Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Three brown mice
Now up to three mice in four days. Never caught so many mice in one campaign before. Good thing that they are dim and keep on going down the same track.
Record beefery the other day. Started off with twelve pounds of brisket on the bone, rather more triangular and less rectangular than last time, and cooked it for a record 14.53 hours, at 120C. Wrapped in foil and collected maybe a pint and a half of gravy from same at the end of the cooking period. Drained off some of the fat, rouxed in (after a fashion) a bit of cornflour and instant gravy available to go with the mashed potatoes, mashed swede and cabbage. Gravy set a bit of a record too. Very hard core extract of beef - part of the flavour being a rather high fat content. Excellent accompaniment to mashed potatoes in small doses. Five of us managed to do three quarters of the beef in one sitting. Good job that BH had judged that a lightweight pudding was the order of the day.
Interesting little wine to go with it from OddBins where the salesman had explained that it was good gear to have with something with a strong flavour but maybe not too hot to have by itself. I was sold by the poncey label (the only English being the made in France bit) and it having numbered bottles. Anyway, two bottles at something under £10 a pop did very well. Red in colour and called Amarande or something like that. No idea where it comes in the Pinot vs. Chardonney stakes. Not a classification which I have ever managed to get to grips with.
And topped off with the first game of Monopoly for about twelve months (at a guess). After a desperate struggle with the younger sprog, FIL was the victor, sitting smugly on Mayfair. I think he was lucky to win against the purples, reds and yellows. And I have just learned from TB that there is a Chelsea Football Club version. The railway stations are names for parts of the stand, jail is jail and I think the places are the players and more important staff. The price presumably reflecting their prices. I wonder how far the game designer was allowed to go at poking fun at the sometimes tacky habits of very rich young men.
Blair1 has popped up again. Seen fit to join the papists at last (although this is only hearsay. Not seen the printed word in the DT myself, let alone heard it one the nine o'clock news). Complete mystery how such an intelligent (if obnoxious) person can, in this day and age, go in for all this three in one stuff. Not to mention dubious policies on celibate priests, abortion, contraception and sundry other matters. Perhaps he is a junkie for the Latin mass, the Latin giving him a nostalgia kick from his fancy school days. But maybe the man has a point there. I invested an hour every weekday in Latin for five years and have not got that much to show for it. So maybe I should go in for a bit of nostalgia too. (But I should not run Latin down. I owe a good part of my knowledge of grammer to Latin classes and I have heard say that it helps with vocabulary. Quite apart from the original speakers being quite an interesting bunch, having experienced in one way or another many of our own political turmoils).
Record beefery the other day. Started off with twelve pounds of brisket on the bone, rather more triangular and less rectangular than last time, and cooked it for a record 14.53 hours, at 120C. Wrapped in foil and collected maybe a pint and a half of gravy from same at the end of the cooking period. Drained off some of the fat, rouxed in (after a fashion) a bit of cornflour and instant gravy available to go with the mashed potatoes, mashed swede and cabbage. Gravy set a bit of a record too. Very hard core extract of beef - part of the flavour being a rather high fat content. Excellent accompaniment to mashed potatoes in small doses. Five of us managed to do three quarters of the beef in one sitting. Good job that BH had judged that a lightweight pudding was the order of the day.
Interesting little wine to go with it from OddBins where the salesman had explained that it was good gear to have with something with a strong flavour but maybe not too hot to have by itself. I was sold by the poncey label (the only English being the made in France bit) and it having numbered bottles. Anyway, two bottles at something under £10 a pop did very well. Red in colour and called Amarande or something like that. No idea where it comes in the Pinot vs. Chardonney stakes. Not a classification which I have ever managed to get to grips with.
And topped off with the first game of Monopoly for about twelve months (at a guess). After a desperate struggle with the younger sprog, FIL was the victor, sitting smugly on Mayfair. I think he was lucky to win against the purples, reds and yellows. And I have just learned from TB that there is a Chelsea Football Club version. The railway stations are names for parts of the stand, jail is jail and I think the places are the players and more important staff. The price presumably reflecting their prices. I wonder how far the game designer was allowed to go at poking fun at the sometimes tacky habits of very rich young men.
Blair1 has popped up again. Seen fit to join the papists at last (although this is only hearsay. Not seen the printed word in the DT myself, let alone heard it one the nine o'clock news). Complete mystery how such an intelligent (if obnoxious) person can, in this day and age, go in for all this three in one stuff. Not to mention dubious policies on celibate priests, abortion, contraception and sundry other matters. Perhaps he is a junkie for the Latin mass, the Latin giving him a nostalgia kick from his fancy school days. But maybe the man has a point there. I invested an hour every weekday in Latin for five years and have not got that much to show for it. So maybe I should go in for a bit of nostalgia too. (But I should not run Latin down. I owe a good part of my knowledge of grammer to Latin classes and I have heard say that it helps with vocabulary. Quite apart from the original speakers being quite an interesting bunch, having experienced in one way or another many of our own political turmoils).
# posted by Jim @ 12:04 AM 
