I don't think, after last Sunday's lamb, I showed you a picture of the resultant Shepherd's Pie, so here it is. It looks good enough to eat.The yorkshires were from the freezer. Whenever I roast a joint I make a tray-full (12) and freeze what are left-overs. They only need, say 6 minutes from frozen and are put straight into the oven.
Picture 2 is yet another from our Longshaw WoW trip looking towards Hygger Tor.
Underneath it, specially for Jill, is a version in sepia and I shall be interested to find out which is the more popular.
The © watermarks are just an experiment and I suspect they are too prominent anyway.The builder fitting our new shower basin and new shower has been with us most of the day. As we have suspected for years the old basin wasn't sealed or fitted properly and the years of water seepage had caused the timber supports to rot away.
The new one is much better but the re-tiling is not taking place till Monday and everything will need to dry before we can use it. Good job we have the bath !
This morning we both had our flu' jabs. Pleased to report - no painful arms, and no feverish symptoms.
CommentsJill ..... Glad you enjoyed the maple leaves and Yes, the Sunflowers were from the supermarket. With us, they seem to last OK (perhaps a week) but this current lot have developed a sulphurous whiff which is off-putting.
How wise to have a quiet weekend ! Blanket-square assembly sounds pretty grim though.
Re the apples. Tomorrow I must deal with more that we have been given. Been putting it off I'm afraid.
bungus ...... My research reveals that 'font' is correct and traditional usage, and not as you aver a modern americanism. Wiki tells me that a 'typeface' is made up of 'fonts'. This is only marginally more interesting than spiders webs.
Re gooseberry bushes. We only bought 2 suspecting a pollinator was necessary. No I know t'aint so, you are welcome to one of ours.
You are right about the location of Josiah Brown. And thanks for reminding us about Burton's. For many years they had a branch in Southwell, directly opposite The Minster. Such a classy grocers with super produce.
reg ...... I love the lady with the laffing tabs. Classical 'Erewash Valley' can be so expressive.
We also experienced Eastwwod traffic this morning when, after our flu' jabs, we were silly enough to go to the bank. Couldn't work out what caused it to be so 'solid'.
4 ticks ...... The thing I used to love about Pearsons was going in via the Angel Row entrance and then emerging on Parliament Street - some 40 feet higher? As if by magic. As you say, "sadly missed". Lucky old you with your long-lived dishwasher ! And of course we all remember Beecrofts. I served with a son, -at least a relative of some sort, - called Malcolm Beecroft.
We didn't see the bluberry bushes in Lidl. If we did we thought they were blackcurrant bushes. Perhaps a further sortie is called for.
I'll keep my eye open for cane/wicker chairs.
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No quotation - sorry ! - too tired.
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No quotation - sorry ! - too tired.
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POLITICAL CORNER
ReplyDeleteI may have got it wrong but I understand that Sarah Palin has been justifiably condemned for running on the ‘VP ticket’. But only last week I saw a photo of her bending over and I couldn’t detect anything.
The global economy is losing more money (between $2 trillion and $5 trillion pa) from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study.
The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide. (BBC News online)
BLOG COMMENT
Glad I wasn’t about to eat when I saw your Shepherd's Pie (made with LAMB!),
When I make Yorkshires (S always buys frozen now, to save time) I like a single BIG one. Don’t think I am greedy; I don’t object TOO much to sharing it with one, or, at a push, two, other(s).
But yours look very good despite the artificiality of the colour. Next time I may try doing two eggs and make three medium sized ones plus a half dozen small ones for the freezer
How strange; I like the Hygger Tor.colour picture in the small size but prefer the monochrome when enlarged.
No doubt there is a place for monochrome (or simple b&w) not just in photography but in film. I am convinced that, for instance, The Third Man and Psycho would be much less impressive in technicolour.
At risk of causing offence, I feel obliged to say that I really think it would have been preferable to have restricted your ‘watermarks’ experiment to just a few close critics. In my view, the inclusion of ‘letters’ drives it close to pretension. I do not for a minute think that is your aim and I am sure you will dispute the suggestion with irrefutable logic. But that is my first reaction, although I may have been influenced by Sandra who is very loathe to use her honour letters because they embarrass her.
re Picasa 3, if I have another complaint apart from the sluggishness it is that the fonts do not go small enough.
I hope our shower floor does not collapse as it is on the first floor!
I recall a Wellow resident (a builder) whose hw cylinder and cw tanks came crashing through the ceiling. Wow!
Perhaps we could not meet until you are clean again?
I continue to reject offers of flu jabs, leaving the field open for people to say, “We told him so.”
The nurse who syringed my ears offered and when I declined said something to the effect that she suspects it’s all a con job anyway.
When you comment to Jill about ‘Blanket-square assembly’ I presume that for you, as for me, it has the sound of Military Service about it.
I am trying to keep up with apples too. I was going to try one of the cakes yesterday but Sandra said “I like that Dorset Apple Scone,” so I made that instead. It really is delicious. The only problem is that I could eat it all at one go, by myself. But Sandra says it is a lot healthier than many other things I eat.
The gardener on R Nottm this morning said he will ‘juice’ and freeze his surplus. “Good luck to him!”, I say, after my experience of turning a hundredweight of apples into 3 gallons of cider.
I admit amazement at 'font' being traditional usage. I do not remember ever having heard it used in the present sense until perhaps 20 years ago. Maybe it is like some other words that went over with the Pilgrim Fathers and have been shipped back against our better sense. I accept that, like several other archaic words and terms, it may well always have been used as a technical term in the printing trade for ever.
But well done for looking it up even if I wish you hadn’t!
Are your gooseberry bushes of different varieties? I have never heard of them needing pollinators and ours certainly doesn’t have one. But if they are different I would not wish to deprive you of variety. I’ll look in Lidl next week and, if they still have them, get one for Alex anyway. At that sort of price it doesn’t really matter, does it?
Surely the traffic you and Reg speak of cannot be people trying to get INTO Eastwood? There cannot be that many Lawrence fans and what other incentive could there be? (apart from local sayings) Perhaps it is people trying to escape having heard that the grass is greener? Like the California Gold Rush?
Reg:
Like RG, I applaud the ‘tabs laff’ anecdote.
By-pass or bus-pass, either could help.
I went to open an account in Jessops many years ago. Perhaps I wasn’t wearing a tie.
“Name please, sir.” Duly written down.
“Address please,”
“No None…”
“Do you mean you have no fixed abode?”
(‘No-None’ is the name of our house. Nobody would give us a number and we wanted to change it from ‘Wengar’ - Wendy / Garth – and our eldest thought ‘SanBo’ might be construed as racist.
I can remember when my father would not leave the house, even to go to work, without wearing a suit and a collar & tie. It was a major event when my mother persuaded him to be measured for a sports jacket and grey trousers.
I only wear a tie now for events that involve going to church; christenings, weddings and funerals. I even attended the funeral of my favourite aunt wearing a black polo neck shirt. I could get away with it as I have always been regarded as the ‘arty’ one in the family.
4 TICKS:
The bark’s real name is Arthur but he prefers Colin (his second forename, which gives an anagram of ABC, that’s the sort of sense of humour his parents had – just their branch of the family that is.)
I believe my late, most recent, father-in-law may have been the builder responsible for demolishing Pearsons. When one of his workmen said, “We’ve found some caves, boss, what shall we do?” Bill said, “Fill ‘em in quick.”
One of my cousins (daughter of the above aunt) first started work as a shopgirl in Griffin’s. That is much less interesting than spider webs. She later became a tracer in an engineering drawing office. It gets no more enthralling, does it?.
Sorry, I do not remember Beecrofts (assuming you do not mean the milk bar at the top of Westgate in Mansfield – which is where I declined the chance to ascend a bouncy 3 storey ladder).
My Spitfire was a (1/72 scale, I think) model of the Supermarine version with its Rolls Royce Merlin engine (am I more or less right Reg?)
Just as a matter of interest, I thought only Scotts (the manufacturers) spelt ‘porage’ like that?
When somebody invites you once, and not again, doessn’t it make you wonder what you did wrong ? Failed to salute the Grand Mistress, or something? Wrong coloured socks, possibly?
I shall certainly try the apple cakes. And, as above, I recommend the simpler Devon Apple Scone (which may also be made with blackberries but I prefer the apple).
When I first married and was about to move into a brand new house with brand new furniture, I bought 2 wicker armchairs (along with a Guy Rogers bed-settee) because they were so cheap. They were all from Jessops, as were the curtains, which were of olive green cotton twill throughout the house. And all the ground floor was Heatherbrown quarry tiles with underfloor heating, no plaster on the exposed Macarthy’s sand-lime brick (loadbearing) walls and pine-boarded partitions.
And then, a couple of years later, one of my visitors, a young female member of the Royce’s Mansfield Shoe Company family, said, quite seriously, “How nice to live so simply and spend all one’s money on foreign holidays.”
I am surprised that wicker is now expensive. Could be well worth looking in FatBoy’s on the Boughton Industrial Estate, just east of Ollerton on the Tuxford Road. I’ll nip down this pm to check if they are still stocking it and report back.
When your Garden Room is furnished you will be able to sit in it and play ‘Tomorrow the Regiment sails for India, Cynthia. May I have another cup of Darjeeling, please?’
4Ticks:
ReplyDeleteMission accomplished.
Fat Boy’s still have cane/bamboo/wicker furniture in stock. A variety of armchairs at £50 each, 2 seater settee at £70. I don’t know if that is expensive or not – it doesn’t sound out of the way to me.
If you are interested in second hand (you mentioned auctions) it might be worth contacting/visiting Ollerton Furniture Project, a charitable organisation that stands Ollerton Market on Wed, Fri, Sat from 10.00 till 3.00. Their warehouse is open Mon to Fri, 10.00 till 4.00 on the Boughton Industrial Estate North at NG22 9LD (enter site and turn left. Take 4th turning on right and warehouse is about 100 yds on the left).
They can be googled for basic details of what they do, or emailed
'recycle@thefurnitureproject.net’.
A friend of ours recently obtained from them a bamboo/wicker.cane 3 piece suite (for her conservatory) for £35.
Just to be perverse, I prefer the coloured version to the sepia......
ReplyDeleteShepherds Pie looks good enough to eat - there is a recipe for a Moroccan Shepherds Pie in the paper today, now it may be a perfectly good thing to eat, but Shepherds Pie it aint. Yvonne was talking about your shepherds pie awaiting her when she got home, almost salivating at the thought of it. We don't salivate in Peter Jones.....
Bungus, I don't know if Alexandra Palace is that building you see on the right hand side on the train coming into St.Pancras or wherever from Nottingham, because I've never come back from Nottingham on the train.....looking at a map, it may well be, it would be on the righthand side, and it is on a hill, large red brick Victorian building. Y might know? It is beautiful inside, all stained glass, and a huge organ and organ pipes. It was burnt to the ground, restored, and then burnt to the ground again, and finally restored again at vast cost, incorporating a skating rink. I never think anough use is made of it, public transport is difficult though, it is not within (normal) walking distanmce of any sort of station, you have to get a bus. For exhibitions courtesy buses re laid on.
On Friday when I and a great many other mostly middle-aged or elderly women arrived at Wood Green Tube Station we were greeted by eight policemen and one of those arches you go through that detects metal. Nearly all the women had metal knitting needles in their bags or about their persons that set off the alarms....we explained about the knitting and stitching show a couple of miles down the road - it was news to them - they were just doing a random search that particular day. Later on apparently they gave up, and if you were going to the show you could walk round the arch.
I am almost recovered, but it is taking its time...I will send a photo of the blanket when finished, it has been a mystery blanket, a well-known designer organised it, you get instructions and yarn, beads, anything you need, for four or five squares at the beginning of every month, without knowing what the finished blanket will look like, or the theme, or the colours, you just get pictures of that month's completed squares. This has lasted ten months, it has just finished. After a couple of months it became obvious it was 'in the country - on the farm -sort of thing, well-thought out, with at least one new square design every month. There is a website - ninety people are doing it, mostly in the UK, but also the UsA, Canada, Australia, Holland and Spain. There is allowance for some individuality, you can embroider what flowers you like in whatever colours. I was not too happy about some of the colour choices as we went along, but now it is all finished it works beautifully as a whole, which is why she is a famous designer and I am not! I'm signed up for a new one starting in January, I love getting the parcels every month.