Priceless Paintings from W7

There’s a lot of press coverage about the demise of bees recently – apparently, bees all over the world have been disappearing at an alarming rate, and for not fully understood reasons. This frustrates hobby bee keepers, but brings agriculture into serious jeopardy in many countries.

No bees, no apples, the simple truth goes.

While that is truly worrying on a global scale, I was of course worried about my own mini-orchard first of all. I am happy to report that both the pear and cherry trees are well pollinated, and are heaving with fruit. Surely I will lose most to the birds and some to the slugs, but I am hopeful that we might be able to harvest some of it for ourselves.

Maybe I have finally understood a little more about tree pruning than before, too. After a recent and very stimulating visit to RHCS Wisely Gardens, I am thinking we’ll also have us an apple tree and some raspberries maybe, once the garden begins to return to normality.

Food and Drink, Thoughts gardening

…emergency kitchen food, again. I had enough of it now, but you wait until this Friday’s latest photos…

Braised Lamb shanks, roasted winter vegetables and saffron rice (always lovely, but will be even lovelier soon – did you know my new oven can run as low as 70 Celsius?),

Spaghetti Bolognese (a reliable source of good-tasting food whenever I can’t think of anything else),

A stir-fry from chicken, prawns, Chinese sausage, cabbage, ginger and chillies, with egg noodle soup (the world of stir-fry cooking is only just emerging – did you know we’ll also have a gas cooker in the new kitchen?),

Steak Tartare with beef tomatoes and french fries (yes, and a dedicated feature for this, too: the new kitchen has space planned for attaching the mincer, an affair that required a certain amount of improvisation in the previous arrangements).

Food and Drink cooking, Kitchen, recipe

Low-grade olive oil comes in metal canisters, but the decent stuff comes in nice glass bottles.

So do all the many other specialist oils: walnut oil or raisin or whatnot – except Sunflower oil, which refuses to go upmarket, still selling in the same old, time-proven but nevertheless unappealing plastic bottles.

One would have thought the sunflower oil people would want to open a door into a higher price segment with better quality and nicer presentation.

I use Sunflower Oil only for those jobs that don’t agree with the sharp flavour of a good olive oil, and for mundane tasks such as oiling a wok or a frying pan, and I can’t really see myself changing this practise, even if sunflower oil suddenly came along in a nicer presentation and with a claim of superior quality. The mind boggles nevertheless.

Food and Drink cooking, oil

Buy any one appliance anywhere these days, and you’ll be pestered with numerous attempts to make you sign up for an extended warranty or appliance insurance of some sort. Do as I do, and buy multiple appliances from multiple places at the same time, and you’ll get a flood of those calls.

Just in case you’re reading this and aren’t sure about these schemes: forget it. It goes like so:

I buy a new dishwasher today for £400. They’d like to sign me up for their lifetime warranty scheme at £6 per month, claiming an average expected life of 3 to 5 years.

I’d have made a poor purchase decision if my new dishwasher indeed breaks down after 3 to 5 years already, but even if it does, I’d have paid almost the equivalent of a new unit in “insurance premium” by then.

If my dishwasher lives more than 6 years, I’d be wasting my insurance money. The merchant gets a better price than I do, so he has a nice little constant earner from 2 to 3 years lifetime onwards, plus a guaranteed return customer. If the merchant goes under meanwhile, he’s in no obligation to me.

This doesn’t even include the many causes of dishwasher death which would, presumably, be exempt from the policy by way of fine print.

I am a great big old fool, but not big enough a fool for them.

Thoughts, home home, robbery

It’s Friday again already, and the end of my blog posting pause. As promised, here’s an update on the state of affairs:

The electrical work is done, as you can see from the nice light shining out of the windows.

The walls in and around the kitchen have been forced to admit an IKEA kitchen, by making even what wasn’t even, and making right angles right. All floor and wall units are now in place, the solid surface (artificial stone) worktop is cut and glued, the kitchen island (a peninsular, actually) is being build, and the remaining units are arriving.

The dishwasher is here, and the ovens should be here by the time you read this post. 

Next steps include sanding and polishing the worktop – a job in itself, given we are talking about almost 6 sqm, fitting hobs, sinks, tap, drawers, doors, shelves, … I assume the kitchen alone will take another week. Add the tiling and laying of the bamboo floor, and you’ll see the same light as we do. It’s there, somewhere, but still a month or so away.

home home, ikea

No posts this week until Friday, my lovelies. My bones are aching from carrying, cutting and laying the railway sleepers. My head is full with kitchen details and not much else besides regular work, but I wouldn’t want to bore you with either.

So, bear with me, browse the archives, or do something useful.

Will be back this Friday with a new progress report.

Thoughts, home home

It’s only been a four-day week, but it’s one of those that feels longer than most. Progress on site continues to be steady:

We are now in the process of getting the kitchen installed, along with a plethora of big and small decisions, and along with a number of small and severe fix-ups to make the kitchen units fit:

Some of the pipe work had to be re-run. This change caused another problem because one of the stop cocks would no longer work. I replaced it myself – but not without very narrowly escaping a mid-sized domestic catastrophe. My adrenaline is still coming down to normal levels as I write these words.

The boys were also busy hacking away some of the plaster that other boys put on only a few days ago, and adjusting to some other truths. Maybe I should have made it very clear from the very beginning that there will be a kitchen installed, and that kitchen will rely on standard measurements, will prefer right angles, will come with a floor, …

Why thinking ahead if we can fix it later? The mind boggles.

Now that we begin to look into the finishing touches, we begin to see those ‘issues’ that weren’t visible before. In a way, these weeks are the moment of truth, when we see how, or if, things come together as envisioned. And not all of it is as envisioned.

On the upside, we are well on track and making progress throughout. The kitchen units are going in, the worktop has been chosen, ordered and is due for delivery. The dishwasher is on order, and all the other five hundred smaller things are also coming together now. It begins to be our home again, although it doesn’t currently look that way.

Click here for the latest images.

home home

At times when more and more people append a legal disclaimer to their email messages (which, I think, has questionable significance in legal terms), I am struggling with the more mundane aspects of email messaging. Or maybe it is more correct to say that I am struggling with the more mundane aspects of inter-human communication, so here’s my suggestion for an email footer and disclaimer:

Caution:
This email message may contain more than one statement and/or more than one question. You must read the entire message and you must answer all questions before you can consider this message read and answered.

Maybe I should add that answering Yes or No to a question with Or doesn’t do the trick either.

I am sure you will now agree with me: my life is much harder than yours.

Thoughts email, human

…on my knees and on the TV table, looking forward to having not just a kitchen –any kitchen-, but also having regular chairs and a regular table to sit on and at while having a meal. In this restricted and uncivilised manner, we enjoyed the following over the past week:

Roasted cured smoked loin of pork (known as Kassler in Germany), with mushrooms and buttery rice,

Chinese Take-away food from our local Hong Kong Gardens – I only mention this because I am happy to report this is only our second take-away meal since the loss of our kitchen,

A home-made pizza with spicy toppings from grilled artichokes and churizo,

A lovely quiche made from smoked Scotish salmon, grilled artichokes, roasted peppers, blue cheese and tomatos.

It’ll be another couple of weeks until we can move into our new kitchen, but the number isn’t all too big now, we hope.

Food and Drink cooking, Kitchen, recipe

How on earth can you explain to an English plasterer that you will, of course, have woodchip wallpaper on top of his finest art?

I failed. The best I could come up with was “’coz we’re German,” which is an accepted umbrella excuse for any strange requests on a building site, but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the good man.

He’s done a super job in providing an extra-smooth finish, and I like it that way. It’s the perfect surface to apply wallpaper to, but he seemed saddened that we plan to cover his best efforts.

The wallpapering thing is just one of these things we don’t think twice about. Of course, we’ll have woodchip wallpaper. What a question!

Thoughts decoration, home

Time again for a progress report on The South Wing. As you can see from the picture on the right, not a lot has changed to the outside, but the floor screed is laid, the plastering is done, and the windows are freed from their protective plastic sheeting.

The Bamboo floorboards have arrived, kitchen units and tiles are scheduled for next week, the worktop has been chosen (artificial stone, subject to price though), and all is looking ahead to the first glimpse of light at the end of this particular tunnel.

There’ll be some more weeks to go, but we begin to see the light. Definitely the light – check out the more recent photos!

home home

Don’t you love public art?

I’m serious.

There’s an awful lot of awfully expensive and hideous public adornment around. I do, for instance, recall a supersized string of toothpaste, made from concrete, outside the courthouse in my home town, and a poorly manufactured stainless steel monstrosity in the same town.

However, some public art pieces are just brilliant. Most of their brilliance steams from simplicity and accessibility.

Just look at the giant marble in the London Assembly Hall forecourt shown in the little picture here. It’s just a big black ball in the middle of a public space, but it encourages people to interact with the ball, the architecture, and themselves.

Another great example is the Weather Project, a few years ago in Tate Modern, or the binoculars that allowed (through hidden cameras and monitors) looking through from one end on London’s South Bank to some place in New York.

Love it.

Thoughts art, london, London Assembly Hall

…improvised emergency kitchen food, again. We have another few weeks to go, so occasionally I put in a bit of cooking in defiance. Here’s some of what happened this week:

A lovely and moist lemon cake,

A Lecker Frikadeller Platter (which turned out to be very popular with the wife; must make this again soon and gather more sympathy points ,

Hanwell Goreng (a stir-fry with prawns and mangos),

A quick chinese-esque noodle soup,

Fillet of Venison, with garlic butter, roast potatoes, and a quick fry-up from fresh artichokes, young fennel, bread, chillies and garlic. Delicious!

The Sunday Evening Curryhouse Club ate at the Urban Karahi – pretty good, if you ignore the stupid tri-colour lighting in ever-changing colours, none of which is inviting, friendly or warm.

Food and Drink cooking, food, recipe

Starting today, the press notice released on an unspecified day in March 2009 reports, Hanwell businesses will be taking part in a trial scheme to provide more public toilets in the town.

It means that four local cafes and bars will allow free and public access to their toilets. In return, each gets £600 per year to help cover cleaning and upkeep.

The truth is that these businesses aren’t so much taking part in a trial scheme to provide more public toilets in town, they are part of a scheme to help the council weasel out of their duties. £2,400 per year, a few hours of bigwig palaver and a new sticker in the window is going to be much less than buying and maintaining “real” public toilets. As such, the plan is admirable, but I can’t help thinking of my hair dresser.

In short, his argument is that he cannot allow public access to his toilets (only to a select few), because his facilities would otherwise be used to route drugs, weapons, and some-such.

If he’s right, those four businesses have just taken on a pretty big responsibility. I can only hope he’s wrong, ‘coz I can’t believe those four local businesses are up for the whole package.

Current Affairs, Thoughts Ealing, Ealing council, london, Politics

Here’s one for those narrow, tall, spaces:

Down By The Lake

Oil on bamboo floorboard,
920×90 mm
March 2009

Nothing special in any way, but I kind-of like it anyways. Click here for the real picture, or stop by for a cup and a look at the real thing.

Painting oil painting, paint;