Week 45 (just 15 to go) in my experiment documenting each week five things which have made me happy of for which I’m grateful — and it’s been another strange week where I’ve totally lost all notion of what day it is. Anyway here’s my choice for the week.

1. Eton. On Monday I had to go to a meeting at Eton College. I always enjoy going to Eton, it is such a civilised place even if one does feel somewhat out of one’s depth. The school itself rambles across a large area, which isn’t surprising as it has to house, teach and entertain over 1200 boys. It includes some wonderful architecture — the old College buildings; the early 16th century Lupton’s Tower and the 15th century chapel are just a delight. What’s also nice is that the town still has something approaching an old-fashioned high street of small shops (many in late Regency properties) although sadly they are now more tourist orientated than domestic. One thing I noticed on this visit was that the whole place was adorned with huge hanging baskets of red, white and blue flowers; the white was a petunia (actually blushed with mauve) which had a delightful scent of jasmine. Somehow Eton always seems so much more friendly and inviting than Harrow.

   

2. Sunshine. Yes we actually saw the sun a few times this week! Yesterday (Saturday) was so glorious, even if not hugely warm, it was a shame not to be out in the garden.
3. Beef Curry. Just for Sue I have to include something about food; and we’ve had so much good food this week. Should I mention Friday’s pan-fried lamb with whisky? Or yesterday’s most excellent sausages with linguine in a spicy tomato sauce? No I think I shall mention Tuesday’s beef curry. Yummy beef having been marinaded all day in curry spices, garlic, ginger, lemon juice and gin; cooked with spinach and served with Noreen’s very lemony rice.
4. Orchids. My orchids just go on and on. The first ones in flower have now finished and the later ones are following on behind. But on Friday I succumbed to another: a pretty pale yellow slightly blushed with pink, very like the one on the right — a colour-way I’ve not seen before. And I have two (one mine; one my mother’s) which are already growing flowing spikes again. These plants are mad!
5. Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. We are especially enjoying Italian wines at the moment; the reds especially seem much richer and fuller than the French, and I think one is getting much better quality wine for the same money. We first had this Montepulciano at one of our local Italian restaurants and subsequently found it being sold by Majestic Wine. It is a lovely soft but full-bodied red, just right for accompanying those sausages and pasta. Indeed one could sit and drink it all evening.

OMG it’s now week 44 (of 60) of my experiment documenting each week five things which have made me happy of for which I’m grateful. But I’m still trying to work out where the last week has gone. I seem to have been running in a blur of circles all week with little to show for it except stress and losing all track of what day it is. Ably assisted the while by having a cold and sinus infection — thankfully it seems now on the wane.

So I have to come up with my five picks for the week. Hmmm …

1. Pak Choi. Yes that strange cabbage-y oriental veg. I rather like it’s slightly nutty flavour and its crispiness and it is full of vitamin C. As it has been good recently so we’ve eaten it twice this week.

   
   And I’ve made my own way of cooking it (probably not original): slice the pak choi in half along it’s length and pan fry it in olive oil and flambé it with a slug of whisky or brandy. (I nearly managed to fire the kitchen doing this last night!) Serve when it’s beginning to brown but still fresh and crunchy.

   What I hadn’t realised is that it is very closely related to the common or garden turnip. But don’t eat too much of it as it contains some toxic glucosinolates.

2. Bastourma. We’ve eaten out twice this week as on both Tuesday and Wednesday we ended up near a favourite restaurant in the early evening. On Tuesday, as we left a meeting about 6pm I asked Noreen what we were about to do. She said “I’m taking you out for dinner”. Well who am I to object? Especially when we were but a few hundred yards from one of our favourite Italian restaurants.

   Then on Wednesday I had another meeting which was scheduled right across evening meal time and which I knew wouldn’t finish until 8pm. So afterwards I met Noreen in our favourite Greek Cypriot restaurant. I just had a quick main course of Bastourma, a smoked spicy beef sausage, with a couple of beers. They weren’t hugely busy, so we had time for a chat with the lady of the house too.

3. Boarding the Loft. Regular readers may recall we’ve been slowly trying to clear and organise our loft. This week we had James in to lay boarding in the second (of three) areas we’ve cleared. Job well done and lots more usable storage space. Now we just have to clear the final third!
4. Roast Pork & Apple Sauce. This week’s other treat was a large joint of pork from our trip to the supermarket. Succulent roast pork, with Noreen’s tart apple sauce (just Bramley apple stewed with butter) — and a naughty bit of crackling on the side!
5. Completed Tax Returns. What a wonderful job for a Sunday: filling in the income tax return! Like most people it’s a job I hate; I remember my father swearing about it every year. But it’s worse now I have three tax returns to do: mine, Noreen’s and my mother’s! But with a decent PC application, last year’s return as a basis and all the data in the file ready it doesn’t take too long. Mine and Noreen’s have been sent in; just my mother’s to finalise during the week. And it is such a pleasant relief when it is over for another year!

OK, so it’s another week down in the experiment: week 43 done and 17 to go. Here are my five picks of the week.

1. Wedding Anniversary. As I mentioned, yesterday was our wedding anniversary. I worked it out; a mere 33 years! I make that pearl (30) and leather (3), so we invested in some fancy dog-collars shackles. 😉 But … Eeeekkkkk! We’ve been married much longer than we weren’t. And every year we look at each other and say “How did we do it?”. And we still don’t know! But it’s a good week for it; we have several friends with wedding anniversaries this week.
2. Summer Weather. This week has been another of glorious late summer weather: clear blue skies, hot sunshine, warm nights — just like summer should be — but also quite humid. It seems the first week of September is so often good weather, which is one reason we often used to go on holiday in early September. All of which has meant we’ve enjoyed several days of …
3. Eating in the Garden. Well at least on the terrace, aka patio.

   

4. Plums. Our next door neighbours have a small Victoria Plum tree. Like all fruit trees It hasn’t been prolific this year (we’ve had no apples worth eating), but earlier in the week they gave us a couple of pounds of delicious ripe plums; just right for eating.
5. Duck and Blackberry. See my recipe from yesterday!

OK, so it’s week 42 of the experiment. Which means I have to find another five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful this week. Some weeks this is incredibly easy and other weeks it is hard. For no obvious reason this is just one of those hard weeks.

1. Hypnotherapy. As I’ve said before, I always enjoy my hypnotherapy sessions. That’s party because it is quite relaxing; in fact so relaxing I almost always fall asleep when I get home. And this week Chris was able to push me deeper than ever before.
2. Smoked Chicken Salad. Here’s another regular. We always keep a couple of smoked chicken breasts in the fridge. They make a quick, delicious salad.

   
   Click the image for larger versions on Flickr

3. Alpine Mornings. Thursday night was an exceptionally cold night for August and Friday dawned bright a chilly: really autumnally alpine. Which I love even if it shouldn’t be happening in August!
4. Lamb with Port. One of our occasional treats from Waitrose is a piece of butterflied leg of lamb (ie. boned and opened out), dressed with some herb and garlic before being vacuum-packed. We only buy it if it is reduced (ie. near it’s sell-by date) — it is just too expensive otherwise. The piece we had this week I sliced into steaklets and pan-fried with a little olive oil and a generous glass of port. It was just so tender and went down extremely well with some mixed rocket salad and steamed new potatoes.
5. Food with Friends. Last evening we went to a local Thai restaurant with our friends Sue and Ziggy, plus their two boys — a last chance before the boys go back to school and everyone’s’ diaries get impossible to shoehorn anything else into. Good food, a few beers, excellent company as well as fun watching Sam (14) and his mother wind each other up! We wound up the evening early-ish partly because young Harry (10), having put away a gargantuan amount of food, was visibly beginning to wilt — and I knew if we went back to S&Z’s for postprandials then Harry would likely resist bed and they’d all regret it. A good evening nonetheless.

Experiment, week 41.

What a strange week. Apart from going to Norfolk to visit my aged mother on Monday it has been a fairly uneventful week, so I’m not quite sure why it’s been quite so strange.

But anyway the experiment continues … so here are five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful this week.

1. Shipdham. On the way back from visiting my mother we detoured via the Norfolk village of Shipdham with its rather interesting church. As I wrote about it here, I’ll say no more now.
2. Feeling Human. Somewhere around Thursday I suddenly came to the realisation that I was beginning to feel human, almost normal, rather than my usual morose, grumpy and depressive self. I have no clue where it came from, or why. It was a most strange feeling. It hasn’t entirely gone away, but it isn’t entirely here now either. I’d be quite happy if it came back, though.
3. Plums. It’s the season for decent English plums. I love good plums and especially Victorias. On Monday we bought some large plums in Roy’s (again see here) of a variety called Jubilee. They looked and tasted like large Victorias. On Friday we bought some actual Victorias in Waitrose. Both were excellent, although to be honest the Jubilee were maybe the better if only for being more succulent.

   Click the images for larger views on Flickr
   

4. Hollyhocks. Also on Monday there were some wonderful hollyhocks in the village of Bawburgh where we had lunch. I’ve noticed this glorious show before, many growing not in the gardens but on the verges. The photos above are just a couple of a whole range of colours from pure white to deep maroon.

   

5. Home-Grown Chillies. As I have for the last several years I’m growing my own chillies again on the study windowsill. Up to now I’ve always grown 3 or 4 different varieties. The large Scotch Bonnet type never seem to do well for me — I have just a couple of fruit ripening — they probably need it consistently hotter and brighter. But I have a tiny purple-turning-red variety called “Explosive Ember” which is prolific. They are hot and I usually dry them for winter use. But my favourite is “Hot Lemon” (the ones in the photo above are from my 2010 crop). They are 2-3 inches long and when ripe a bright lemon yellow. They too are hot with, when fresh, a delightful succulent, almost citrus-y taste as well. They go well in salads, and they look just stunning. Today I picked the second flush — only seven fruit, but there are already at least as many more to come and the plants are still flowering. It’s a travesty not to eat these fresh, but next year I might succumb and plant only these — they are that good.

Experiment, week 40.

Apologies for the hiatus in postings this week, somehow I’ve managed to be busy, busy, busy. There are a few things happening over the next 2-3 days, but hopefully things can then get back to normal.

Anyway we’re now two-thirds of the way through my experiment. This is week 40 of 60 and so far things are looking fairly positive.

In fact this week has been so busy I’m actually struggling a bit for things out of the ordinary to write about, however here are five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful this week.

Sorry Sue, It’s a foodie theme again!

1. Meeting Katy. On Monday Noreen and I met up with our friend Katy and her three children who were having a break in London. While it was a social meeting we also agreed to go and see the Shakespeare exhibition at the British Museum. Meeting Katy is always a pleasure especially as we usually eat cake and lunch! And the Shakespeare was also a pleasure, especially as it’s aim is to show things about the times in which the plays were written and put some of the great speeches into their contemporary social context. The exhibition is definitely recommended. You can find Katy’s write-up of the exhibition here.
2. Ciao Bella. Having done the exhibition, had coffee and cake, and let the children run around in Corams Fields for an hour or so, we wandered off for lunch. Katy had spotted a good-looking Italian restaurant, Ciao Bella, next to the Lamb pub in Lamb’s Conduit Street. Despite (or maybe because of) being inhabited by what appeared to be a couple of small groups of Mafiosi, it was excellent. Although we had just a quick, simple and late lunch the food was substantial and good. Definitely one to be added to the list of useful London eateries. Again, you can find Katy’s write-up here.
3. Doughnut. On Wednesday we spent a depressing chunk of the day in a consultation meeting about changes to our local hospitals. Depressing because of what my father would have called the “poverty of mind” of most of the people there; people who cannot (or will not) understand what is being proposed but oppose it anyway. Afterwards Noreen and I had to fortify ourselves with doughnuts and a cold drink. I’m not a huge fan of the doughnut, if only because they don’t do much for the waistline, but this one went down a real treat after a long, and very hot, ordeal.
4. Swifts. I like having swifts flying around and I always look forward to their arrival in late-April/early-May from Africa and wish they wouldn’t fly away again so soon at the end of July. But amazingly we still have at least one swift still around; I’ve seen it on each of the last three evenings. This is unusually late (although not unheard of) and especially late for me to see a swift in London.
5. Pub Meet. Yesterday I hosted the quarterly lunchtime Anthony Powell Society Pub Meet in London. I always enjoy what are informal chats between friends over a beer or two and pub lunch. We never know who will turn up and yesterday we had three people come along totally unexpectedly and enliven the conversations. These conversations cover almost anything but sooner or later always return to some Powellian theme or aspect of life. For a wonder yesterday I managed to get through over three hours in the pub without a drop of alcohol, or sugary drink — just to compensate for Wednesday’s doughnut!

Experiment, week 38. So here we go, another week completed in the continuing experiment documenting five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful this week. We’ll soon be two-thirds of the way through the experiment.

1. Willem Van De Velde and …
2. The Wallace Collection this week produced the first two of selections. More on both here.



3. Queen’s Head & Artichoke. After we’d been to the Wallace Collection, Noreen and I pottered off (in a taxi) to the Artichoke for lunch. We had a selection of their tapas: Prawn & Scallop Skewers, Whitebait, Chorizo and Lentils, Cannellini Bean Salad and Patatas Bravas. This is an excellent gastro pub in Albany Street, NW1, very close to Great Portland Street and Regent’s Park tube stations. I can’t believe I’ve not written about it before as we use it both for ourselves and for some Anthony Powell Society functions (it is close to Powell’s former Chester Gate home). The menu is always interesting: a good selection of starters, main courses and puddings and on the other side a whole range of tapas; you can mix and match anyhow you like as long as you don’t want standard pub food. The food, beer, wine and service are always good and friendly; the manager is a characterful Frenchman (certainly Francophone with a wonderful Inspector Clouseau accent). They are always willing to try to accommodate allergies: we have one friend who is vegetarian and allergic to dairy, and they were quite happy to quickly adapt a risotto for her. And it isn’t expensive, especially for central London. The only downside is that if it’s full the main bar can be a bit noisy, but if you’re eating there is always the upstairs restaurant area. I have to thank our friend Jeff Manley for finding it on one of his transatlantic trips to London! Everyone we’ve taken there has liked it.
4. Waitrose Chorizo Sausages. These were one of last week’s finds as they were on offer. Eaten cold between bread for lunch. Mmmmm!
5. Strawberry & Gooseberry Crumble. Friday’s trip to the supermarket found lots of fresh strawberries and gooseberries leaping into our trolley. They were destined for a favourite crumble: gooseberry and strawberry — yes, it really does work! I cooked the fruit a bit first, with just a tablespoon of sugar and a small slug of apricot brandy. This was then topped with crumble and given a 10 minute burst in our combi oven. What an excellent way to start Sunday morning: a bowl of G&S Crumble** and Custard.

** G&S Crumble. An interesting addition to the Savoy Cabbage operas.