Well my name comes from Sarasa Comet which is a type of goldfish.
I remember your signature line, after a name change amnesty, about changing from a newt fancier to a goldfish. Being a big P.G. Wodehouse fan I laughed at that.
(Gwokaml is very popular here in Arizona, but with the more traditional spelling.)
Is this what being in quarantine does to us? Cannibalism? First Dormouse and now Lamb Chopped, not to mention Piglet! Yikes! I'm glad owls are considered inedible!
Cats try to entice their humans into eating mice, but are rarely successful.
I have a name that indicates a fondness for lipstick (among other things). Maybe I'm just shallow. Oh well.
Meanwhile this is turning out to be a most civilised apocalypse. This evening: black rice paella cooked by husband en rouge and a semolina cake by me. I had horrible memories of semolina from school dinners but the cake was really very pleasant.
Mine should actually be Heavenlyanarchist (my artist name) but the name is too long for some forums so I started putting Heavenlyannie instead. But I am Annie irl.
We had roast chicken for dinner - yum!
We had a takeaway from the local chippy, which was just fine. My brother and sister-in-law did a humongous shop for us at Marks & Sparks, so the fridge is absolutely groaning with food (including cod and haddock), which I'll have to try and find interesting ways of cooking.
I'm tempted to subject S. to cod au gratin, which is a Newfoundland speciality: a good one is a Thing of Beauty, but I've never actually made it before ...
I did a not in walking distance shopping trip today to go to the butchers and a more English-focused fishmonger. Both were reasonably substantial shops, so the freezer is now a bit fuller, particularly with pork products I can't get locally.
Last night was haddock with spinach (microwaved and then squeezed hard to take out the water) covered in cheese sauce, topped with Parmesan, and baked. And very nice too.
The restaurant next door is doing chicken with crayfish tonight. MrD is having that, but I didn't fancy it. So I'm having steak, chips, & green beans with butter and garlic. And a dab of horseradish. I'm salivating already
We're going to walk to my mother's care home this afternoon to drop a card off for her. On the way back we're foraging for nettles, so my husband can make pasta with blue cheese and nettles for dinner tonight. We once had it in a local pub and it was delicious. Not sure quite how the home made version will be.
From the "Wales Online" website (yes, I know it's really a Headline of Weirdness): Three men from London found by police camping in Wales. You'd have thought that the police would have better things to do than go camping, wouldn't you?
I'm down to the emergency Pot Noodles, fortunately my saintly sister has volunteered to brave Tesco for me so I may not have to make that sacrifice.
I was quite enjoying the lockdown while I was well, but now I have mild symptoms I am just itching to get out, go for a McBreakfast or spend an evening in the pub. I'm sure the virus gets into your brain to make you want to spread it.
It's really just cod in a basic cheese sauce (possibly with savoury, a herb that's very popular there, added) baked in the oven.
A change of plan has happened: when I described it to S., she sounded less than enthusiastic, so I'm going to have a go at this, which tbh sounds much nicer! Again, new territory for me, but why not use this horrid situation to learn new things?
It's a lovely, if not terribly warm, day (9°), so I really must amble later.
Get well soon, BTO.
I went out for a very slow mile long walk earlier, in an effort to retrain my body to respond correctly to being upright and moving. This daily walk seems to be working, as my pulse rate seems to be improving afterwards for the rest of the day.
Ham and eggs for lunch; I think we are planning beef mince enchiladas for tea.
Each morning see some task begun,
each evening see it chucked.
It's been a funny day. I spotted a minor irregularity in a jumper I was knitting and forgot the cardinal rule that you cannot unpick intarsia. Ended up ripping the whole thing - tbh, I wasn't totally happy with the colour combo. Send off for some different yarn.
Wanted to give Mr F a haircut but he insisted on doing it himself. It's as well he's not going out for a few months.
Having put rawlplugs in the kitchen cupboard door to give something for the hinge screw to screw back into, noticed they are in fact blunt ended. Set the Black&Decker on them anyway.
Started assembling the frankendressing gown I was making but then decided it was never going to work. Bin.
So that one (possible) accomplishment out of four. I feel oddly upset.
We're going to walk to my mother's care home this afternoon to drop a card off for her. On the way back we're foraging for nettles, so my husband can make pasta with blue cheese and nettles for dinner tonight. We once had it in a local pub and it was delicious. Not sure quite how the home made version will be.
Would be interested to hear more about how that works out. Pasta with a blue cheese sauce is popular around here, but I'd never heard of adding nettles. How much do you use? When do you add them?
We're going to walk to my mother's care home this afternoon to drop a card off for her. On the way back we're foraging for nettles, so my husband can make pasta with blue cheese and nettles for dinner tonight. We once had it in a local pub and it was delicious. Not sure quite how the home made version will be.
Would be interested to hear more about how that works out. Pasta with a blue cheese sauce is popular around here, but I'd never heard of adding nettles. How much do you use? When do you add them?
Well @Stercus Tauri , we trespassed along with what looked like half the Borough onto a local golf course. I might not have done it but I spotted a very respectable family from church heading that way and followed. Found lots of nettles so when we got home husband made sauce. I think it was supposed to be equal weight of blue cheese to nettles but I think it needed more cheese and less nettles. Still nice though. When we had it in a pub they'd made the nettles and cheese into small balls which I think might have worked a bit better.
We also picked up bits of greenery. We'd read about The Getty Museum Photo Challenge and decided to recreate Millais's Ophelia. He used the Hogsmill river as his background and that is very near where we live. I ended up lying in the bath surrounded by pillows and scarves in my wedding dress. The idea is my husband will photoshop it onto a picture of the river as it is today. First attempts are not brilliant, but it'll keep us entertained till we get it right. It might help if I was the age and thinness of Lizzie Siddall.
We also picked up bits of greenery. We'd read about The Getty Museum Photo Challenge and decided to recreate Millais's Ophelia. He used the Hogsmill river as his background and that is very near where we live. I ended up lying in the bath surrounded by pillows and scarves in my wedding dress. The idea is my husband will photoshop it onto a picture of the river as it is today. First attempts are not brilliant, but it'll keep us entertained till we get it right. It might help if I was the age and thinness of Lizzie Siddall.
I’ve seen some photos of these challenges online, they look great fun.
We're going to walk to my mother's care home this afternoon to drop a card off for her. On the way back we're foraging for nettles, so my husband can make pasta with blue cheese and nettles for dinner tonight. We once had it in a local pub and it was delicious. Not sure quite how the home made version will be.
Would be interested to hear more about how that works out. Pasta with a blue cheese sauce is popular around here, but I'd never heard of adding nettles. How much do you use? When do you add them?
Surely the answer is wearing gloves?
The Ship is such a great place for the innocent seeker after knowledge. No question is ever left without a helpful answer...
Pascha today, so salmon, eggs, cheese, and wine are back on the menu for this pescatarian, though I'm slightly lactose-intolerant so I'll focus on the others. And chocolate!
Bread and wine is on the table, waiting now to join the zoom service at my NF church. Didn’t go last week as I was unwell and husband disorganised (he caught the last few minutes) so interesting to see how it will work. There is zoom chat, with break out rooms before and after the service; we’re just doing the after bit.
I though we’d return to our usual Sunday routine of nice cheese for lunch too, we usually have posh bread but I’ve found a box of cheese crackers left over from a Christmas.
The butcher's is still open for business and we are in possession of a mighty rib of beef. It shall be roasted and eaten with French fries and a nice bottle of 2014 Hermitage.
We don't eat much meat, and I am a bit embarrassed to go in there just for eggs, but our local butcher is a reliable source, whereas the (nearer) Sainsbury's Local has not had any for three weeks - or, at least, not on the day I go shopping.
I have also found very nice mango chutney there when none of the other local shops had it.
We had roast pork today, courtesy of Friday's butcher's visit. There is at least one more meal there. I also discovered crispy eating apples don't convert easily into apple sauce. (Bought the fruit and veg before the meat.)
It being Sunday we pushed the boat out a bit:
freshwater crayfish tails* on wilted spinach
Wiener schnitzel, new potatoes and runner beans
Chocolate souffle & cream
* I know someone with a licence to trap signal crayfish and got a call this morning to say they had a glut
I suspect that by the time they reached The Organist's dining table they may have been past caring ...
It's another glorious day here, so I shall amble in a little while.
Whenever it's the Quinie's turn to cook dinner, we have been feasting.
The Quinie's boyfriend's mother has been sending the Quinie gifts of food and recipes, and the Quinie has been sending her photographs of the end result. There is nothing quite like trying to impress a boyfriend's mother for upping the culinary game.
This morning the Quinie made two loaves of sourdough bread, and tonight we had Paneer Masala (paneer and spices posted up by boyfriend's mother) and homemade sourdough naan bread, followed by chocolate fondant pudding.
It's Monday. It's sausages. Sausage Boulangere, since all I have in the veg line is onions, potatoes, a few elderly carrots and, for some reason, two and a half bunches of scallions.
Tomorrow will be even more scratch - two small chorizo, packet of prawns and some microwaveable Mexican-style rice. Sprinkled with chopped scallion.
Meat-free Monday, because the meat delivery is Tuesday...
Today we had cabbage and lentil stew with cream, which was far nicer than it sounds. The addition of the weekend’s chicken gravy definitely improved it (so not quite meat-free).
We had tinned chicken in white sauce, augmented by tinned mushrooms and real spring onions, on a bed of tagliatelli, green with either spring onions or wild garlic. Neither flavour was apparent. It was liked by the other party. And the cook, but that goes without saying. Tomorrow is something I find in the freezer with enough for two.
I'm off shortly to be on the doorstep of Tesco's for 6am and plan a roast chicken dinner this evening with the provisions thereby purloined. Shopping's a bit of a military operation these days but the staff are doing a cracking job.
Hope the mission was successful @nenya. I’m a long term on-.line grocery orderer and so far have managed to get a slot each week. So far I seem to be spending twice as much as usual. I’m not sure if that’s because prices have risen steeply or because I’m trying harder to get enough in for a week at a time. In normal times I pick up extras several times a week and I’m trying to avoid shops if I can. Oh and I am buying more wine than usual.
This is what I find stressful. Despite the promises to the 70+ (that'll be me) and the Shielded (that'll be Mr F) we have no priority access to supermarket deliveries. By prowling the websites late at night, I have bagged two in the course of four weeks. The temptation is to bung on everything I can think of since I don't know when I shall get another.
So are we, but we'd planned a dry evening yesterday. Sadly, after the shower tray Mr S had ordered turned out to be the wrong size, and the boiler refused to light (again!) good intentions are strewing the wayside...
This is what I find stressful. Despite the promises to the 70+ (that'll be me) and the Shielded (that'll be Mr F) we have no priority access to supermarket deliveries. By prowling the websites late at night, I have bagged two in the course of four weeks. The temptation is to bung on everything I can think of since I don't know when I shall get another.
We’re not a priority household in the same way, but have been online customers for probably a decade and suddenly can’t get deliveries at all. No slots available as far ahead as dates are listed.
Fortunately, from this point of view at least, one of us is furloughed and has time to shop. But we are a household of four adults and a strapping teenager. The purchasing limits of x items per customer mean that either we need to shop much more frequently or that more of us need to be shoppers in order to have a week’s supply of anything.
We are resorting to a kind of guerrilla shopping where, when one of us goes out for any reason that takes us near or past a relevant shop, we are asking if we need to get anything. The household staples which are continually at a marginal level are loo paper and strong flour.
We’re making far more use of the new corner shop 2 minutes behind us on the new build. Owing to our previous covid status and then my subsequent health complications, husband visited Waitrose last week for the first time in a month. We’re lucky to have milk delivered and that we already had a veg box being delivered (which I added a small meat box to a few weeks before lockdown just in case).
We’re exploring the unusual items in the Eastern European run Nisa behind us. Particularly good is one of the huge tubs of white cheese which melts beautifully in sandwiches. We need to explore the dried sausage section. They even have flour, though you have to guess the type from the picture.
I have hit defrosting the chest freezer and cleaning the oven stages of "What can I get up to today that will keep me occupied." The plan is to do some batch cooking later in the week and get the chest freezer filled up again.
Other than that, I have been getting so far ahead with organist's admin work and the voluntary bits of church admin which seem to have come my way over the last few years, that I am almost out of the end of the current year's Lectionary! Scary. It does, however, mean that the Sunday and mid-week communion readings are all prepared for printout as needed and I've almost completed the 3-years cycle for Sundays and am in the home straight of the mid-week 2 years cycle.
Comments
(Gwokaml is very popular here in Arizona, but with the more traditional spelling.)
Cats try to entice their humans into eating mice, but are rarely successful.
Meanwhile this is turning out to be a most civilised apocalypse. This evening: black rice paella cooked by husband en rouge and a semolina cake by me. I had horrible memories of semolina from school dinners but the cake was really very pleasant.
We had roast chicken for dinner - yum!
I'm tempted to subject S. to cod au gratin, which is a Newfoundland speciality: a good one is a Thing of Beauty, but I've never actually made it before ...
Am I correct in remembering wonderful red wedding shoes?
Last night was haddock with spinach (microwaved and then squeezed hard to take out the water) covered in cheese sauce, topped with Parmesan, and baked. And very nice too.
I always read your name and ‘red wine’ 🍷
I was quite enjoying the lockdown while I was well, but now I have mild symptoms I am just itching to get out, go for a McBreakfast or spend an evening in the pub. I'm sure the virus gets into your brain to make you want to spread it.
Get well soon, @Bob Two Owls , and may your Saintly Sister (on whom be peace) find something tasty for you at Mr Cohen's Corner Shop.
It's really just cod in a basic cheese sauce (possibly with savoury, a herb that's very popular there, added) baked in the oven.
A change of plan has happened: when I described it to S., she sounded less than enthusiastic, so I'm going to have a go at this, which tbh sounds much nicer! Again, new territory for me, but why not use this horrid situation to learn new things?
It's a lovely, if not terribly warm, day (9°), so I really must amble later.
I went out for a very slow mile long walk earlier, in an effort to retrain my body to respond correctly to being upright and moving. This daily walk seems to be working, as my pulse rate seems to be improving afterwards for the rest of the day.
Ham and eggs for lunch; I think we are planning beef mince enchiladas for tea.
each evening see it chucked.
It's been a funny day. I spotted a minor irregularity in a jumper I was knitting and forgot the cardinal rule that you cannot unpick intarsia. Ended up ripping the whole thing - tbh, I wasn't totally happy with the colour combo. Send off for some different yarn.
Wanted to give Mr F a haircut but he insisted on doing it himself. It's as well he's not going out for a few months.
Having put rawlplugs in the kitchen cupboard door to give something for the hinge screw to screw back into, noticed they are in fact blunt ended. Set the Black&Decker on them anyway.
Started assembling the frankendressing gown I was making but then decided it was never going to work. Bin.
So that one (possible) accomplishment out of four. I feel oddly upset.
Would be interested to hear more about how that works out. Pasta with a blue cheese sauce is popular around here, but I'd never heard of adding nettles. How much do you use? When do you add them?
Surely the answer is wearing gloves?
We also picked up bits of greenery. We'd read about The Getty Museum Photo Challenge and decided to recreate Millais's Ophelia. He used the Hogsmill river as his background and that is very near where we live. I ended up lying in the bath surrounded by pillows and scarves in my wedding dress. The idea is my husband will photoshop it onto a picture of the river as it is today. First attempts are not brilliant, but it'll keep us entertained till we get it right. It might help if I was the age and thinness of Lizzie Siddall.
I though we’d return to our usual Sunday routine of nice cheese for lunch too, we usually have posh bread but I’ve found a box of cheese crackers left over from a Christmas.
After which napping shall undoubtedly occur.
I'm not sure what delights* I'm going to cook up this evening - there are many interesting possibilities in the fridge and larder ...
* or not, as the case may be
I have also found very nice mango chutney there when none of the other local shops had it.
freshwater crayfish tails* on wilted spinach
Wiener schnitzel, new potatoes and runner beans
Chocolate souffle & cream
* I know someone with a licence to trap signal crayfish and got a call this morning to say they had a glut
It's another glorious day here, so I shall amble in a little while.
The Quinie's boyfriend's mother has been sending the Quinie gifts of food and recipes, and the Quinie has been sending her photographs of the end result. There is nothing quite like trying to impress a boyfriend's mother for upping the culinary game.
This morning the Quinie made two loaves of sourdough bread, and tonight we had Paneer Masala (paneer and spices posted up by boyfriend's mother) and homemade sourdough naan bread, followed by chocolate fondant pudding.
Tomorrow will be even more scratch - two small chorizo, packet of prawns and some microwaveable Mexican-style rice. Sprinkled with chopped scallion.
Today we had cabbage and lentil stew with cream, which was far nicer than it sounds. The addition of the weekend’s chicken gravy definitely improved it (so not quite meat-free).
Lovely weather: stiffish breeze dried laundry PDQ so I've spent most of the evening ironing.
Supper tonight was salmon (thank you "reduced " cabinet) on green lentils, followed by baked apples.
applause!
So are we, but we'd planned a dry evening yesterday. Sadly, after the shower tray Mr S had ordered turned out to be the wrong size, and the boiler refused to light (again!) good intentions are strewing the wayside...
Fortunately, from this point of view at least, one of us is furloughed and has time to shop. But we are a household of four adults and a strapping teenager. The purchasing limits of x items per customer mean that either we need to shop much more frequently or that more of us need to be shoppers in order to have a week’s supply of anything.
We are resorting to a kind of guerrilla shopping where, when one of us goes out for any reason that takes us near or past a relevant shop, we are asking if we need to get anything. The household staples which are continually at a marginal level are loo paper and strong flour.
We’re exploring the unusual items in the Eastern European run Nisa behind us. Particularly good is one of the huge tubs of white cheese which melts beautifully in sandwiches. We need to explore the dried sausage section. They even have flour, though you have to guess the type from the picture.
Other than that, I have been getting so far ahead with organist's admin work and the voluntary bits of church admin which seem to have come my way over the last few years, that I am almost out of the end of the current year's Lectionary! Scary. It does, however, mean that the Sunday and mid-week communion readings are all prepared for printout as needed and I've almost completed the 3-years cycle for Sundays and am in the home straight of the mid-week 2 years cycle.