Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Barley news
The recently awakened interest in pearl barley has scored another outing. Add three ounces to some water. Bring to boil. Turn off heat. Stir from time to time, making sure that the water continues to cover the barley. Some time later, add to the left over sheep mince, in equal proportions, barley to mince. Warm up. Once it is heated through place chopped left over spinach (from somebody else's allotment) on top of heated mixture, to one side and certainly not stirred in. Leave until the spinach is heated through then serve. Did very well for a lunch time snack. Maybe, given the ingredients, the sort of thing that hill country shepherds ought to have for tea, during whistling winter gales, while huddled in their wheeled huts.
We are also running a fad in pink salmon, a large tin of which can be procured from Mr S for 80p. Open tin, drain and then spend maybe five minutes removing the various bits of skin, bones and fat. Mash up the remainder to a pink, fishy pile. No need for dressing although I dare say a bit of oil and vinegar would work OK. Serve in a salad or perhaps a sandwich. Good gear - certainly hugely better value than higher grades of tinned salmon. Maybe in this age of nicely prepared packaged food, not so many people can be bothered with removing the nasty bits from cheap salmon.
And then how many eat fish paste (another fad, past its peak). Or spam. We don't yet have a fad for the stuff, but I don't suppose it is very much differant from the cheaper end of French and German sausage - the latter, I believe, being the origin of Spam's recipe. Brand image a bit of a problem with the word having been largely highjacked by the email fraternity. Bit of a job to sue them for breach of copyright or damages.
On the Cheam front, have found that my shiny new (and for me, hugely expensive) bicycle tyres are apt to skid on road markings. Particularly new or refurbished white ones - of which we seem to have quite a lot at the moment (see above). Quite an unnerving feeling when the back tyre slides an inch or so underneath one. Maybe the answer is not to pedal when crossing areas with lots of markings - and hope that this does not leave one without power in the middle of a heavily marked junction.
And lastly, I find that the central and local government fad of some years standing now for new second world war memorials has not worked its way out yet. In that the other day I found a new-to-me memorial to the SOE on the embankment, somewhere near the entrance to Lambeth Palace. Now while the SOE were a heroic outfit with the sort of life expectancy which results in medals for survivors, I am not sure what is gained by placing a rather nondescript memorial on a rather nondescript embankment. Few members of SOE can be in a fit condition to come and see the memorial - and who else has much of an interest? Isn't it time to let the war go now?
On an adjacent pitch, properly a rose bed, someone had seen fit to plant sunflowers around the edge. They had done reasonably well, maybe getting to 8 feet high, but a bit on the skinny side. It would have been better had they been proper municipal sunflowers (which I suspect they were not) and allowed to take over the entire rose bed. A block of sunflowers would have look a bit more impressive. And the men from the municipality could have been tasked with food and water to ensure that impressivity.
We are also running a fad in pink salmon, a large tin of which can be procured from Mr S for 80p. Open tin, drain and then spend maybe five minutes removing the various bits of skin, bones and fat. Mash up the remainder to a pink, fishy pile. No need for dressing although I dare say a bit of oil and vinegar would work OK. Serve in a salad or perhaps a sandwich. Good gear - certainly hugely better value than higher grades of tinned salmon. Maybe in this age of nicely prepared packaged food, not so many people can be bothered with removing the nasty bits from cheap salmon.
And then how many eat fish paste (another fad, past its peak). Or spam. We don't yet have a fad for the stuff, but I don't suppose it is very much differant from the cheaper end of French and German sausage - the latter, I believe, being the origin of Spam's recipe. Brand image a bit of a problem with the word having been largely highjacked by the email fraternity. Bit of a job to sue them for breach of copyright or damages.
On the Cheam front, have found that my shiny new (and for me, hugely expensive) bicycle tyres are apt to skid on road markings. Particularly new or refurbished white ones - of which we seem to have quite a lot at the moment (see above). Quite an unnerving feeling when the back tyre slides an inch or so underneath one. Maybe the answer is not to pedal when crossing areas with lots of markings - and hope that this does not leave one without power in the middle of a heavily marked junction.
And lastly, I find that the central and local government fad of some years standing now for new second world war memorials has not worked its way out yet. In that the other day I found a new-to-me memorial to the SOE on the embankment, somewhere near the entrance to Lambeth Palace. Now while the SOE were a heroic outfit with the sort of life expectancy which results in medals for survivors, I am not sure what is gained by placing a rather nondescript memorial on a rather nondescript embankment. Few members of SOE can be in a fit condition to come and see the memorial - and who else has much of an interest? Isn't it time to let the war go now?
On an adjacent pitch, properly a rose bed, someone had seen fit to plant sunflowers around the edge. They had done reasonably well, maybe getting to 8 feet high, but a bit on the skinny side. It would have been better had they been proper municipal sunflowers (which I suspect they were not) and allowed to take over the entire rose bed. A block of sunflowers would have look a bit more impressive. And the men from the municipality could have been tasked with food and water to ensure that impressivity.
# posted by Jim @ 5:36 AM 
