods, instant grits are an abomination unto the Lord.
That looks far less horrid than I think it should - I thought grits was (were?) just like porridge but with a different kind of grain instead of oats, but that looks almost like a risotto.
The grits that I have had and enjoyed were cooked like a risotto.
@Amanda B Reckondwyth your diet has obviously been more varied and ‘interesting’ than mine.
I must remember, if I’m ever offered severed fingers that they’d be fine cooked and served cold with a Marie Rose dressing and crisp lettuce. (Presumably they should be filleted.)
I find myself imagining severed fingers and grits.
Thank you, Nick. The Mater never, ever allowed us to refer to hominy as "grits." (And all the Yankee restaurateurs who have invaded Charleston have tarted the dish up so much that it's almost unrecognizable.)
@Amanda B Reckondwyth your diet has obviously been more varied and ‘interesting’ than mine.
I must remember, if I’m ever offered severed fingers that they’d be fine cooked and served cold with a Marie Rose dressing and crisp lettuce. (Presumably they should be filleted.)
I find myself imagining severed fingers and grits.
Thank you, Nick. The Mater never, ever allowed us to refer to hominy as "grits."
Yes, Charleston was always a little . . . different . . . in its grits/hominy usage from the rest of the South. It reminds one of deviled eggs becoming stuffed eggs in the Mississippi Delta.
(Makes note to self: Must get some hominy—what the rest of us not from Charleston call hominy—from the store. Sadly, I’m the only one in my household who likes it.)
(And all the Yankee restaurateurs who have invaded Charleston have tarted the dish up so much that it's almost unrecognizable.)
I was once tempted to try grits, when a shop specialising in American food opened up in a nearby mall. Until I saw the price. It seemed to me that grits should fall into the price range of polenta, wild rice, buckwheat and other such staples, rather than - it's hard to think of a comparison. Saffron risotto with top of the range specialist mushrooms? They were nearer £10 than £3, so I didn't bother. I hadn't read anything that encouraged me to try the stuff.
All this talk of leathery prawns, severed fingers, 'grits' (which sound as though they ought to be very crunchy) etc. is giving this thread a rather surreal feel, no?
Probably matching the surreal world we find ourselves in. Who tampered with the Large Hadron Collider? Come on - own up. We won't be cross...
Surely a severed finger (though I've never eaten one!) would be very hard to bite into because of the bone! I can't imagine eating a prawn being similar in any way, whether it's tender or leathery - I reckon it's more that a prawn kind of looks a bit like a white person's finger, in colour, shape and size, so some vivid imagination must be at play!
Heh, there wouldn't be much of the finger left if it was filleted - not as much flesh as a prawn. Fingers are surely mostly bone, covered with a bit of skin! While prawns are all flesh, covered with a bit of shell.
By the way, this is totally off-topic from eating fingers and prawns, but I wanted to share something that might be helpful for people struggling to cope with the lockdown - a podcast by Bessel van de Kolk (psychiatrist and trauma specialist and author of The Body Keeps the Score) about coping with trauma at this time: link here.
Also, it's just very interesting, psychologically, for understanding the mental health issues involved, and the how isolation affects us, how it affects different groups of people, and practical things that can help.
Very good point by fineline, highlighting the difference between an exoskeleton and endoskeleton. The former is exemplified by a shell on crustaceans. Why am I talking about this? Who am I? What virus?
We have run out of everyday soap and are now using the Nice Soap. I have quite a collection of soaps which have been Too Nice to Use, and which I've kept in drawers etc to make them smell nice.
The first Nice Soap is Tea Tree and Eucalyptus, which is the least nice of my Nice Soap. It still feels like a treat to use.
I am using a nice soap too. I bought two nice soaps from Kew Gardens last summer, and I wasn't going to use them, because they smell so nice, so I liked putting them by my pillow at night, but I opened up the lavender one to use it. Not because I'd run out of soap, but just to have an extra nice soap in my bathroom during isolation to cheer me up.
Using special treats, like Nice Soap, seems to be a good thing to do right now! Yesterday, I actually put on a dress and a little makeup, with a necklace and earrings to watch our online church service! Makes coping feel a tad less stressful by having little special goodies.
Also, please remind me to not read the KenWritez-esque food suggestions anymore while I'm feeling ill!!!
Comments
Eldest child is in the process of learning to drive. Clearly, lessons have been suspended for the duration, but driving Mum or Dad on an essential shopping trip is still OK.
Being in a car controlled by eldest child is a somewhat fraught experience at the bets of times, but these days? On our way home from a short trip to the pharmacy (less than 5 minutes on residential streets) we passed three separate sets of pedestrians that leaped (without looking) into the middle of the road in order to maintain distance from an oncoming pedestrian on the footpath, two teenage boys riding skateboards down the middle of the road, and a couple of boys throwing a football in the road. (I hope the boys were brothers, because although they were well separated, chucking something back and forth between you rather negates that.)
Eldest child is appropriately cautious of erratic pedestrians, but it was an interesting experience nonetheless.
Lemons & red wine???
I hear you, but I don't drink GIN (not a very good Anglican/Episcopalian). More seriously, you folk are brilliant.
I have eggs, and the Avgolemono sounds intriuging. The lemon pasta also sounds wonderful (no cream but I guess you could substitute yoghurt or crème fraiche or at a pinch quark). I do have a small Kilner jar, so I suspect I may go down the preserved lemon route.
I am however drooling at the thought of lamb casseroled in lemon & paprika (or even chicken/turkey) so I will want to hear about that. And I've never investigated lemon chicken, so that's another I shall be considering post Easter ( I think it's a reasonable chance that lemons will be in the box)
I must admit my preserved lemons came in a jar from the middle eastern supermarket.
I must also remind him to actually get some beer in for the weekend.
I remembered that if you have a use for the juice but not the zest, you could always make some limoncello (or orangecello - apparently that is a thing too)...
[Pondering: if you replaced the sugar in the recipe with honey, maybe it could be a standby for hot honey & lemon, for ordinary colds & coughs?]
Of course, this does require a supply of vodka for which you have no other immediate intentions
To prepare escargots:
First collect your snails from the garden, and put them in an old but clean biscuit tin - the sort which grocers used to use, as deep as they were square in section, into which you have put some flour, and put the lid, into which you have punched a few small holes on.
After a day, move them into a second such tin, with clean flour, and wash and dry the first tin, ready for the third day.
Continue changing the tins and flour for a week. You will then be sure that you know what the snails have been eating, and have flushed out their digestive system.
Prepare a pan with melted butter by frying garlic cloves until thy have caramelised, and then add the snails. (My brain seems to have lost any reference to killing them first.) When suitably cooked, serve.
They will then taste like pencil erasers coated with garlic butter.
Warning - Do Not Try This At Home (whether in English, or French)!
Of course, Sagacious Shipmates will appreciate the fact that it is far easier - and kinder to wildlife, especially Snails - to simply obtain some pencil erasers from the appropriate Emporium, and cook them in garlic butter.
They would, at anyrate, have to be the proper Provencal Roman escargots.
How do you feel about shrimp? crab? lobster? Same diff.
Rejoice that some of us don’t like them. That leaves more for you.
I must remember, if I’m ever offered severed fingers that they’d be fine cooked and served cold with a Marie Rose dressing and crisp lettuce. (Presumably they should be filleted.)
The amount of choking that might otherwise ensue is appalling to contemplate...
Some sort of dressing (French?) and a green salad would go very nicely with them, I agree. Also new potatoes.
(I think we all need to get out more, if only we could....
(For those who may not be familiar with what I have in mind.)
High praise indeed!
That looks far less horrid than I think it should - I thought grits was (were?) just like porridge but with a different kind of grain instead of oats, but that looks almost like a risotto.
Properly cooked grits are very creamy and tasty. At breakfast, they are often served with country ham and red-eye gravy. But for other meals they may be served with a fancier gravy, as with shrimp and grits. Or they may just be served with butter, and may have cheese mixed in. Sausages and grits is a common Sunday night supper at our house.
As with polenta, grits can also be baked.
And as with many foods, instant grits are an abomination unto the Lord.
How many of those have you eaten? He asked timorously.
The grits that I have had and enjoyed were cooked like a risotto.
(Makes note to self: Must get some hominy—what the rest of us not from Charleston call hominy—from the store. Sadly, I’m the only one in my household who likes it.)
Yep.
Probably matching the surreal world we find ourselves in. Who tampered with the Large Hadron Collider? Come on - own up. We won't be cross...
It has been plainly stated by Experts that severed fingers should be filleted before cooking.
*sigh*
Although I am told that they can be obtained more cheaply at a second-hand shop...
Also, it's just very interesting, psychologically, for understanding the mental health issues involved, and the how isolation affects us, how it affects different groups of people, and practical things that can help.
The first Nice Soap is Tea Tree and Eucalyptus, which is the least nice of my Nice Soap. It still feels like a treat to use.
Also, please remind me to not read the KenWritez-esque food suggestions anymore while I'm feeling ill!!!
To be perfectly fair, severed fingers are only leathery and hard if they are overcooked.