Food, Zedulous food

 More food.  Some of the family will come for lunch tomorrow.  I don't often buy meat, though I eat it, but I've decided to cook the first Sunday roast of the year - pork in this instance, followed by Queen of Puddings, which is Dilly's favourite and has the advantage of using up a glut of eggs, plus a rhubarb crumble with home-grown rhubarb.  

Walking to the butcher's, I passed the fishmonger and we smiled at each other, so then I wanted fish, of course.  I called in on my way back and decided on some Cornish squid.  Then I noticed the dish of seaweed, three different sorts.  I've never cooked with seaweed, I said, so it's about time I did.  No idea what to do with it yet, but I'll find out.  

Then to the greengrocer and I saw the asparagus.  I can hardly believe that there is English asparagus in the third week in March.  It didn't have a price on it.  If I'd asked, I'd probably have been too alarmed to buy it, so I didn't ask.  Comparing notes with Wink afterwards, she made the same decision.  Then I spotted the lion's mane mushroom.  The thing is, when an independent greengrocer decides to buy in something expensive, he has to sell most of it to break even.  It's not on sale or return and it's very perishable.  So I bought some of that too, along with the veggies for tomorrow.  

The bantams have been laying very well recently, but they're going broody, so it'll all pause while they ponder their maternal instincts.  I really must do something about finding a nice cockerel, so that I can let them rear some chicks.

I put the tortoises in their outdoor run on Thursday.  It's chilly overnight, but they've got a choice of two shelters (and they each have opted for a different one).  They're out and about all day and much happier than in their comfortable, spacious indoor run.  Wild animals in captivity deserve the most natural conditions possible.  I feel guilty about having them at all, but I'm stuck with them, so do my best.  

When the going gets tough, Z cooks. And eats. And drinks.

 One used to say, it'll all be the same in a hundred years.  I don't think we have that sort of certainty any more.  I'm concerned for my grandchildren, of course, but there's nothing I can do about it.  The cousin of a friend (no one I know personally) went out to the Middle East  for the birth of her grandchild, a few weeks ago and now she and her family are stuck there.  The daughter of another friend, along with her own two daughters, lives there and she's stuck too.  We think we have a sort of control over our lives until something happens to prove that there's nothing, we may be helpless.

I'm so relieved that my propane tank was filled in February.  It cost over £2,700 but it would be double that now.  No idea what it might cost next time, but that's a long time away.

I have things to do today, but I cooked instead.  I still need to do the admin, but I pretended that cookery mattered more.  And at least it was practical.  I made leek, celery and a little potato soup, tomato and onion (with spices) curry sauce - it's a fabulous Madhur Jaffrey recipe that is supposed to go with hardboiled eggs, but actually goes with many other things - and spicy masala potatoes, from a newspaper recipe that I cut out 20 years or so ago.  I had eggs to use up and a bunch of coriander leaves, the rest was all basic stuff that I have all the time.  I'll freeze a lot and still use some of it every day next week.

Then I had cheese, lovely local cheese with homemade bread, for lunch and some wine.  Cheap, the wine, but palatable.  I should get on with the paperwork and housework.  I'll do some of it, anyway.  

Blog party planning

 I'm very slowly starting to take back control, which is overdue.  I look fine and behave normally, but I'm in quite a state underneath, largely because of people thinking it's fine to treat an elderly widow with contempt.  Not everyone by any means, but enough.  But the email I sent today, which I had resolved to do on Sunday at the absolute latest (but I read instead) is nothing like that.  It's just for information, but then I'll have to do something with the information...

Anyway, I've finally turned my attention to this year's blog party.  June would suit me best, preferably not the second weekend.  So, the 6th, 20th or 27th.  I'm not sure if anyone who reads this is likely to come, I communicate mostly with ex-bloggers on Facebook now - or Instagram, but reluctantly as the app is even worse than FB and I can't cope with much social media nowadays, it's all been monetised so much that there's no room for friendship.

If you would like to come, please let me know which date suits you.  As ever, you're welcome to stay.

Z pushes back

 I'm looking after myself.  I hope it'll help.  Yesterday evening, we went to a fabulous recital with Jonathan Lemalu as the singer and a really excellent accompanist on the piano, Kathryn Mosley. Despite a road closure on the way home, which my satnav didn't recognise, so creative navigating was required, it was an excellent evening.  Today, I have mostly read.  Reading a book in a day has always soothed me, but I've got out of the habit - and it wasn't accurate anyway, it wasn't one day.  I started it two days ago, but hadn't had time to progress past the first 50 pages,  I sat down after lunch and finished it in a sitting.  Lovely book.  "Of Thorn & Briar," it's called, by Paul Lamb, who is a traditional hedgelayer.

I might have seen him, a few years ago.  I was driving between Wink's home and her office and, at the side of the back road, a hedge was being layered very neatly and professionally.  I can't think that many people do that job for a living any more.  I wanted to stop and speak to him but there was traffic behind me and I had to be somewhere soon - I've always regretted not going back.  Anyway, it's @westcountry_hedgelayer and he has quite an Instagram following (I hate the Insta app so, whilst I have it, I don't use it much) and I admire him very much.

I had work to do today, but I mattered more.  So, though I will regret having left it, I was right to put myself first.  

Chin up, darlings.  It's springtime.  It'll get better.  But now, though it's only 8 o'clock, I'm going to have a bath and then go to bed.

Thinking of having my hair cut shorter.  

Z is mildly miffed, but only because TFL needs to get its act together

 I'm on my way home from That London.  Every time I go, it reinforces my absolute knowledge that I couldn't bear to live further away than would make a day trip feasible.  Today, we were visiting the London Museum at Docklands.  The old London Museum was at London Wall and so very convenient for Liverpool Street Station (the one I use) but it was never very well publicised so, by the time I finally went there, it was already marked for closure.  The new main museum will be at the old Smithfield Market site and is due to open this year, but this smaller one (mostly the history of London as a trading port) had an exhibition of what had been retrieved from the shores of the river by mudlarkers.  People have mudlarked for centuries, but for most of that time it was for scavenging anything that could be used or sold and now it's for interesting and sometimes very old artefacts.

Since the opening of the wonderful Elizabeth Line (London's most recent Tube line), which seems to go everywhere, easily, our horizons have been broadened in terms of ease in getting places.  What isn't so good is actually tracking down directions.  That is, we hopped on the train and reached Canary Wharf in minutes, but finding which exit to take wasn't so easy, nor was finding out how to cross the dock.  I asked a chap at a fast food place in the end.  Then, my phone app took me to the staff entrance of the museum,  when it would have been quicker and easier to direct us to the main way in.  Had there been a signpost anywhere, we'd not have needed directions.

After that, I looked up the Transport For London (tfl) app to find how to get to Tate Modern.  It blithely told me a tube and two buses, so I looked on the tfl website.  That just had the tube and one bus.  I checked Apple Maps and I could take the Dockland Light Railway to Bank and then walk.  It was quite a long walk, but far more straightforward.   

Anyway, we had a good look at the Picasso exhibition and then decided to walk back, rather than half a mile in the wrong direction and then a bus.  The good thing about anywhere in the City is that it's no more than a mile anywhere - it's even called the Square Mile.  So all is well, except that the tfl app, that used to be excellent, is now so obsessed with giving you cycling directions that it is absolutely dreadful for anything else.  When I get home, I'm going to give it another damning review.

The weather has been wonderful.  Sunny and springlike all day.  Now 4.45pm and it's still sunny.

Z should be working

 Another dove fell down the chimney this morning.  They're very discreet birds.  A pigeon will crash down noisily and then try to bash its way out, but a gentle dove drops quietly and then just stays and thinks about it.  Unless you hear the flutter of its delicate wings, you don't know.  But it happened about 7 o'clock and I was faffing about on the internet, so I did hear.

The tortoises started moving around when it became mild, earlier this month, so I got them up, bathed them and put them under the lamps.  Of course, the weather turned cold again, so they have just spent most of their days basking.  Fyodor started eating after a couple of days, but Leo just looked unhappy - not ill, so I didn't panic, just worried.  Last week, he graciously accepted some lamb's lettuce and now they're both fine and eating plenty.  I'm supplementing their weed diet with some bought salad, partly because they needed to be tempted but also because the weather has been horrible and foraging is anything but a pleasure.  Now it's milder and there's more in the garden, they're starting to enjoy the good stuff too.  Fyo went for an enthusiastic walk, the whole length of the run and back, which was quite cute.  I liked it when they were called, optimistically, Natasha and Anastasia, but they're certainly boys (it's all about the shape of their tails and it isn't apparent until they're about 5 years old), but it's not as if they know their names and they may end up with different monikers, if I think of something that suits them.  

I badly need to do some overdue paperwork, so obviously I'm blogging instead.  I'm sorry, darlings, talking to you is my displacement activity.  At least I've got as far as the computer, however, so it may be a stepping stone.  What I have done, in the last few minutes, is going on to the tv licence site and told them that no one lives at Pam's house at present.  They've been writing for months and it's started to get quite a bullying tone.  As has the website where you say you don't need it.  Do you ever watch Sky or any of the other streaming services?  Well, if you do, you pay for it, but apparently you need a licence too.  I don't object to paying for a tv licence, even though I rarely watch, but if I only used Netflix etc, I certainly would.  I said the property was empty and they wanted to know when it would be occupied?  I have no idea, it's not been put up for sale yet.  I guessed 1st September, because I couldn't leave it blank.  Pam is feeling very despondent at the prospect of not having a home of her own any more, but she knows it has to be sold.  We've talked through the options - she moves back and employs help, she buys somewhere more manageable, she stays in the home but moves to one of the little bungalows in the grounds, when it's available, or she stays where she is.  She acknowledges that the last is the only realistic one - I'd opt for the bungalow, in her situation, but she doesn't like the thought of sleeping on the ground floor with the open window that she prefers and, having become used to having people around her, she would feel isolated.  I completely sympathise with her situation, I'd be distressed too.  I can only listen and be kind, she's already making the best of things.  I set up a standing order to pay the fees for her on Friday.  £6,800 every four weeks.  She really will have to sell her house.

I'll go and shut the bedroom window, assuming the bird has flown.

Zed's bread

 I finally started to make bread regularly again.  It was the price that did it.  One day I bought a very good sourdough loaf and it cost £4.80 and, next time I needed bread, I went to a good independent bakery in the town and a non-sourdough wholemeal loaf cost £4.00.  It didn't even have seeds in it.  So, much as I like to support small businesses, something in me switched.  Although prices have risen horribly over the past couple of years, the ingredients I used would still cost me well under £1.50 and the Aga is on anyway.  I've made a loaf about once a week ever since.  Having, shamefully, let my sourdough starter during the year after Tim died, I'm just using yeast.  With a mixture of white (the good unbleached stuff from the whole food shop), wholemeal (sometimes one of those fancy ancient grains) and rye flour, plus a range of seeds, it tastes better than anything I buy, even on the occasions when it hasn't risen as much as I'd expected to - and it's never as light and fluffy as bought bread and I wonder why that is?

Actually, neither was Pete's.  In fact, he was the reason I let baking go.  He made bread and some pastries once a week and sold them at the Thursday market for several years.  And his stuff was genuinely homemade.  Fluffy lightness wasn't the point.  Flavour and goodness was.  In fact, I like my bread even more than Pete's.  I bake it and, the next day, slice and freeze most of it and take it out as I need it (no darlings, not as I knead it, it's the dough that you knead, not the bread).

Anyway, once in a while I buy a pizza from a small independent company from either the deli or Jonny's farm shop.  They're two different makes, but both are trustworthy in terms of ingredients.  Yesterday, the pasta dish I made for dinner featured mozzarella, but I only used half of it.  Today, I realised I needed to use the rest because I'm out for dinner tomorrow and I don't want to have to throw away the mozzarella.  I also had some leftover tomato (with onion, garlic and peppers) sauce and some basil.  So I made pizza.  

Honestly, it was the best pizza I've eaten since the last time I made pizza, several years ago.  I'm an entirely adequate cook, but not the best, by any means.  The fact is, home made is best.  I don't even know why, but it is.  Dammit.  I can't cut corners any more.  I usually leave most of the dough, but this was too good.

I do go out to eat regularly and I usually choose something I'm unlikely to make myself.  I don't suggest I cook better than a professional chef, because I know I absolutely don't, but there's something about mass production.

Anyway, to finish with the food theme, I did call in at the deli today and bought cheese.  They have a cheese of the month and, this time, it was one I didn't know, called Shadow Flower (I think).  I was given a sample and it was fabulous.  I asked about it, it's Bavarian and from the same cheesemaker who makes Alp Flower, which is also delicious, but its rind is covered in a thin layer of crushed mixed peppercorns.  While I was about it, I bought Roquefort, which I adore but don't often buy as I usually opt for local cheeses (or British, anyway) and some local Baron Bigod.  I ate them with homemade bread.  I had great difficulty stopping and had to force myself to put them away.