More cooking..

I have been doing some more cooking, and more is planned also. The desserts I am making for us, are also going to neighbours and the people I go and visit in my nearby area. Very often these people are on their own and don’t want to go to the effort of making a dessert for one person. So it’s nice to bring along a surprise for them. This time a treacle tart, which as a surprise for me, the filling uses breadcrumbs! Unfortunately the pastry case was a bit burnt after the filled tart was cooked, but it wasted quite nice. The filling has lemon juice in it, that takes the edge of the sugariness of the other ingredients. 

I introduced my lodger to the Come Dine With Me series, which he enjoyed. It was based in Liverpool and one of the contestants was very eccentric, wearing a wide range of attires, much to my lodgers amusement. There are loads of episodes and I am sure we will be watching more over the next few weeks. He has looked at the car, we have seen he will have to be careful if he takes it into London as it will fail the ULEZ restrictions, and cause us to pay the daily fee. Back to cooking, I have bought the ingredients to make a Mary Berry Christmas Cake. I also made a lasagne, which turned out very well, no lumps in my white sauce! This was the meat part of the meal. We actually ate it while watching CDWM.

Finally I have nearly finished the jigsaw my neighbours lent me, it has to share my attentions with other things I am now doing. I visited a neighbour every day last week, which was nice, one of them lent me a book, that she wrote, which is about her time when she was evacuated during WW2 from London. Unlike my father, she ended up doing a mini tour of Britain, and not staying in just one place. But like my father, when they returned to London, when the worst of the blitz was over, the Doodlebug appeared, and everyone got to know when its engine stopped, that’s when it would plunge down and unleash its deadly cargo. She also told me of a relative, who was on convoy duty, and three of the ships he was on were torpedoed! What dreadful luck, on one occasion he floated on a raft for days, before being rescued.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Deja Vu

Image
It is the last day of looking after the Cocker Spaniel who lives in the house where  one called Neville used to live. As time goes on the two Spaniels are converging, there are some subtle differences, the  youngster is becoming less black on his back. The youngster is very vocal, he talks non stop. Ignoring him increases the volume of the chatter until you involve him in some way. He loves doing things, non stop, action all day is the name of the game. He loves water, but he won’t swim. It’s been hot, so the walks I have done I have tried to ensure he had the opportunity to cool down. A walk from Aston to Henley, along the river Thames. Pub visit at the Angel on the Bridge. He loved that of course. Another day, another walk. This time around the pub at Waltham St Lawrence, another favourite pub, but we did the walk too early for opening time. Another dip in the lake by Shottesbrook. He found a dead mouse early in the walk, decided to carry it about, but thankfully dropped it!...
Read more

A few days off in the sun

Image
Like many tourists of yesteryear I have just got back from a holiday in North Wales, based in Colwyn Bay where my brother in law now lives. I have stayed there before but many years ago. He was down in our neck of the woods, so I hitched a lift in his MX-5 car to save me using the train or driving. The weather was still nice up there, just a little cooler, with a sea breeze thrown in for good measure. In the evening after we got up there, as  Monday is a quiet night, we had a few drinks in a local bar, where they have a reciprocal arrangement with a local pizza place, you order at the bar, they get delivered to you and you eat them with your beer. Result. All are priced the same. I had Peking Duck ( amazing ), he had Smoked Haddock ( also amazing ). The bar does all sorts of things like film nights, to tempt to punters in. We also had another drink in the local Wetherspoons, which I think was an old cinema, still featuring lots of its old fittings. On the next day we walked to near...
Read more

Remembering two tragedies

Image
After breakfast in my room, I had a leisurely start and left Penzance by foot to Mousehole, not pronounced as it is spelt. I walked through the town, heading to nearby Newlyn, which is a proper fishing village. Along the route was a lovely wide promenade and a Lido, cleverly designed to withstand the force of the sea and heated from a geo thermal spring. It’s called Jubilee Pool because it was built to celebrate George V’s Jubilee in 1935. There was a nice old art deco pub opposite, sadly with the parked cars it was not easy to see its full design. Along the prom, lots of people were walking, and many of them had black Labradors, which was nice as it got me thinking about the one I know who now lives in Oxfordshire, they contacted me today, I might see them next weekend. I carried on into Newlyn, a smaller conurbation with several buildings with a fish themed rectangular mosaic on their front walls, a nod to its fishing heritage which is ongoing. There was a statue to honour all the fi...
Read more