Saturday, October 25, 2008
End of pie
We finally saw off the last of last week's Sussex pie today. That is to say what was left of the stock and gravy went into today's soup. We thought that a week old was about enough. Soup was made by boiling up the sheet of ribs taken out of the rolled pork belly that is to be our Sunday roast. Take the meat of the bones, chop and return. (The meat from between the bones is a bit pipey and connective tissue full but ther is plenty of it and it eats OK). Add stock, gravy and liquidised left over vegetables from yesterday. This brings the emerging soup up to the right consistancy; wet but not watery and without involving flour, currently off the communal menu. Add some coarsely chopped potatoes and some finely chopped celery. When the potatoes are cooked and finely sliced savoy cabbage. Just before serving add some thickly sliced mushrooms. The three of us - mainly me I guess - did maybe a gallon of the stuff in two sittings. Balance of a couple of pints chucked in the interests of dietary hygiene.
Thus fuelled up been pondering about eco-matters. Triggered by my posting two used cartridges from my printer back to some HP base in France. How does one justify sending two small and dirty plastic containers back to France? This was a bit too tricky to deal with, so I turn to wind power, which does indeed have plenty of web coverage, some of it quite fancy, presumably reflecting the large amounts of money at stake. I learn, for example, that the unit cost of wind power has fallen a lot in the last few years and is now a bit cheaper than coal or gas, with nuclear being a bit dearer (although I guess this last depends a lot on tricky assumptions about waste disposal). The big catch seems to be how to build enough of them. The answer at http://www.yes2wind.com/ seemed to be that we could maybe do 40% of UK energy this way - a serious contribution. The site, which I thought rather good, was built by Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund and Friends of the Earth - gangs whom I usually find rather tiresome. Perhaps they are not all bad. I'm a convert!
To my own personal mountain of triva I have been able to add some Polish snippets. First, despite having Scandinavians to the North with saunas and Russians to the East with bath houses, the Poles do not go in for either. It seem they have bathrooms. I wonder about the Russians. One can certainly read about bath houses in, for example, Dostoevsky, but I do not recall reading about them in the Russia of today. Maybe they have moved into bathrooms now. Second, at their Christmas Eve meal, their version of Christmas dinner, Poles will partake of twelve dishes, one for each of the apostles. There is some measure of agreement as to which twelve dishes. And third, despite having a French name and having lived in France, Chopin was a Pole. Odd, that while it had never occurred to me that Chopin was French, it had never occurred to me either that he did not have a Polish name.
This afternoon to a book sale at Walton. Not particularly high grade stock, despite it being a fairly posh area. Not as high grade as, for example, the annual book sale run by the Epsom methodists. But it was cheap. I was able to pick up - if that is the right word for a three volume tome coming as a 10 inch cube - a branch new copy of Debrett's Peerage for £2. Rather annoyed not to be able to find any relatives in it. Must write to publisher. But first project is to try and work out the twists and turns of the Norfolk dukedom, interest in same being triggered by Kate Blanchette (whom I thought a bit feeble as a queen) and a biography of Elizabeth by a Mrs Somerset. This last, at 800 pages, is twice as long as the long established biography by Neale. And with Somerset being one centimetre shorter and one centimetre narrower than Neale, albeit this comparing a paperback with a hardback, the paperback has a rather skimped and mean feel to it. If one had great time and energy, it would be interesting to do a serious comparison of the two works. But so far I have found that Somerset brings to life life in the royal ladies' marriage market, an inside view, in a way that I suspect Neale - not read for some years now - does not. And I have been reminded how hard it was to be a queen. Being in charge was a business better suited to men in those days.
Thus fuelled up been pondering about eco-matters. Triggered by my posting two used cartridges from my printer back to some HP base in France. How does one justify sending two small and dirty plastic containers back to France? This was a bit too tricky to deal with, so I turn to wind power, which does indeed have plenty of web coverage, some of it quite fancy, presumably reflecting the large amounts of money at stake. I learn, for example, that the unit cost of wind power has fallen a lot in the last few years and is now a bit cheaper than coal or gas, with nuclear being a bit dearer (although I guess this last depends a lot on tricky assumptions about waste disposal). The big catch seems to be how to build enough of them. The answer at http://www.yes2wind.com/ seemed to be that we could maybe do 40% of UK energy this way - a serious contribution. The site, which I thought rather good, was built by Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund and Friends of the Earth - gangs whom I usually find rather tiresome. Perhaps they are not all bad. I'm a convert!
To my own personal mountain of triva I have been able to add some Polish snippets. First, despite having Scandinavians to the North with saunas and Russians to the East with bath houses, the Poles do not go in for either. It seem they have bathrooms. I wonder about the Russians. One can certainly read about bath houses in, for example, Dostoevsky, but I do not recall reading about them in the Russia of today. Maybe they have moved into bathrooms now. Second, at their Christmas Eve meal, their version of Christmas dinner, Poles will partake of twelve dishes, one for each of the apostles. There is some measure of agreement as to which twelve dishes. And third, despite having a French name and having lived in France, Chopin was a Pole. Odd, that while it had never occurred to me that Chopin was French, it had never occurred to me either that he did not have a Polish name.
This afternoon to a book sale at Walton. Not particularly high grade stock, despite it being a fairly posh area. Not as high grade as, for example, the annual book sale run by the Epsom methodists. But it was cheap. I was able to pick up - if that is the right word for a three volume tome coming as a 10 inch cube - a branch new copy of Debrett's Peerage for £2. Rather annoyed not to be able to find any relatives in it. Must write to publisher. But first project is to try and work out the twists and turns of the Norfolk dukedom, interest in same being triggered by Kate Blanchette (whom I thought a bit feeble as a queen) and a biography of Elizabeth by a Mrs Somerset. This last, at 800 pages, is twice as long as the long established biography by Neale. And with Somerset being one centimetre shorter and one centimetre narrower than Neale, albeit this comparing a paperback with a hardback, the paperback has a rather skimped and mean feel to it. If one had great time and energy, it would be interesting to do a serious comparison of the two works. But so far I have found that Somerset brings to life life in the royal ladies' marriage market, an inside view, in a way that I suspect Neale - not read for some years now - does not. And I have been reminded how hard it was to be a queen. Being in charge was a business better suited to men in those days.
# posted by Jim @ 11:11 AM 
