Sunday 13th July

Well after all the cooking yesterday, I took it easy today - ham sandwich for lunch! It was really good, funny how something simple can just take your fancy.
So what have I been up to today? Cleaning mostly, I've got the gas board coming tomorrow, and I want the place to look well at least half way presentable. I'm also off on holiday soon, so I'm busy making up bagcharms and bookmarks to list for when I get back - oops, repeating myself there I think!
I've been re-reading an old book recently, the Helliconia Trilogy by Brian Aldiss. There's no doubt that this book is one hell of an achievement, way up there with things like the Dune books, and I highly recommend it if you've not read it - it's about a world - the eponymous Helliconia, which owing to quirk of astrophysics has a small star in orbit around it, and a big star they both orbit. A wanderer star that turned up sometime back in the past, and has given this world two years - a great year, and many small years. Over the course of a great year, the planet goes from ice age to global warming, and I can't say that I noticed much seasonal variation over the small years. There's a satellite world as well, sent there by the humans of Earth, who after scouring the galaxy for ages have only found this one single world bearing any other meaningful form of life, and send this satellite, the Avernus, to record everything that happens on Helliconia. There are three books - one set in the spring, one in the summer and the other in the autumn of the great years, and the way this ecology affect the races that live on the planet is fascinating. But in some respects they're odd books - for instance in the summer book, the story is focused on a king - JandolAnganal, (excuse the spellings I don't have the book in front of me as I type!) and his queen, Myrdemingalla. Jan, to shorten his name, sets out to divorce his queen, who is much beloved by her people (apparently for her beauty, although this isn't really focused on) and marry the daughter of a neighbouring kindom, Borlien, for political reasons. The story focuses quite closely on these people, but seemingly presenting the Avernus' view of what's happening, because at the end of the book, the queen is riding away with a small cortege and that's it, you never find out what happens to her. Beyond the fact that Jan has gone to Borlien despite the murder of the girl he was intending to marry, and marries her sister instead, and that the pair of them found a joint monarchy Borlien and Olderando then becoming a single country - yes, I can tell by this point you're feeling very confused.
It's an extremely long book - I have one volume with all three books in it, and the tendency is to sit down and read the whole thing at one go. I have quite a good mental image of the stories in my head, but the details are so prolific, and so complex that frankly you just can't keep them mentally for any length of time. What really does stay with you are the immense vista's this book presents you with - the herds of flambreg (a sort of cattle) so tortured by flies that they race eternally from one end of land to the next driven mad by the flies. The Wheel at Kharnabar, literally rowed through a mountain. Embruddock, surviving the ice age with the help of the hour whistler (a geyser) where the battle of the sexes is re-fought to the personal tragedy of it's combatants. The Avernus and it's mobile pudenda (you really have to read it for this, I'm not going in to the details!!!), and of course, the fall of Earth following the much avoided but finally occurring nuclear holocaust. It's an amazing book, whose images live inside my head - even if sometimes I wished they didn't. There's a sadness about it, a sense of decay over time and the inevitability of that decay. It's well worth reading I'd say, but you need some stamina to get through it!

Saturday 12th Extra - Stuffed Courgette!

Right, the stuffed courgette. Let's start off with the ingredients!

Clockwise r - l we've got - Goats Cheese, Mushrooms, Peppers, Leek, the Courgette and some cold ham. I also added a clove of garlic - but needless to say, I'd not got an onion in the house!!!

First thing is to wash everything. If you wash it all first thing you do, you don't forget to do it later, and the water gets a chance to drain. Next slice your courgette in two -

Make sure it sits nice and flat. Next thing you'll need to do is use a sharp knife to run around the seeds in the middle of the courgette, but use a teaspoon to lift them out. They're quite firm, you'll need to use a bit of force, but be careful not to put the teaspoon through the base of the courgette.

(Sorry this photo's not too good - flash effect!)

Put your courgette halves into a flat baking tray. This one's a non-stick, but it's not essential. You might want to drizzle a bit of oil over them at this point as well, and it's no harm in giving the outside a bit of a rub over with oil as well.

Put the tray with the courgettes to one side.

Next thing to do is to slice your leeks - cut them in four, and then cut them to small tiles of leek - I'd give them another quick wash at this point because leeks harbour dirt as they grow. There's nothing worse than gritty leek!

Put the leeks into a pan of boiling water for a good five minutes - this is 'blanching' or pre-cooking the leek. Drain them well.

Chop the remaining vegetables. In my case today, that means the mushrooms, pepper and the garlic, but I'd have chopped the onion as well and frankly when I taste the result, onion is not something I'll be leaving out on a regular basis! If I was going to add any herbs I'd be putting them in at this point as well - you can add anything you fancy, but I'd not necessarily put in anything too strong. Italian or Mediteranean herbs are what this needs.

In a frying pan, I've heated a bit of oil, and fried up the vegetables. Add the ham last, and crumble the cheese into the veg when the pan is off the heat.

You can see on the above right that I've added the well-drained leeks to the pan after the peppers and mushrooms are softened. I cooked them well for about five minutes - on a low heat so they don't take any colour.

Next I added the ham, and then after the pan was off the heat, I crumbled in the cheese.

You then take the mixture and fill the courgette halves - I find it's best to use the teaspoon for this. The mixture is prone to falling out of the halves particularly when you're piling it up on top, but I find this doesn't really matter if it's just a few pieces. Just pop them back on top.

Drizzle some more oil over the top, or put on a pat of butter. Season them, and pop them into the oven for about 25 minutes.

Here's the baked courgette as it came out of the oven -

I'd love to show you both of them, but I'm afraid I had to stop about half way through this blog to.. yep, you guessed it!

Saturday 12th July

Well here we are, mid July already! I'd love to be able to say we're basking in glorious sunshine - and it is true that there is a bit of it outside, but when I was at the bus stop earlier, needless to say without an umbrella, what happens? Happily for once the bus turned up on time and I didn't get too wet.
I was browsing the Guardian website mid-week, and came across this great little story about a German website that I went to have a look at and really - well, have a look for yourself. pundo3000.com puts up photographs of the sorts of things we all end up buying at some time or another, no matter how much we tell ourselves (and others!) that we don't eat processed food. There'll come a day when we're tired, hungry and end up grabbing the nearest thing off the shelf at the supermarket, get it home and take it out of the pack... this website puts up photo's of the packaging - those glorious shots of wonderful looking food - and the stuff that's inside the packet. It's German so there's a lot of sausage, which I'll admit I don't eat a lot of over here (Great Britain) but you can recognise the brand names on a lot of this stuff. You really should go and look at it, and I feel like I need a print out of it to take with me to the shops! The original Guardian story is at http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,2289879,00.html
I reckon I'm going to be keeping a look out for this gallery of theirs, should be interesting to see what revolting concoctions we Brits are shovelling down our throats!
I can hear you saying now, ok, so why aren't you out there taking a photo Tess? Truth is (and I swear this is the truth) yesterday I ate meatballs made from minced pork and various spice mixes, with some rice, and today at the shops I bought some really lovely looking large courgettes, which with the addition of some leeks, peppers, onion and some goats cheese, I intend to bake. I'll take a photo of the result to prove it! In fact whilst I'm at it, I'll put up the whole kit and kaboodle, you can check out my version of a baked courgette. I was listening to Saturday Kitchen before I went out, and they have this food heaven, food hell thing for the guest - it was John Craven, who my lord has gone totally white in the hair department, there's age for you - who's idea of food hell was stuffed marrow. As a kid, my parents grew marrows in the garden, and we'd have them stuffed with mince and tomato, with cheese sauce, and they were absolutely delicious. When I saw those large courgettes - it's a bit early as yet for marrow at the supermarket, I thought yay! Stuffed Courgette. And there's enough there for a little courgette to be left over and have as vegetable with another meal.
I just popped out to put the oven on, I'm going to make a small fruit loaf cake this afternoon - it's the weekend, and I'm partial to a bit of cake with my cup of tea on weekend afternoons. I don't promise to photograph this because I'm still getting used to my new loaf tin, and the last couple of times I've used it the top of the cake has ended up getting burnt. But if it comes out nice, well what the heck, I might photograph that too.
It's been a night shift week - well feels like a couple of weeks, because I was night shifting it all of last weekend, and then again in the middle of this week. But not to worry, because I have no more night shifts for a couple of weeks now - and I'm off on holiday too, so that's good. Mum's not been too well recently, in fact she's been in hospital for a bit over the start of last week, so everything's been up in the air - but we seem to be coming down to ground a bit. I will freely admit that I've been feeling a bit down about it all, the thought that whilst she's ok now, the fact that this will inevitably happen again at some point and we'll all be put through it again. So a bit of a holiday will do me the world of good.
For those of you who've been checking out the old shop, no I haven't put enormous quantities of new items on sale this month. I have in fact been building up a nice little stash of bits and pieces to be listing when I get back, and I have been doing a roaring trade in bookmarks - I think people are starting to buy ahead for Xmas! I did a 'stock check' of my pre-Xmas bookmarks last week, and I've managed to put together about 160 so far - I've rather astonished myself! Oh well I'm off to make cake and check out the days' stage in the Tour de France - ah, alas a positive drugs test. You know what with Dwain Chambers, the cyclists, the Olympics coming up, I'm beginning to think rather than have the assumption people won't take drugs, why not go ahead and let them? We could make them read out a list of everything they've taken to get these silly medals, and with each drug name, make them read out a list of the side and long term effects. Here you are, here's a medal for being the person able to run fastest in the world in 2008, now tells us what you're going to be experiencing in 2028. Organ failure? That's nothing in comparison to the glory of running a micro second faster than the chap who came second. It's a different kettle of fish for the kids that are being sucked into these so called sports though. When you've got a kid who's spending three quarters of their entire life trying to run that little bit faster, and you've got someone sidling up to them and hissing in their ear, here you are take this and you can run faster than you ever dreamt, well that's when it all turns rather sick. It's those people who need to be found, caught and prosecuted. Some one's pushing this stuff. It really shouldn't be any different from your neighbourhood drug dealer, if the police haul them in, why aren't they hauling in the people shoveling EPO and whatever down a young athlete's throat? And come to that, has anyone found out what the Chinese are going to do with someone caught doping in Beijing? I presume it'll be the same as at any other Olympics, they'll be hauled up in front of the press to try and explain themselves, then flown away. Thing appears to be that whilst these are illegal according to the sport authorities, they don't appear to be illegal to the legal authorities. You never here of anyone being prosecuted for possession of anabolic steroids for example. Well if they have I haven't heard of it. If, as a society, we really wanted to stop this, it would be illegal to possess these drugs and probably a reasonable number of athletes etc would think again about taking them. Mind you, I don't know what I'm blathering on about, I know nothing about drugs in sport. And I did say I was off to cook cake - better than anabolic steroids anyday!

P.S.Here's the cake!

It's a pretty standard Victoria Sponge - 2 eggs, with a couple of handfuls of sultanas, and half a handful of walnuts!

Tuesday 1st of July

Well, hospitals are figuring large in my thoughts today - Mother is in one, and a colleague at work is expecting her first grandchild today - great day for a birthday eh? Mum isn't too bad, although it wasn't an anticipated visit. She's had a few stomach pains and is having some tests and so on just to make sure there's nothing wrong. But with someone of Mum's age, and her state of health, no visit to hospital is entirely without risk.
In fact, to add to the general air of poor health, and health related topics, Jo's not in too good shape either - she had a bad fall a week or so back, and has torn all of her shoulder muscles. Poor old Jo eh?
But I should say that yours truly is in very good health. Positively bounding as they say. All set for a trip to the local post office later on - yep, the hills the hills. (It's up a small hill!) And it's a lovely day, nice sunshine, bit of breeze - you couldn't ask for better. So yep, got the sunhat fixed up just in time! What more could be guaranteed to bring on the forecast thunder storms early!!!

So apart from a trip to the post office, what else is on the cards for today? I have a chicken carcass sitting in the fridge, surrounded by a stock made the day before yesterday - I had hoped to use it to make a broad bean soup, but would you believe that Sainsburies aren't selling frozen broad beans at the moment? I couldn't believe it either. They've got them in the fresh veg section, and yep, I'd love to use fresh, but when I went to have a look, they had small bags of them - you'd get maybe a serving and a half out of them, having spent a heck of a time podding. I was cross about it. I spoke to a man in the green grocery section, who was really quite amusing. Oh I've only been here 4 days, he said, I'll look into it for you, I'll get something done. (Our Sainsbury's is a training store.) Good luck I said, which for some reason he seemed to find funny. I didn't find it funny. That store's run for one purpose only and thats to train up the staff that they send to other shops. They don't seem to give a toss about what their customers might want - and the state of the place. Price labels missing, empty spaces - hopeless. I mustn't get started!