Experiment, week 37. We’ve completed another week done in my continuing experiment in documenting five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful this week.

This week’s selection is for Sue, who challenged me to write one of these posts without mentioning food!

1. Wood Smoke. I love the smell of wood smoke and bonfires. It always takes me back to my childhood and especially to scout camp. Those were good days! What is it that makes smells so evocative?
2. Family Reconnections. What a brilliant week! I seem to have managed to put another bit of the family back together! My paternal grandfather skipped bail during the war and ended up having another three children by his mistress. (They never married as my grandmother wouldn’t give him a divorce.) I knew of my half-aunts’ existence when I was young and even met the eldest (who is about 7 years older than me; the other two are with a year of my age). But as with my father’s family contact was lost. I finally managed to trace the middle of the three sisters (family history forensics again!) and wrote to her in the hope that I could fill in some of the gaps on the family tree. She rang me last Sunday and I’ve now spoken with all three sisters; they’re all delighted to be back in touch after 40-odd years and longing to know more about their father. They’re spread around England so we’re planning to meet in October when they can all come to London. An interesting day beckons!
3. New Glasses. I got my new glasses on Monday. Although my prescription hasn’t changed a lot, it was time for a new pair. They’re rimless and crystal clear. My optician was slightly concerned that they’ve had to change the make of lenses (what I have had for the last few pairs are no longer made) and that I might find these difficult to adjust to. But I’ve never had problems with varifocals and I adjusted to these instantly; not even any of this looking slightly fuzzy for a few hours. And they are such light titanium; they feel so fragile even compared with my old pair of gold frames, which weren’t exactly substantial. Mind you my wallet hurt a bit at £560! The frames weren’t expensive either, even with the surcharge for extra precision engineering for rimless. It’s the high spec, hard plastic, photo-chromic lenses that do the damage! But I’m blind without my glasses, and they’re so comfortable I don’t know I’m wearing them, so it is a good investment every few years.
4. Sitting in the Garden. Isn’t it wonderful to have had some decent summer weather and been able to sit in the garden! Even more wondrous was the fact that the other evening it was so quiet: no noisy neighbours’ children, no planes escaping from Heathrow, no lawnmowers, and even very little traffic on the nearest main road. It was really quiet. Almost eerily so. Would it were like this more often.
   
5. Wood Pigeons. Yes, wood pigeons! Columba palumbus. Not those scruffy feral pigeons (although I don’t dislike them). We’ve had wood pigeons round for years and their rather sleepy, slightly husky sounding call — coo-cooo-coo, coo-coo — is something else that takes me back to my childhood and camping with my parents at Rye when I would have been about four or five.

There you are, Sue, no mention of food at all! 🙂

Experiment, week 36. Well it’s another week done in my continuing experiment in documenting five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful this week. So here’s this week’s selection.

1. Fish Counter Display. We did our usual weekly supermarket trip on Thursday this week and walking up to the fish counter I spotted that the regular guy (Colin) had done a slightly different display:

   

2. King Prawns on Special Offer. Apart from the displays you can usually rely on Colin to come up with something tempting in the way of offers on either meat or fish. This week he offered us uncooked king prawns at the knock-down price of £11 a kilo. That really was no contest: one portion cooked and eaten that night with pasta, the rest in the freezer.
3. Retsina and Moussaka. On Wednesday I had to go to an early evening meeting in West Ealing, which was scheduled to finish at 8pm (we actually finished slightly earlier). So I arranged to meet Noreen at the nearby Greek Cypriot restaurant, Retsina & Moussaka, were we had a typically good Greek feed: what a super small restaurant! This could become a regular treat as I will probably be attending these meetings every 6-8 weeks, although we’d better restrict our selves to just a main course otherwise all ideas of weight-loss will quickly fly out of the window!
4. Lilies. Also at Waitrose on Thursday we bought a couple of really nice bunches of lilies: one yellow, the other white blushed with pink. As well as looking pretty they’re making the dining room smell heavenly.
5. Dining Alfresco. Yay! Today has been hot and sunny: wall to wall sunshine! After summer we’ve had so far this is such a treat. And we’ve been able to eat outside not once but twice today: lunchtime and this evening. That’s the first time we’ve managed more than coffee and cake in the garden this year! What’s even better is that the forecast is for even hotter and sunnier weather for at least the next few days. Brilliant!

Experiment, week 35. Another week in the continuing experiment and at long last it has been a bit different …

Well for a start it’ been weeing down with rain almost all week. Oh, there’s no change there then.

And secondly we had a quick night away in Somerset which has provided four of this week’s five pleasures: (1) Hilary Spurling’s lecture, (2) La Bisalta, (3) the Archangel; all of these you can read a bit more about in my earlier blog post.

La Bisalta

Then (4) people who enjoy and are interested in their job. I was especially struck by the pair who were serving breakfast in the hotel. The young man was a professional bar-tender and had made it his business to learn all he could, including about food, and was interested enough to be helping out on his day off. The young lady was a trained chef. Her boyfriend was obviously the hotel chef and they had agreed not to work in the kitchen together (very sensible!); so she was learning the front of house stuff (she even checked us out!) so she had the skills when they were able to start their own business. Unlike many chefs she was seriously interested in food. They weren’t busy so we had an interesting conversation. They, together with the staff at La Bisalta, were friendly and welcoming. It’s such a refreshing change!

So then to (5) Strawberries and Raspberries. We bought both on this week’s shopping trip because they looked good, were known to be good varieties — which is also a refreshing change — and were English. No need for cream, they were delightful enough all on their own for Saturday breakfast.

Experiment, week 34. Another week, another selection in my continuing experiment in documenting five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful this week.

1. Fast Internet. We had our internet upgraded this week from the about 4meg we used to get from Be to about 70meg via an FTTC feed from BT. (For reasons I won’t go into here our phones are tied to BT, so BT turned out to be the best overall option.) Surprisingly at the end of this we should not be paying more over a year for all our telecomms than before. BT have (so far) done what they said they would and done it pretty efficiently, whereas Be have been all over the floor getting my account closed down.



2. Rubbish going to the Tip. One day earlier in the week our friend Tom took two car loads of toot — largely outpourings from the loft — to our local tip (above) for us. And they reckon to recycle over 95% of everything they take in; and they take everything. We’ve a lot more to go, but it’s a another big dent in the job!
3. Boursin in Salad. I can’t remember which evening it was that we had smoked chicken salad, which is always good. But as I was preparing it I remembered we had half a Boursin (cream cheese with garlic & herbs) in the fridge which had been open a couple of days. So I added this to the salad. It was messy to break up and it softened with the vinegar and olive oil dressing; it was quite rich, but my did it taste good!
4. Cherries. Thanks to Noreen’s shopping exploits I’ve had several lots of cherries this week. Yum!
5. Germs that Go Away when Told. Last night at bedtime I was feeling decidedly “Meh”, depressed and cold-y with a cracking headache. I don’t want this so I dropped myself into an almost self-hypnotic state of invincibility and told the “germs” (or whatever they were) to bugger off before morning. This doesn’t always work for me, but this time it did. Much to my astonishment and delight.

Experiment, week 32. Back on track this week with an on time report, although it will doubtless be coloured by the fact that I didn’t start feeling really OK again until Wednesday. So here’s the week’s selection of five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful.

1. Japanese Ceramics. Quite by chance the other week I came across a guy called Mark Smalley who makes ceramics in the Japanese style — very much after the tradition of Bernard Leech and his grandson John Leech, the latter of whose pottery we love and use almost daily. Mark showed a photo (below) of a pot he’d made; it is a yunomi, a Japanese tea cup, but the type used for everyday rather than the formal tea ceremony. It intrigued me, especially when I saw that it was carved. Yes, carved. Apparently this is done by making the pot, putting it aside to dry, then carving it before glazing and firing. Luckily for me Mark put the pot on this Folksy site and I snapped it up as an unbirthday present for Noreen, knowing she likes both green and this style of ceramic. It is only about 3-4″ high and as delightful as it looks!

   
   Photo by Mark Smalley

2. Nutty Seedy Bread. One of the great things about having a bread machine is that you can have an almost endless variety of loaves, at will, for no extra effort and at half the price you’d pay for something inferior in the shops. Noreen is master of the bread machine and a bread she does once or twice week is laden with pinenuts and sunflower seeds. If the nuts weren’t so expensive we would doubtless eat this all the time!
3. Broad Beans. Twice in the last week we’ve had broad beans; fresh broad beans. Firstly the other night in a chicken risotto and tonight in salad. Small tender and full of flavour — the best way to eat any vegetable.
4. Orchids. Oh no! More orchids! (But not more orchid photos — yet!) I’ve decided that I shall only buy Phalaenopis orchids (they’re the easy ones you most commonly see) if they are really unusual colours that I don’t already have and which I like. So this week I bought three on our weekly trip to Waitrose. A miniature one in white and magenta, a large spotted one (in beige-y yellow with deep magenta spots) and a Chartreuse yellow one. And, oh dear, I’ve now run out of windowsill space!
5. Saturday Dinner. I must say yesterday’s evening meal was rather good. A week or two back Noreen bought a piece of lamb leg, opened out into a really thick steak. We didn’t need it immediately so it was frozen. We thawed it and I cooked it for last night. Pan braised with some onion, garlic and wine; and served with English asparagus, samphire and steamed new potatoes. It was a lovely piece of lamb and I have to say I’ve paid a lot more for much worse in restaurants. Mmmmm…

Experiment, week 31. A late report this week as I’ve been under the weather for the last few days; hopefully now on the up! Anyway here’s last week’s selection of five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful this week.

1. Waitrose Cox’s Apple Vintage Cider. Yummy! Memories of childhood: this is what cider should taste like.



2. Pigeon Bones. See Pieces of Pigeon.
3. Microwave Combi Oven. We decided last week to retire our old microwave oven. I use old advisedly: we bought it soon after we moved into the house, so it is over 30 years old! We replaced it with a Combi Microwave/Oven/Grill which promises to be very useful and save using the “big oven” a lot of the time.
4. Sunshine. Don’t faint! We had sunshine two days running last week.
5. Cherries. Noreen bought some wonderful large, dark red cherries (from M&S, I think). They didn’t last long.