Priceless Paintings from W7

… welcome-back-home food:

Pancakes with a spicy filling from minced lamb and tomatoes, with lambs lettuce,

A lovely Ratatouille (which I shall discuss one of these days), with rice,

Apple Season Supper: Green salad with apples (except I had run out of apples, but you can imagine I hadn’t, can you?), a roast of pork, cooked in its own steam and on a thick bed of apples and sage, spiced with star anise, honey and lime juice, accompanied by Fettuccine with sage butter, and all finished with a Tarte Tatin and vanilla ice cream,

Shallow-fried white fish in spiced batter, with luke-warm south-west German potato salad and a mixed green salad,

And charcoal-grilled lamb kebabs with fresh pineapple, fresh yoghurt, mint, rice, and greek salad.

Food and Drink cooking, food, recipe

Groan. Turn ‘round. Groan again. A narrow-eyed peek at the alarm clock. 5.30 am.

Don’t you just hate that?

Waking up half an hour before the alarm goes off, and in need for the bathroom. There is no way of ignoring that urge, and there’s no way of going back to sleep for the remaining 25 minutes.

Nature can be a cruel thing.

Thoughts human

Oh, welcome back everyone, and thanks for hanging in there. Back to the UK, back home, and back to normal – if anything is normal these days. Anyway, I wanted to tell you this:

I reported on this some while ago, and during my recent business trip, had the opportunity to observe it once again, almost every of the ten nights spent in a hotel bed: during the night, I rotate to align with my body to match the orientation in my bed at home: feet pointing east-south-east, head west-north-west.

For a long time, I considered the earth’s magnetic field behind this, and considered myself a medical and scientific wonder. A human compass.

Turns out the solution is simple. I am pretty sure this is it: the hotel bed sags. Not much, but a little bit. My own bed doesn’t. Not a little bit; it’s firm and flat. Rotating in the hotel bed to sleep crosswise lets me (subconsciously) avoid that sagging, keep my spine straight and sleep more relaxed.

The truth can be so simple.

Thoughts human

Why on earth would a nationwide vetting database cost one hundred and seventy million pound sterling? – yes, you read that right: The cost for the planned vetting database, a nationwide tool to help prevent unsuitable people from working with children and vulnerable adults, is estimated to be £170m (£84m have already been spent).

Call me naive if you like, but if you do so, please explain the cost to me. Remember the country already features well-established government offices and buildings, all readily networked. Council workers already have a desk and a computer. All that seems necessary is the creation of a database, a web front-end, a bit of security around it, redundancy, done. A few millions maybe, if you include printed manuals for every council worker and NHS employee, but £170m?

Someone is seriously milking the system, pulling the government’s leg big time and you know what? They fall for it. Fools.

Maybe someone can also explain why such a database is necessary in the first place, given that several “offenders registers” and the Criminal Records Bureau are already in existence.

P.S. Now returning to my blog break, but certain things just can’t wait, can they?

Current Affairs, Thoughts Britain

A blogging break, again. Yes, again. My back and some muscles ache from lots of digging work around the garden. My head aches from some pretty painful work for pay, and somehow no space and time is left for blogging.

Assume I’ll be back at the end of this month. Meanwhile, behave, don’t shout and be nice to each other.

Thoughts

One of the many noteworthy aspects of life in London is that people don’t normally greet. Most people avert their eyes and speed up their step as they cross my path –and believe me, I do not look very dangerous,- and they appear to wish to get back into the safe heaven of home or office with the smallest possible interaction with fellow humans.

So, I make a point of greeting people in the street, especially of course those whose path I regularly cross. A middle-aged lady in my neighbourhood now enthusiastically offers greetings, even shouted over long distances when necessary, whenever she spots me. I exchange brief greetings, friendly smiles and friendly waving of arms across the street with several other women, too, and each time, I hope I brought a little smile to someone’s face.

Men are different though. Men hardly greet, at least not in one or more actual words. They grunt a friendly ‘Oh-oh,’ or they make a very minimalistic gesture with hand or head. Some greet by some form of first-to-fist or fist-to-shoulder contact, but that’s not my thing. At any rate, men’s greetings are almost like a secret society’s secret signal, and I like it just because of that minimalistic approach.

I talk to the women, and exchange a knowing look or brief head or arm movement with the men. I just hope that I haven’t given away the best-guarded secret of the secret society of men with this confession.

Thoughts human, london, society

This week, I’ve been mostly eating trusted standards:

A Chinese-esque Noodle soup with Tamarind (fruity fruity!),

A chicken Cesar salad, featuring my first ever homemade Cesar dressing and extra-crisp and lovely rosemary chicken, accompanied by chorizo and cheese filled fresh bread twisters,

Halibut steaks, Portuguese-style, and Pudim Flan (forever a favourite),

Quiche Lorraine, and Smoked Salmon and roasted artichokes quiche (now also children-approved),

A Thai Green Curry (chicken and prawns), with fragrant rice. Shame it wasn’t very hot; the chillies were too lame, but the flavour was there.

Food and Drink cooking, food, recipe

Approximately one metric ton of timber and a few days work later, and the frames for the raised beds are ready; all interlocked and screwed together with the brilliant Fastenmaster Timberlock screws (Britons note: screwed, not nailed

Very therapeutic work, undertaken during some of the finest days for this year, and completed with only minor injuries (and a bit of luck, given that I almost broke my foot at some stage).

Anyway, these frames look good already. Can’t wait until we have herbs and salads, and maybe some raspberries, in them.

Next thing now is to find a way to move 3 to 4 tons of topsoil from some roadside delivery place into those frames without breaking my back. Looks like I am in need of one or two strong young men for a day or so.

Thoughts, home gardening, home