Some time ago Tracy gave us a 'potato-ricer' (see Picture 1) and I didn't really know what to do with it. My handling of an old-fashioned masher please click is exemplary. If you open that link, ours is second from the left. With 20+ stone leaning on it most potatoes yield !
Anyway I had bright idea 6,326 and considered that the ricer would make an ideal makeshift meat press. So I decided to cook my remaining Pork Hock and it worked like a charm. Picture 2 shows the result and the £1 is there for scale, so that Bungus doesn't winge. I've just had a sandwich of it and it is delicious. Takes me back to boyhood.
It was a very pleasant morning and Y had spotted a locally organised walk, setting off from the Horse & Groom at Moorgreen at 11.10am to finish around noon. Yes. I too wondered about the rather precise start time but apparently it is to do with bus-timetables. After dropping Y at the Pub I decided to go down the lane at the sde of the Pub in search of pictures and they abounded. I saw a sparrow-hawk but he was too quick. Most of the corn-fields had been harvested (see Picture 3) and I suppose we have nearly reached that 'all is safely gathered in' time of the year. I used to love Harvest Festivals and found the display of crops at the front of The Church adorable. At that time the corn was in the fields in 'stooks'.This is how they used to look and I remember as a little chap being allowed to ride on the
enormous Shire Horse as he pulled the cart which the farm-workers forked the stooks onto. Well he seemed enormous to me, but so gentle. And the 'threshing yard' was less than a 100 yards from where I lived.Two of the ramblers were back in the pub by the time I arrived around 11.45am so I introduced myself. They had seen the sparrow-hawk too and a buzzard has been seen. And a yellow-hammer, which I don't think I would recognise even if I was lucky enough to see it. A case for Jill, I think.
Yesterday evening I had one of those late-perception moments with the word 'castaway'. I have fully understood the word for at least 65 years but only at that moment realised that it comes from a person being 'cast' - 'away'. Stupid or what ? And I have much enjoyed the list of memorable film-moments and the only one I would still add, is that horrifying instant in Alien when the creature bursts out of the person's chest.
Thanks Bungus for the suggestion that a 'murmuration' of starlings be replaced by a 'nastiness' because they certainly are. But I have checked the group names for birds list and notice that vexation hasn't been taken. My Shorter Oxford gives one meaning as -'harassing by means of malicious or trivial litigation' - I rest my case. Starlings to a T. A 'vexation of starlings' has a certain ring to it.
My quote is from my iGoogle home page :-
"Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable."
I'm not sure I agree with him though. The link is courtesy of Wikipedia.
Blood-test for me in the morning and then Tracy is taking us to Chatsworth for the day and we will prolly have lunch in the Restaurant at the rear of The Farm Shop. Looking forward.
.......Sleep tight everyone. Catch you tomorrow.
2 comments:
I think you would know a yellow-hammer, there is nothing else similar - yellow and brown - sort of canary crossed with a house-sparrow!
Pork Hock - is that something else native to Notts? Is it raw meat you buy from butcher? never seen one in this neck of the woods. Like a sort of chunky pate? I have a potato ricer I actually use for potatoes when there are small children around - they like pretending it is worms....
Memorable film clips - I would add the bit at the beginning (I think) of 'Saving Private Ryan' where some soldier is sitting in a landing craft talking about tin helmets when a bullet hole appears in the middle of hs forehead....
I left the cinema shortly afterwards (couldn't understand what they said)and we were on a ship where the cinema comes for free and I had eaten the choc ice and some of the bucket of popcorn they gave you as you walk in.
We went to Chatsworth some years back with a friend who had lived there during the war, her boarding school had been evacuated there. She showed me the bullet marks on the outside of the building from German planes!
Watch the sausages in the Farm Shop - we bought some and they were distinctly 'off'.....
Have a good day!
I bought a potato ricer and used it once but found it far too slow, messy and fiddly. We use a masher rather like the third picture from the left.
But ‘bright idea 6,326’ lights up the sky! Congratulations. And the end product looks excellent. For Jill a ‘pork hock’ is the porcine equivalent of a ‘lamb shank’ (which no one in this part of the country had ever heard of until about 5 years ago). ‘Ham hock’ is the same but cured (What, you didn’t know it had been ill’?). I have had a sort of Music Hall ‘song in progress’ for many years now, with a chorus which goes something like: “Get off of my pork hock / Let go of my pork hock / What a to-do / It never hurt you / Get off of my pork hock’
The rolls of hay are quite dramatic, particularly when viewed in low evening sunlight but I preferred the old stooks. I also liked haystacks, which are also things of the past. They were incredibly well constructed with a thatched ‘roof’ to throw off the rain.
I too had a ‘late-perception moment’ last night when I heard the sound of a river and realised that the mains water pipe had sprung a leak under the kitchen floor. After ripping up the living room carpet I was eventually able to find the stopcock (nothing like a pork hock) under the floorboards and, after a good but short night’s sleep, devised a way to turn it off.
The Gas Board man (we have a Plumbing Contract with them) arrived about 4.30, which left not enough time to do anything apart from gain an understanding of the situation. So the water is still off until tomorrow afternoon when a different man will arrive and need an hour to get his head around it which will probably mean there will be insufficient time …
I am not blaming them. It is a very unusual situation which does not accord with the best building practice (but there is a reason for that).
It does mean that my customary Birthday Meal Out Treat will have to be put on hold and I shall probably enjoy most of the day emptying and moving cupboards and the ‘frig…. freezer’. At least the cupboards are not 'built in' but it looks pretty certain that we shall need a new floor.
Do I hear someone singing 'Happy Birthday'?
I haven’t seen ‘Private Ryan * but “Yes”, ‘Alien’ was a fine moment of horror. I am sure we shall think of others.
How about endings? The original ‘Wages of Fear’, the original ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ and ‘Hamp’ with Tom Courtenay (re-released, I think, as ‘For King & Country’). And then there was Sinatra singing ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ as another deserter (like Pte Hamp) was executed by firing squad (‘Battle of the Bulge’?).
* For Jill (I think I may have blogged this before but no apology) the parents of a college girl friend of mine lived next door to (and played Saturday evening Mah-Jongg with) Major John Howard (played by Richard Todd in ‘The Longest Day’) who was reputed to have been the first man down on D-Day. He showed me his ‘tin hat’ with a bullet hole in it from that occasion.
I have played Mah Jongg, and enjoyed it, but the thing that sticks in the mind most is a tile referred to by the Howards and Moorhouses as ‘Mrs Simpson’s Knickers’. That sort of puts a date on the game’s period of strongest popularity among occidentals.
Post a Comment