Category Archives: personal

beliefs, books, food+drink, memes, music, personal, quotes

Ten Things – December

The final episode of my monthly series of “Ten Things” for 2011. Each month during the year I’ve listed one thing from each of ten categories which have remained the same each month. So today completes the ten lists of twelve things about me.

  1. Something I Like: Fresh Snow
  2. Something I Won’t Do: Go Horse Racing
  3. Something I Want To Do: Write a Book
  4. A Blog I Like: Postsecret
  5. A Book I Like: Charles Nicholls, The Reckoning
  6. Some Music I Like: JS Bach, Weihnachtsoratorium
  7. A Food I Like: Treacle Tart
  8. A Food or Drink I Dislike: Butternut Squash
  9. A Word I Like: Antepenultimate
  10. A Quote I Like: If we don’t change our direction we’re liable to end up where we’re going. [Chinese Proverb]
food+drink, natural history, personal, pleasures

Reasons to be Grateful 3

OK the experiment is into week three: this week’s five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful:

    Harry the Cat

  1. Cats. Harry the Cat has been especially friendly this week, which is nice. He’s resting next to me on my desk as I write this, just as in the photo. He’s not so welcome though is when he throws up on the bed at 6am!
  2. Lamb & Kidney Pie. This has become one of Noreen’s specialities. Make it like Steak and Kidney only with lamb neck fillet instead of beef: cheaper and tastier.
  3. Parrots. Or rather Ring-Neck Parakeets, which seem to be spreading rapidly around London. We regularly have them in the garden — fun and colourful. And yesterday driving out of central London at dusk we saw several groups, one of 100 birds, flying off to Wormwood Scrubs where there is a nightly roost of 2500 birds.
  4. Vegetables in Cheese Sauce. A much loved favourite of my childhood when it was usually either runner beans or butter beans, we recently resurrected this as a quick, simple and cheap meal. Cook the veg (anything of your choice, root veg works well as do beans, cauliflower, fennel, potato, Jerusalem artichokes etc.) and serve with a good thick cheese sauce. Real comfort food.
  5. Wild Boar Sausages. Eaten yesterday with red cabbage at the Queen’s Head & Artichoke in Albany Street.

A foodie week, then. And off shortly to eat a pork version of Osso Buco (known here as Osso Piggo). Mmmmm …