If It’s Good Enough For The Birds…

Tags

Cake-a-Doodle-Doo, chicken soup, crayfish, Exeter, lardy cake, lidl, venison, Waitrose

Mostly Concerning Food

I’ve noticed the birds in the cherry tree, where I hang my feeders, have taken a strong interest in the fat balls this month. They get largely ignored (except by the squirrels) in the warmer seasons but at the moment they need replacing every few days. They know instinctively when they need to change their diet. Soon it will be nesting time and all the feeders will empty daily as they build themselves up for the eternal circle. For the moment, keeping warm is their top priority and they are eating a lot of fat and a lot of fruit. I’m doing the same and for pretty much the same reasons. One, it keeps out the cold and two, I’m programmed to do it. My parents, grandparents and great grand parents did the same. It’s in the blood.

Chicken and vegetable soup to fight off the January colds. I’m touching wood while I type but feel bold enough to say that I haven’t had a bad cold since I gave up smoking over six years ago.. They used to hang around from October to March. I can’t say that it is any more than coincidence. I’ve made a lot of other changes in my life during that time. One thing that doesn’t change is my love of a home-made soup. It’s like bread in that it is simple, wholesome, and as much fun to make as it is to eat. I prefer to keep it brothy rather than blend it. Sometimes it improves it to blend it, mostly, it seems to me, to be making it into baby food. I like to be able to enjoy the different elements. Not that there are too many here; onions, leeks, carrots and chicken stock with any meat that had been left on the carcass after it had already served as main course for two meals.

These are my secret treats. (Not so secret now as T reads these blogs). Bacon, fried eggs and fried potatoes with a mug of black coffee. This is a Hemingway style writer’s breakfast. I face it without Papa’s hangover and talent. The tray cloth suggests that I had minor aspirations to grandeur that morning. The plastic sauce bottles help to keep me grounded.

This used to be a real treat as a boy and a starter in restaurants that had heard of three course meals but didn’t really want to offer the customer too much in the way of clever cooking. Inexplicably people chose to have it. Some restaurants still try to get away with it, cutting it thin and fanning it out. Now that melons are available for under a pound all the year round it is the equivalent of being offered an apple. Very nice but not at £25 a head.

I try to finish whatever work I am doing by 4 o’clock and have a meal ready on the table for when T gets home. I’m currently going through bit of a chop phase. All of this plateful is nice. The Bramley apple sauce is but five minutes effort and adds so much. Freshness is all. The best part of the meal isn’t actually the chops but the baked potatoes with real butter.

The last of the chops pan fried with a couple of sausages (hence the black flecks on the chop) re-heated baked tatties and a greedy helping of grated cheddar cheese. My lunch the following day.

As you can see giving up cigarettes has not left me vice-free. I like my food tasty and I tend to enjoy a generous portion. In my defence (does pleasure need a defence?) my working day does consist of plenty of strenuous labour at the moment. And I don’t eat much for the rest of the day.

This is one of a dozen (at least) meals that I would call my favourite. Some crackers, some good Stilton cheese and some pears. Heaven on a plate.

Hotel room. Not sure why the shaving brush and bowl are there but there is limited space in a hotel room. We share a Danish pastry and an almond croissant. On their own they are nice. With a decent apple, they are even better.

One of my great regrets on leaving Exeter 20 years ago was that we were leaving behind a wonderful parade of shops on Magdalen Road. Some of the best have gone and been replaced by cafes run by people who are about as qualified to run cafes as I am to exhibit at the Tate. The best greengrocer in the West of England has closed since I was last there and that is a nail in the coffin as regards it being a world class shopping street. Happily the bakery is not only still there but hasn’t followed the trends into sourdough and wholesome or fancy. (I like sourdough and fancy, my gripe is against a particular type of cafe and bakery). They bake good bread and sell the same choice of cakes and puddings that they did in the eighties (and probably the fifties). Here we have a plum and almond cake and a lardy cake. Lardy cake was a fantastic treat as a boy and now has almost disappeared. This bakery has stuck by its guns and will outlast all of the fashion following rivals. I like my poetry written by poets, my food grown by farmers and my bread (when I don’t bake it myself) baked by a baker.

Not a traditional way of eating lardy cake. Ayrshire cheese, pears and figs. I don’t care, this was delicious.

These Buxton fish and chips were just about as good as they appear: more filling and thrilling. No complaints but no rush to go back for more.

But here is a fish meal that would tempt me back. Made by David and Melissa and the highlight of our visit to the South West. Baked smoked salmon with potatoes and a really delicious combination of vegetables flavoured with honey, balsamic and other ingredients. Very special indeed.

I’m not against well-meaning middle class people with the ability to bake from opening their own cafe. Amongst the many dreary efforts in Exeter are one or two that are superb. One goes under the cheerful but corny name of Cake-a-Doodle-Doo! It is on the Palace Gate end of Cathedral Green and is everything you want in a cafe. A limited choice of first class cakes and simple but tasty meals. (Too much choice is a great mistake in small cafes). All freshly made and served in a cheerful and tasteful atmosphere by the people who baked them. I was halfway through my coffee and walnut cake before I remembered that T had a camera on her phone. Also on view are the remains of a rich chocolate (gluten free) cake and the bottom third of a slice of Victoria sponge. Imagine you are able to sample the wares on the final day of the Great British Bake Off and you won’t be far out. Oh, and they served proper tea as well not a bag seeping in an aluminium pot.

Another meal that is a contender for my very favourite. Good bread, butter, cheese, ham, tomatoes and nothing else. Scientists have recently concluded that vanilla yoghurt is the food of happiness. I can only presume they forgot to test this plateful.

A bought Christmas pudding. One of many I’ve eaten this year. This one is made to look fancy by being topped with lots of glacé cherries and whole almonds. The almonds are ok but glacé cherries are no longer anyone’s idea of a treat. Just give me more plum pudding and don’t stint.

I’m not the biggest fan of supermarkets. I can’t see the little bits of good they may have done, in widening tastes and making foods available, has even come close to cancelling out the huge harm that they are responsible for. But they are here now and they aren’t going to go away. (Though I’m proud of the efforts of British people, in protesting about the market leaders showing that all they really care about is profit and dividends, and giving them a bloody nose). Tesco and Sainsbury’s have pretty much lost my trade until they show that service (to both supplier and customer) comes before the balance sheet. Waitrose bribes me (successfully) with free tea and coffee to go with a decent range of treats in their cafe as well as a free newspaper, but if their shelves didn’t hold better food than their bigger rivals I don’t think I’d bother. I’m still with the new guys. Not simply because they are cheap but because they have more exciting products. My current favourite is Lidl. The one I go to is in a run down part of Sheffield and my fellow shoppers are the displaced from the UK and all over Europe and beyond. It is the friendliest shop I know. It never fails to give me something I’d be prepared to travel a long way for if it wasn’t on my doorstep. Here are some delicious crayfish tails. I’m the only one in our house who likes shell fish. It allows for feastly portions. I made up a little creamy dressing to complete these sandwiches. I must have been a good person in a previous life.

Lidl also provided a tray of venison for the price of a pint of Guinness in a London pub. I know which I’d prefer. They were packaged as if they were steaks but on cooking they fell into these lumps. It said haunch of venison on the box but was more like hunks of venison inside. Still very tasty but not quite the Robin of Sherwood feast I had in mind.

Everything goes well with new potatoes and peas. No fruit and very little fat (venison is an extremely lean meat) to finish the post.

Bon appétit!

Post 355: Smoking For Fitness and Health

Tags

Arbroath Smokies, Chatsworth Farm Shop, Cullen Skink, curd tart, Fortunes of Whitby, Hambridge of Matlock, kippers, Waitrose

Mostly Concerning Food

We kept October meat free but got very tempted by some Cumbrian air dried ham on a visit to the farm shop at Chatsworth. November has been an occasional meat month. It has been a brilliant month for smoked fish. We tried at least three sorts of salmon patés (two with smoked salmon and one with poached salmon) and then started doing a little bit of cooking ourselves. An Arbroath smokie became a highly flavoured risotto before an equally delicious Cullen Skink. The highlight came with a pair of kippers that I reckon may be as good as those you get from Fortunes of Whitby. These were smoked in Argyll by the Inverawe company. They simply smelt and tasted as though they had just come out of the smoke house. The meat fell off the bones and Stewart (the cat), who is a laid back sort of fellow most of the time, became more animated than I can ever remember seeing him. I wouldn’t say for certain that they are better than Fortunes but they are certainly up there; certainly a kipper worthy of the table for high-tea as well as breakfast.

My favourite meal; some decent bread and cheese, paté and fresh tomatoes all washed down with a clean cup of tea.

I can’t remember the name of the cheese or the paté. Both were bought at Waitrose and both went down very nicely. I wan’t intending doing a food blog so I didn’t keep notes. The tea is Betty’s Blue tea. It compliments this sort of a meal.

If I see the cheese again I will buy it. Cheese is one of our greatest achievements as a species. To be able to get so many different tastes and flavours and aromas into one foodstuff is something to be celebrated. Of course the human species has also, in Dairylea, been able to create a cheese that is almost free of flavour. It’s a decent starting point but a pity if it is also a finishing post.

More blue tea with parkin and apples. Tastes of Autumn.

I did actually make a jack’o’lantern out of this (grown by Steven) but not until I’d made a gently spiced soup and a sweet pie to celebrate Halloween. The spice mix for the soup was cumin, coriander and fenugreek. It was wonderfully warming after spending the morning putting up a fence.

The star here is hidden under a layer of melted butter. Again I cannot remember the name of the firm who made this salmon paté but it was exceptional. It was bought in Waitrose and I will be looking out for it in future. The best of all the ready made fish products we’ve had this year.

 

One of the best ways of looking forward to Christmas is to spend a month or two enjoying the pleasures of simple, one food, meals. If you have a daughter whose chickens can provide you with eggs as good as these then you have no reason to be unhappy….we are extremely happy.

 

The Chatsworth Farm Shop attracts a lot of Vyella shirts, brown brogues and a fair smattering of older men in wine coloured trousers. The clientele are certainly well-heeled. On the whole the stuff on sale is good though one wonders at some of the decisions. We enjoyed a burger in the restaurant. A good burger is a real treat and this was a good burger; first quality meat and perfectly cooked to give those browning reaction aromas on the outside while remaining juicy and delicious inside. The bread was good and a generous green salad was helped with a tangy dressing. Why then add a dollop of floury, over-mayonaised potato salad and a pile of tasteless crisps? Not a criticism. More a suggestion. (Hello Mr Chatsworth kitchen manager, people aren’t coming to your shop to buy crisps.)

The Yorkshire curd tart (Not one for Dr. Spooner) was a little dry but this was taken care of by having it with a generous bunch of grapes.

 

These sausages came from Hambridge of Matlock. We cooked a pan full, sliced a decent loaf and tried them out with a range of pickles. The winning relish being a chutney recipe sent by a Mr Bruce Goodman of North Island New Zealand. It may seem a little greedy to have a whole pan of sausages between two of us and it was! (Though a well-loved border collie collected more than a morsel or two.)

 

According to local legend (and Wikipedia) Arbroath smokies were created when a fire in a salting shed over heated a number of barrels of haddock that were being cured. It burnt down the building but left a culinary gem behind. I love Arbroath Smokies. They are young haddock that are first cured in salt, then air dried before being hot smoked in barrel-like-smokers. This is a big flavoured fish. The haddock isn’t without flavour in itself but all three of the processes add flavour and aromas that make these rather special.

This is Cullen Skink. It’s a wonderful soup made from onion, potato, smoked haddock, milk, cream, parsley and seasoning. Scotland has got a very well deserved reputation for poor diet. If you really wanted to eat badly then Scotland will provide you with plenty of opportunities. It has also given us some of the finest of foods. Cullen Skink is a tremendous soup and all the better for being made with a genuine Arbroath Smokie.

 

This simple risotto is also made from an Arbroath Smokie. The salt house fire is a myth. The people of the East Coast of Britain learned about preserving fish from Denmark and Norway. We owe a great deal of our culture to those who came from elsewhere to make Britain their home (long may this continue). Salt fish, dried fish and particularly smoked fish are a legacy from the vikings. Even accounting for all the middle class people who have started their own smokeries, the vast majority of fish smoking is still done in areas that were once ruled by Danes and Norwegians. The original “red herrings” came from Yarmouth. These were left un-gutted, saturated with salt and then smoked for several weeks. Apparantly they tasted wonderful and lasted for well over a year. The down side was an odour that has left them as a by-word for covering over a scent trail. Smoking began as a means of preserving fish but soon became a way of imparting a range of complex flavours (I’m largely paraphrasing sections of Harold McGee’s Food and Cooking here).

Flavours used to be much stronger because fish had to be able to last longer. The link between food and industry is not always smiled upon but it was one of the main inventions of the industrial revolution that transformed smoking and curing. The steam engine led to railways which in turn allowed food to reach the plate days quicker and both salt and smoke cures became much milder.

Arbroath Smokies are first salted which not only adds a little salt (a flavour enhancer) to the meat but also draws some proteins to the surface. When this is dried it forms a sticky layer that gives the fish an attractive gleam once it has been smoked. I was first attracted to smoked fish by the way they looked. There is an awful lot of pleasure to be had from food of this quality and good food feeds all five senses.

Fish are either hot smoked or cold smoked. Smokies get the first treatment, kippers get the second. The other difference is that one is a haddock and the kipper is a herring. For centuries the herring has been a great food of the poor all around the coast of Britain. I like herrings in all sorts of ways but this is my favourite.

At one time the kipper (like the sausage) was becoming a factory produced apology of its former self. Large food companies turned out pre-packed kippers by the score. Happily a few of the traditional smokers kept going and enough people insisted on the real thing. Now it isn’t difficult to get first class kippers in different parts of the country. If I was presented with a kipper that looked (and tasted) like the one above in an hotel I would go back again and again. If I got presented with a pre-packed, de-boned imitation I would be looking to check out as soon as possible.

 

Day 399: Jacob’s Ladder of Beef

Tags

chocolate pudding, Jacob's Ladder, Lucky Days Delicatessen, Ogleshield cheese, Sherwood Forest, The Underground Man Mick Jackson, vegetarian food, Waitrose, Welbeck Farm Shop

Mostly Concerning Food

(Apologies for any photographs not opening. I’m puzzled by this and am trying to resolve the problem. Please suggest solutions)

My alphabetical travels took me to Welbeck and introduced me to a first class food shop within a moderate cycle range…and mostly along country lanes. I think, as people of a more up to date exclamatory turn of phrase would say: result!

I’m weaning myself off supermarkets. A task made all the easier by Tesco’s implosion. I’m not against supermarkets in themselves. If they were really good and did enhance the quality of life of their shoppers then I’d be in favour. They don’t. Tesco is merely the one that has most forgotten such precepts as service, good products, attractive surroundings, good knowledge of food and treating the customer with respect. The Welbeck Farm Shop scores very highly on all of these and I recommend it to anyone in the Sherwood Forest area. The ice cream is fabulous and is worth the journey on its own. The first ice cream I’ve found that is better than the ice cream I make myself. (I shall have to tease the recipe out of them and up my game a little bit…no point in making ice cream unless it is the very best ice cream that can be made).

I’m not totally convinced of the in depth knowledge of the girls behind the cheese or cake stalls but don’t doubt for a second their intention to learn. No Saturday job demeanour here. The butcher is already time served and ready with the benefit of his expertise. It all looks good but it’s September 30 and we’ve long planned to have a couple of month’s meat free before the Christmas feasting season starts. Vegetarian diet starts October 1st. The ribs of beef look stunning. A dozen of these make quite a sight. A serious consideration for Christmas. Not for us though. I know that Steven is cooking beef for Boxing Day.

I choose the flat rib (Jacob’s Ladder) of beef and reluctantly ask him to take it down from a three rib piece to two. I haven’t seen beef in better condition for a long time. At home I brown this before surrounding it with quartered onions, celery and lots of carrots and about half a pint of water. It cooks slowly for the rest of the afternoon at 130c and gets served with new potatoes and the vegetables from the pan. With either horseradish (T) or mustard (me) it is exceptionally good. A strange way to celebrate the coming season of vegetarianism but an excellent way to give meat a proper send off. Flat rib has become very popular in gastro pubs. It’s got its share of fat (hence the flavour) so it isn’t for fussy eaters. The fat comes in one band through the middle though so is actually very easy the remove and slip to the dog. (There is  quite a lot of dog and cat interest while we are eating this.) It feels like something that would have been served in a farmhouse kitchen in the 1920s.

Ogleshield is a craft cheese from Somerset. Made from the milk of Jersey cows it is encouraged to develop a rind by washing in salt water. The cheese is flavoursome, soft and a very welcome addition to any cheese board. I haven’t tried cooking with it yet but apparently it melts superbly and is a perfect cheese for a burger for those not frightened of giving the taste buds something to do. To cut off the rind or to leave the rind on has been an unanswered question  ever since I encountered my first piece of brie back in the early 70s. I used to assiduously remove the chalky outer in those days simply because the skin or wrapper came off everything before we joined the Common Market. Even apples were peeled on posh occasions. These days I usually leave the rind on.

Here the Ogleshield is served on some simple crackers with three sorts of chutney, beetroot chutney, plum chutney and Steven’s green tomato chutney. All went very nicely with the cheese.

I got Wednesday off as a reward for cooking both savoury and sweet courses last week. Sam was in charge of the mains this week and served up this delicious cheese pie based on recipes she and Charlie have enjoyed in Greece. The pie contained Feta, Parmesan and Gruyere cheeses. It was served with green tomato chutney. I enjoyed the first slice so much I had to have another. I wasn’t the only one. A superb start to vegetarian autumn.

Back by popular demand and eaten with great enjoyment, Steven’s chocolate fondant puddings. Anyone who thinks we might have been disappointed to get the same pudding twice in three weeks hasn’t tasted them. They were as good as the cheese pie and that is praise indeed.

Fabulously buttery biscuits. Light, short and crumbly. I had two of these.

A picnic at the foot of Clifford’s Tower in York. I feel quite fit and toned at the moment but the photograph suggests that I might want to trim down a little. I decided to enjoy the hummus and roast vegetables sandwich (Lucky Days Delicatessen), the mushroom quiche (Bettys) and the Yorkshire Curd Tart (Bettys) before starting the diet. To be fair, the first thing I did on finishing the picnic was to climb to the top of the tower without wheezing.

My £10 Waitrose* challenge was a piece of Gorgonzola cheese, some Serrano Ham and some fresh figs. I got the ham sliced at the deli counter where the supervisor got the first assistant to demonstrate to the second assistant how to slice and wrap this treat. I occasionally make the mistake of buying it pre-wrapped. It is much much nicer if you have it freshly sliced. (And far more entertaining if half the shop is involved.) Food doesn’t enjoy being wrapped in plastic. It may make it look clean and neat but you never get to see how clean and neat the factory was where it was packed.

The ham may be Spanish and the cheese Italian (I didn’t check where the figs were grown) but they went perfectly together. The lettuce and tomatoes came out of the garden.

If we get a referendum I am voting to stay in the European Community. We never had Saturday lunches as good as this before 1973.

Q. A small pot of raspberries. What could be nicer?

A. A small pot of raspberries with double cream.

We go and see films on Sunday and miss the shops. What could be more traditional than a ‘make tea out of what you’ve got’ meal? Scones and gooseberry jam. Make do and mend or the food of the gods? Both.

Griddled tortillas with Emmental cheese. Served with some rather good coffee.

 

Saturday breakfast Waitrose style. A decent bacon sandwich and a free cup of coffee.

 

Picnic lunch between films. Smoked salmon paté, crusty French bread and raspberries. Not the most exotic of locations. Cinema car parks usually aren’t.

 

A cautionary tale. If you are ever tempted by the desire to have a mug of hot chocolate don’t decide that the “special hot chocolate” must be that bit more, well, er, special. It’s ten pence more and is a perfectly nice mug of cocoa ruined by the addition of a layer of the foul squirty cream. Lesson learnt.

Breakfast Chesterfield station, Thurdsday morning.

Free coffee and crisps on the train ten minutes later.

Fresh tomato risotto. Unbelievably nice and a great way to use up some of the tomato glut.

A flat rib of beef, also known as a Jacob’s Ladder. The best beef meal I have had all year. My birthday is in early December. I have already decided that the meal that said farewell to meat eating for a couple of months will also welcome back the carnivore in me.

One of the simplest and most delicious meals. Put it in the oven. Go out for the afternoon. Take it out of the oven and serve.

It’s an excellent week to try something you’ve never had before or something you’ve been missing. Have a good week.

Simon

*How come Waitrose gets left out of my anti-supermarket stance? Two reasons:

1. I don’t actually spend very much. More a work to rule than an all out strike. By the time I’ve claimed my free newspaper and cup of coffee they are hardly getting rich on the Johnson pound.

2. Nice people serve good food at appropriate prices in a decent environment. They haven’t forgotten the importance of manners and respect.

** The Underground Man by Mick Jackson appears in several of these photographs. I read it as part of my research for the post I published on Wednesday. Not a bad book.

Day 279: Eating Out Eating In

Tags

Aldi, Amoretti biscuits, Bolognaise, carrot cake, Cumberland Sausage, Dorothy L Sayers, hot-pot, Lancashire hot pot, Safeway, Sheffield, Sloppy Joes, strawberries and cream, Waitrose, winter gardens

Mostly Concerning Food

Occasionally Saturday morning takes us to Waitrose. It’s always been the supermarket that I’ve allowed in after Aldi. It serves good food at acceptable prices and seems to have a more enlightened approach to employment. The problem is the customers. Educated types, bearded in the old fashioned way; which largely means without sense of fashion (and bloody proud of it) with a young son or daughter who they are training to shop. You don’t get married couples. You do get a lot of the wrong shades of orange and pink and green. Aggressive, unpleasant women pushing their trolleys at you in an  assertion of superiority; students with up-market, designer, low slung  trousers, same sex couples and lots of very, very old people, who you take pity on, until they shove their trolley into your ankle. On the surface they look so benign. I used to fall for it all the time. “Oh they’re just a bunch of people who’d rather have nice food and are keen to get up early for it. Where’s the harm?” After three aisles I’m muttering darkly under my breath.

These are people I have something of a problem with.

T has a solution. She pushes the trolley round and I go into the café and enjoy the free cup of coffee that my temporary membership card brings me: and today I have a Cumberland sausage cob to go with it.

The café (you can’t call it a cafeteria … this is Waitrose Sheffield … it’s a tiny home counties colony … more of a bridgehead… in the north. From here special forces of highly trained, highly cultivated people spread out unseen and introduce the steel city residents to air dried ham and those marvellous Puy lentils) has its share of aesthetes in situ. This used to be a Safeway and a place to sit next to a woman with no teeth in a navy pac-a-mac scraping the remains of her four hour old lasagne from a not quite clean plate. Things have changed. Every aesthete has collected the newspapers that are provided. Not just one section, but the entire Saturday parade of supplements. They guard these jealously; shooting glances at anyone who so much as looks as though they might want to borrow the sports pull-out. I help myself to a weekly review  without asking and settle to my coffee and sausage sandwich. I am very happy with this arrangement.

We move into the city centre. T has a hair appointment. I sit in the Winter Gardens and cannot resist the offer from the little café there. Any cake and coffee for £2. I don’t often have two coffees in a day let alone in an hour. The coffee is, if anything, slightly better than the excellent coffee I had in the supermarket. The carrot cake is even better than that. Forty minutes pass most pleasantly. Genuinely nice people come into the Winter Gardens. Often families with young children who share unfeigned excitement at seeing colourful moulded snakes in among the palms and ferns. They practice kindness and caring and sharing. Add to that the wonderful aroma of growing plants and the well chosen architecture of the place and you have truly found an oasis of goodness in a (mostly) good city.

It’s the first week in June and the weather has been a mixed bag. It rained for four of the days without stopping once but the other days had more of a feel of summer. We ate in the garden. We ate well. Strawberries featured at least three times. These are strawberries picked with the sun on them not from some poly-tunnel where they have been forced. They taste as good as they look and they look very fine. These with a little Italian gelato (I forget the brand but it was very good) and Amoretti biscuits.

A Marks and Spencer passion fruit Swiss roll provides a suitable interlude to  wondering whether Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey will get it together; while all the time knowing the answer. If there is anything that makes a pot of tea and cake taste better it is a fine June day in the garden and a Dorothy L Sayers novel.

We stay in the garden all day. It’s the first of June and T has completed her meat fast for May. She’s had a fancy for Slopppy Joes but we don’t have any buns. We do have some good sized potatoes and baking them is a garden friendly activity. You just put them in the oven and go and read in the sunshine for a hour. The meat sauce is more or less a Bolognaise sauce if you are not a purist. (The purist will insist on beef flank, unsmoked pancetta and absolutely no garlic. I never have been a purist in anything and I see no sign of conversion).

The Swiss roll was fine by itself but it comes to life the next day with fresh pineapple, coffee ice-cream and Amoretti biscuits. More detective fiction is the order of the day.

 

It’s back to school on Monday for T and I’m left unchecked in the kitchen. There is bacon in the fridge. I restrict myself to two thin rashers and load the plate with courgette and chestnut mushrooms. I listen to Start the Week on Radio 4 and read the food pull out section from the free Guardian (Waitrose) where Henry Dimbleby tells me all about the rules for making Bolognaise. I also start reading up for the forthcoming football world cup.

Having a dog who likes to dig up the garden has restricted what we grow. I have managed to position a few gooseberry bushes where Jolly can’t get at them. I look forward to at least one good pudding from them in the next few days.

More strawberries. With bought meringue nests and double cream. Perfect.

It’s actually been a simple and rather frugal week food-wise. A whole week’s collection of photographs down-loading from the camera tends to paint a picture of plenty. The reality is that most meals this week have been simple. Typical is a toasted muffin with butter, a little Marmite and Red Leicester cheese.

On Wednesday I have the car and take myself off to Sheffield again. Breakfast is a croissant and coffee at a well known coffee shop that doesn’t pay much tax.

Lunch finds me the only solo diner in Cosmo. It’s a Pan Asian eat all you want buffet that attracts couples who take it in turns to over-load their plates and business men who sit in groups of three and eat with their mouths open. I have a bowl of gloopy soup with an assortment of Indian style snacks … well, it is pan Asian.

And a very acceptable lamb rogan josh with pillau rice and a little chutney.

The photograph of the Black Forest Gateau (yes you can still get this in Sheffield) hasn’t come out well as I’ve had to change sides of the table as I had just about enough of watching male open mouthed mastication.

By the end of the week I’ve got to make sense of this year’s nominees for the Carnegie Medal for the best children’s book. I’ve really enjoyed four of them. If one of the other four win then there has been an injustice. My favourite is also the one I regard as the best book. Not always the case. This year I think the prize should go to Rebecca Stead for Liar and Spy. It compares favourably with the other contenders and holds its own with many of the previous year’s winners. Half of these books are better than last year’s winner.

Friday finds me making ice-cream. Strawberry of course. It’s early in the morning and the kitchen smells of good things. The iPlayer is giving me the Carol Kaye story and I’m singing along to the remarkable set of hit records that find her either playing guitar or bass. I’ve been a fan for quite a number of years and am happy that her name is becoming better known. You may never have heard of her but she’s probably playing on your favourite song whether it be You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling, Homeward Bound, Nutbush City Limits, Good Vibrations, The Way We Were or the Theme from M*A*S*H. Or a couple of thousand more. It’s a perfect way to start a day.

Once the ice cream is in the freezer I make a hot-pot using a packet of lamb chops from Aldi, a couple of pounds of Maris Piper potaoes and a couple of white onions. A half pint of beef stock and some salt and pepper are the only other ingredients.

 

This is the greatest comfort food of them all. The potatoes cook like a well-flavoured Dauphinois, the onions are soft and sweet and the meat melts off the chops. Served with a generous dollop of beetroot chutney from the stock cupboard. Impossible not to want seconds.

Day 208: One More Sleep ’til Home

Tags

Boots, Cycle tour of England, Edgmond, Georgian town houses, Greggs, lowest temperature in england, Newport Shropshire, Waitrose

A Journey Around the British Isles … Part 98

One final fact about Edgmond before I cycle into Newport. It is the site of the lowest temperature ever recorded in England. On the tenth of January 1982 the thermometer dropped to minus 26.1. OK so readers in Canada and the USA are blowing out their cheeks to say that such temperatures constitute the arrival of spring. In England, it’s pretty cold. In that same winter, possibly the same night, I’d arranged to meet a friend in a York pub. It was a fifteen minute walk from the youth hostel where I worked. I was pretty well wrapped up but had to go back to my room for two more layers and a scarf. It was minus 19 and the River Ouse froze over. It was rightly cold.

Just why the temperature should drop so low in Shropshire is a mystery to me. I’d expect the lowest temperature to be in Northumberland or on top of Scafell Pike. I don’t suppose they’ve got a weather station on the top of every mountain.

I leave behind Harper Adams University and soon am riding into Newport. I’ve managed 95 miles and though I’d like to get to the hundred, the light is fading and so is my energy. I’ve been surprised by how suddenly I’m in the town centre and youthful gatherings in someone else’s town always look a little forbidding. These groups are probably sharing answers for their maths homework but I’m keen to put up somewhere, get my bicycle locked away and myself into a hot bath.

As happens on these occasions I see all the better places I could have stayed after I’ve booked into the one I shouldn’t have. It’s essentially a pub with some outbuildings converted into en-suite rooms. I’m not sure how many of the rooms are being used by overnight guests but the room directly above mine gets used vigorously for an hour and then goes very quiet. Either the county trampolining championships or someone using a short term booking to develop a short term relationship.

I was signed in over a bar where drinkers hung on every word. It was akin to being told off. Fancy anyone wanting to book into a place that advertised rooms!

“You can only stay for one night.”

“That’s ok. I only want to stay for one night.”

“Breakfast is at eight.”

“Suits me fine.”

I should have taken a walk around the town before committing myself. But, all I really wanted was somewhere to wash, sleep and eat. Now that the bedroom gymnastics had finished upstairs, I had no complaints. I took a quiet walk around the streets and satisfied my hunger with what was on offer. The choice was fish and chips or a kebab. I went for the former and enjoyed them more through hunger than delectation.

I was tired and not really open to the delights of Newport and the town wasn’t putting on a show. A group of teenaged boys were practicing cruder language skills and the smokers clustered around pub doorways counterbalanced the floral tubs and hanging baskets.  I returned to my room, read for half and hour and slept a restful slumber for the rest of the night.

My map ran out at Newport but a previous trip told me that heading for Cheadle would set me up for getting home. I estimated about eighty miles. A long haul, particularly with Staffordshire and the Peak District ahead. I made shorthand notes as this was likely to be my last day and went off to have a proper look at Newport in the brightness of a summer’s morning.

It was an altogether different town. Yesterday evening I saw the gaudy and the unspectacular. This morning I look past the filling station and see a row of Georgian town houses; look past the plate glass shop fronts and see a glorious red sandstone church and a wide high street  and a butter cross. It just goes to show what weariness can do. If I’d left Newport at the crack of dawn I would have remembered a tired and tawdry town. The freshness that daylight had brought showed just how wrong I would have been.

The first rule of looking at a town is to look up. Modern shop fronts are almost universally ugly. Newport may be pleased that it is big enough and strong enough as an independent shopping centre to attract in Boots and Subway, Waitrose and Greggs but it might consider obliging these retailers to fit in with Newport rather than allowing them to alter the flavour of the town. I presume there is research to show that shoppers spend more in shops with gaudy plastic signs and plate glass fronts than in shops that fit in with the architectural integrity of the rest of the building. Newport is by no means a major offender on the ground floor but the commercial frontages have the same affect as allowing Vanessa Feltz to apply make-up to Audrey Tatou. A place of great natural beauty is made to look ordinary.

Looking up you see three storey houses of perfect proportion. The ones that have retained their Georgian glazing bars look a heck of a lot better and the general absence of uPVC windows does much for the town. Away from the shops there are some doorways from the Regency first division.

I’m out before the traffic or the crowds. The Adams Grammar School building fronts one of the better performing schools in the county. If ever there was evidence needed to support the educational maxim of “the right environment and the right attitude” it is on show here.

Fire destroyed much of medieval Newport; the Guildhall remains. Careful eighteenth century re-building has left a fine town. Apart from some grumpy looking sorts clutching rolled up cigarettes in evening doorways, the people seem rather proud of their town. And so they should be. It holds it’s own with any other town in the county. With some wisdom in council planning meetings it could become another Stamford, but maybe the good folk of Newport could do without the television and film companies.

Breakfast is in the bar of the pub. I share the room with some engineers from Birmingham. The television is on and dominates proceedings and what conversation there is is in response to what emanates from there. Police have shot dead a young man called Mark Duggan and it has led to rioting and looting in boroughs all across London. Supposed copycat rioting has broken out in Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester. A great deal of moralising is being transmitted  and my fellow breakfasters see a need to bring back both corporal and capital punishment. “Country’s going to the dogs,” says one to general agreement. I keep my thoughts to myself and eat up. The television journalists are presenting the rioting as a state of the nation in crisis. The pictures are dramatic and emotive and are a long way from the country I have been exploring for three weeks. As I ride out of Newport, I can report that the streets are quiet.