Just a brief blog

Today B. travelled from Wallasey to Stafford as she had a dental check-up.  She’d arranged to meet up with a friend later in the evening and wanted to shop at the supermarket as well, so we invited her out for a pub meal at a nearby hostelry that serves food all day.  We knew we had time to fit this in her busy schedule.  We placed our order at the bar and waited for the meal to be served.  When it arrived they had made a mistake and brought one meal that we hadn’t chosen.  I said I would have the meal they had prepared as long as they adjusted the price because I had paid for a more expensive option. (I really didn’t mind as it was a meal I have ordered on previous occasions).  They offered to replace the meal but I said I was happy to eat what had been cooked, so they apologised profusely and refunded the cost of the meal.  

I ate for free - that’s the sort of mistake I don’t mind.

Therapies

Gardening and cooking are two activities which I find are therapeutic.  Days are less fraught when you are busy and on Sunday we worked all day on the garden and cooking.

Suddenly, we have a mini-glut of courgettes and peas. I put in an online search for Courgette and Pea soup and I came up with many recipes – it was just a guess that these two vegetables would be combined.  So I printed off the most straightforward of the recipes and adapted it.

First I added potato, not one potato but about twenty miniscule potatoes that were part of the harvest from the potatoes that were grown in the potato planters (large bags with handles so that they can be moved about).  Then I didn’t have any fresh basil so I used dried and guessed about a teaspoonful would be sufficient. I didn’t use the fresh cream, which was optional according to the recipe and I omitted the large pinch of salt.  I’m trying to make sure that we don’t overdo the salt.

The cooking meant I was kept busy preparing the ingredients and then getting through the mountain of washing up that ‘real’ cooking produces.  The bonus was eating the soup with warm bread rolls – the flavour was mild but good enough to use the recipe again.  Since the recipe produced enough for six servings we will be using it up over the next few days.

F was busy getting the garden back into some sort of order.  The hedge at the front of the house needed cutting so the electric shears were used – the trimming doesn’t take too long, the clearing up after takes more time.  Then F had to get the ladders out to trim the climbing hydrangea from around the windows at the front of the house.  As the lawnmower had to be moved to get the ladders out of the garage F said he might as well cut the front lawn so now we are looking quite tidy at the front of the house.  I mixed up weed killer glyphosate and sprayed the persistent weeds that are growing between the paving slabs and in the gutters – if you pull them out and leave just a little bit of root in the ground they grow back with a vengeance.  The gardening waste bins are full to the top and should be emptied today – ready for the next load. 

By the time we had finished the gardening jobs it started to rain – F was still cutting the front lawn but he decided to complete the job – he was not using an electric mower.  Everything that he had to pack back into the garage was wet.  He was soaked by the time he came in but he was able to warm up with homemade Courgette and Pea Soup.

Harvest

Another long break from the blog – I must try harder.

The garden has suffered from a lack of attention this year and considering that I didn’t put anything into the ground until early June I am lucky to have any produce at all.

I planted potatoes in large bags after last year’s scabby crop in the veg plot.  Yesterday the first bag was emptied, with the help of the under-gardener, as the tops of the potatoes plants had wilted away.  The resulting crop from ten seed potatoes – beautiful, blemish free and about enough for two meals!  A neighbour had said that they never managed to get reasonable quantities when they used bags to grow potatoes.

You can judge for yourself.

 

 The courgettes have been equally lacking – how do you manage to not get a glut of courgettes?
 

The one crop that has bucked the trend – the magnum bonum peas – a late cropping variety that were popular in Victorian times. 

Last summer, I was sent a present of six pea seeds by a fellow Open University Student who I had met for the first time when we both attended a revision weekend before the astronomy exam. We discovered that we both enjoyed gardening and when I told her I had recently started a veg patch she promised to send some seeds.

There were not many peas to eat last year but from the pods that were left on for seed there has been a bumper crop this year.  The peas grow quite tall and need a frame to climb through.

You can judge for yourself.

Doesn’t time fly?

The pressure is off – I took my OU exam last week and there is a four month break before my next course starts so I can do some of the more relaxing things in life.

With a long unseasonably cold and wet Spring, and having other things to do, I didn’t start the veg patch till last Tuesday.  By Sunday the plot was dug over and all the seeds sown. I’m hoping that the summer stays long enough for everything to grow enough to harvest.

Last year, a cold wet growing season made plants susceptible to all sorts of pests and diseases.  The potatoes didn’t look pretty when they came out of the ground but the problem was only skin deep and they could still be eaten.

 I decided that this year I would grow potatoes in large grow bags in case anything from last year was still lurking in the soil.  Today, eight days after planting, one of the sets of potatoes was sprouting through the soil.  Variety?  Rocket. 

Mothering Sunday

Mothering Sunday in the UK occurs on the fourth Sunday in Lent, this year the 10^th March and the offspring made it a very special occasion for me (as usual).

Because B was working the weekend we celebrated the day early –  on Friday we spent the day in Lichfield and the itinerary included visiting as many of the charity shops as we could find where I was able to buy some of the Agatha Raisin detective books on my wish list.  MC Beaton has written a series of murder mysteries, with the sort of charm that you can read them without getting nightmares. There are a couple of dozen titles and I am trying to read them in the order in which they were written. I recommend them if you want something light to read. 

At the other end of the literary spectrum, we visited the Dr Samuel Johnson Museum, Lichfield being his birthplace and the Museum being housed in his birthplace, at the centre of the city.   Amongst other achievements he compiled a dictionary, published in 1755, and for his efforts was given an honorary doctorate from Oxford University.

We had a meal at a pub and then we meandered back home calling in at two garden centres to try and purchase some climbing fuchsias but it is too early in the season so that treat will come later.

On Saturday I received a bouquet of flowers from A and RM.  They are now in a vase in the hall, where it is cooler than the rest of the house so they will last a long time and they are the first thing I see when I come downstairs in the morning. They are beautiful.

I had phone calls from both B and A on Mothering Sunday to wish me Happy Mother’s Day and then the bonus of some photos of last year’s family holiday arrived in an email from G and B.

Thank you all for making Mothering Sunday so special.

A Belated Resolution

The UK and Europe have been scandalised by the appearance of horse meat, in varying proportions up to 100%, being passed off as beef in supermarket ready meals, especially in the cheaper basic ranges.  Fortunately, we do not eat that many ready meals or supermarket beef burgers. 

While I realise that horse meat in itself does no harm in the diet, I am not very happy at the thought of eating horse.  Maybe it’s because both B and A had horse riding lessons for a few years when they were growing up.  In fact I remember B wanting to be a show jumper as a career, until I explained that it wasn’t really a career choice unless you were wealthy enough to own your own land and horses, and then maybe, if you were good enough.

So, my belated resolution is to cook vegetarian, two or three times a month, using a vegetarian cookbook, rather than just cooking without meat – tinned beans, vegetarian cheese and free range eggs are very versatile.

My first recipe was taken from Sarah Brown’s Vegetarian Cookbook, which I bought from a charity shop quite a few years ago, and checking the blurb it was first published in 1984, so there are no links.

I produced Broccoli and Walnut Bake – a main course.  It consisted of the vegetable and nuts, plus onions, garlic, and mushrooms layered between mashed potatoes and served with a creamy mushroom sauce. We enjoyed this recipe so I will be making it again.

In the meantime, I shall be searching through the cookbook to find a different dish so that I can build my repertoire!  And I shall have to try some photographs of the results - perhaps.

February is flying by

February is two thirds gone and I haven’t made time to post on the blog.

Well the month is flying by and I seem to be spending a lot of my time helping F with sorting through his research and playing catch up with my Open University Maths Course.  I am enjoying the work but I can’t seem to dedicate enough time to keep up with the pace.  The good thing about the course is that the tutor has the knack of explaining things clearly – that helps when the books are a bit obscure.

So I cheated for Shrove Tuesday – we had pancakes - but for the first time I can remember I used ready made sweet pancakes, tinned red cherry fruit pie filling and ready made ice cream a copy of the pancakes they serve at the Little Chef. They were ready with no effort and of course I didn’t have much clearing away and washing dishes.  They tasted quite good, but next year I shall be going back to making them from scratch.

Also – good news – my car got though its MOT with no real problems, so that makes it legal to keep on the road for another twelve months.  It has 102,000 miles on the clock – a mere junior compared to some Audis I have read about!  They garage suggested I might consider new number plates, but I like the antique ones they already have – original to the car so I shall be keeping them.

Volunteering

I have been retired for three years now and am always finding there aren’t enough hours in the day.  When I retired I was definite about steering clear of helping out in school – I felt I needed a break from the environment that has consumed my working life.  But I didn’t want to stay at home all the time even though there is always something to do.

In the UK if you volunteer to help out in the community you have to go through a process where you have a background check, carried out by the police, to ensure that you have not contravened any laws that would indicate you were of unsuitable character to work with children or vulnerable adults.    You have to produce identifying documents such as a passport and a driving licence, and list all the places you have ever lived, and all the names you have been known by.  Until recently it was known as a CRB check (Criminal Records Bureau), and is now called a  DBS  check (Disclosure and Barring Service ) and it can take quite a while for you to be checked out.

First I volunteered at Church to help out with the holiday club when church puts on a week of activities for children during the long summer holidays.  By the end of the week I was shattered but I enjoyed the event and we had lots of good comments from the children and their parents. So I have enhanced CRB clearance to work with the children during holiday club.

Next, I spotted a poster at the library asking for volunteers to deliver books to housebound library members.  This means that once a month I deliver a bag of books to each of my clients.  This also required a CRB check – it involved volunteering for library services so I needed to be vetted as I would be visiting vulnerable adults in their homes.  So I had to fill in the same form, and send it to the same place as my first CRB check.

A couple of weeks ago I was chatting with the children’s worker at church.  She visits local schools, taking assemblies and helping out with their delivery of Religious Education.  She told me that she runs a dinnertime club at a school and was looking to enlist help from a team of people to give a hand with the activities.  Since the school is almost next door to my home and would involve just an hour, once a week – and not every week – I have volunteered.

I have had to have a third vetting clearance, now done online, so this was processed quite quickly.  I am happy to be checked out because it is for the well being of the children and adults I come into contact with but it is surely an expensive and unnecessary duplication to need such a check for every different organisation I help.

Having helped out for the first time this week I enjoyed working with the children.  It is the first time I have been into school since I retired but it has not given me a hankering to return to teaching.  The children were lovely, the school very welcoming, but how nice not to have to prepare lesson plans and fulfil all the many tedious tasks that have been imposed on the teaching profession in the last two decades.

The snowy weather

The weather has been so cold that the snow which arrived about a week ago is still lying around and being added to almost every day.  The nearby school closed for a couple of days and though it has reopened we do not see the pupils in the playground. I think the low temperatures have made it so treacherous underfoot that they are confined to the building.  It feels as if everyone has gone into hibernation – it’s so quiet.

 

The postman managed to deliver the mail to our front door - the evidence that I needed to check the letter box was left on the doormat.

The garden looks very pretty.

We have new neighbours and they have built a snowman in their front garden.  They have a two year old daughter so I think she got some grown-up help.

As the sun tries to break through and the temperature rises slightly, some of the snow from the roof is melting and trickling into our Heath Robinson overflow which directs excess rain into the garden borders.  Of course, as the temperature drops icicles form and we a wall of icicles forming on the end of the gutters and down the tree trunks. This photo was taken from the warmth of the kitchen.

Last night – Thursday – we travelled to Wallasey to take assorted goodies to B.  As soon as we left the estate the main roads and motorways were clear of snow but there was much evidence of the previous falls of snow.  The further north we travelled, the snow in the surrounding countryside got less and less.  For the last part of the journey, along the M56 there was hardly ant snow left and in Wallasey itself it looked as if they had had no snow at all.  Being near the coast the temperature had been less harsh and so the initial snow falls soon melted away.  On the return journey, the snow, and the colder temperatures were still waiting for us.  Today it feels bitterly cold even though the thermometer reads just one degree below.

An advantage of retirement

One of the perks of not going out to work is that you have more time to do the things you like doing.  Working full-time and having work to bring home most evenings meant that the pleasure of losing myself in a book was mainly confined to holiday times. 

I enjoy reading a variety of genres and often my choice of reading is dictated by the books I find for sale in charity shops or those that friends share.  Once I find an author I particularly enjoy reading, I try to find other books by the same author. If the author has written a series based around a character, then there is the challenge of finding the other titles in the correct order.    

About nine months ago I joined the reading group at the local library. Meetings are held once a month and a group of about ten of us discuss the months chosen read.  It is lead by one of the librarians, who chooses a book for the group – or asks a group member to select the book.  The variety of books selected is wide and I am now reading books that I would not necessarily have picked – so far, most have been to my taste. 

The group is all female – perhaps it is like this for most reading groups.  The discussions around the books show a variety of views – justifying what you think about a character or scenario keeps the mind alive.  We exchange opinions, challenge views and laugh a lot – an hour soon goes.  Meeting new people is a bonus.

At the beginning of this week the group met and our new book is a historical novel, the first one since I joined the group.  It is set in Tudor England, ‘The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory’, and I don’t think it will last me until our next meeting.  To me, it is a page-turner!  The author knows how to keep her readers engaged with the long and complicated plot.

Things I should have posted in 2012.

The first week of the New Year has already gone and I have not made the time to post.

In spite of RM setting a good example and the thoughts that I should at least be able to manage one post a week … so much for good intentions.

Well in 2012 I should have posted my elder sister’s special birthday – we held a surprise party.

For Christmas we went to Wallasey – it was busy – but good to spend time with the family- sorry no pictures.

After Christmas we travelled to Haughton near Stafford  to view the Christmas lights – every year a lot of the residents in the village decorate the outside of their houses and attract lots of visitors who are invited to donate towards a variety of charities.

 

The New Year has brought more rain – note the fields on the way to the town look more like a lake.

 Well – first post of 2013 – I shall continue to have good intentions.