pumpkinstrokemarrow

Boiled beef with carrots day, although not quite in the usual format. Acquire 5lb lump of chuck steak from Cheam. Take very large saucepan and put about three pints of water in it. Add 7 whole carrots, 6 quartered onions, 5 stalks of celery and 4 ground pepercorns. Add beef, which is just covered by the water. Bring to boil and simmer for a long time. In this case it was cooked in about 4 hours which was rather before we wanted to eat it. So remove from water and place in cold oven. Concerned that it might disintegrate if I left it in the water and thinking that even very soggy meat firms up as it cools. Some time later knock up some mashed potatoes and brussells sprouts. Start reheating the meat in a very low oven. Convert some of the liquor from the beef into carrot sauce. That is to say roux some corn flour in beef dripping (from a previous occasion). Put 2 pints of liquor and bits through the food blender. Stir into the roux. Simmer for 10 minutes. Serve up. Not bad at all. Some of us preferred the carrot sauce with our brussells sprouts, others preferred it on our meat. But I think next time I will work a bit harder at getting the boiling done at the right time: the texture would have been better for the joint having been stood for 15 minutes after boiling, rather than being reheated.

While not worrying about boiling beef, have been doing a bit of DIY. Start of by a visit to Wickes to buy some wood glue, a shop which I do not much care for with its cheap and rather scruffy image. Plus all it sells is own brands which reminds one rather of basics from Mr S. Anyway, go there for the glue and was surprised to find that 500ml of the stuff cost more than £5.

Then take the desktop extension which was the scene of sprog 2's A levels. Deconstruct it, recovering a peice of lowish grade 1cm ply around 3 feet by 4 feet. This being big enough to hold the number 2 desktop computer with comfort. At which point maybe I ought to explain what the requirement is. The screen for the number 2 desktop computer sits on the sea chest from Gosport which stands 23 inches high, that is to say 5 inches lower than your average table. The keyboard and mouse sit on a repurposed wooden chess board, maybe 16 inches square, perched on the edge of the sea chest and further supported by a single hinged leg. This arrangement, which has served after a fashion for some time now, is both too small and too low for comfort. I sure that if I was in the world of work I would make a lot of fuss to the appropriate authorities. Risk of repetitive back injury. But as it is, now had enough. Need something bigger and higher.

So, edge the recovered ply with some softwood recovered from some peice of IKEA furniture recovered from North London. This will stiffen it up. Build a simple contraption to put on the sea chest and to support one end of the new table top 5 inches above the level of the top of the sea chest. Add a couple of legs on hinges to the other end of the table top. All this using old pine from the sea chest which I smashed up (see earlier posting), as opposed to the one which is still up and running. The old pine being lovely stuff to work with, far superior to the soft white pine one gets these days. The hinges being the black shed door hinges I bought some time ago for the fox gate at the side of the house, but which did not do (see earlier posting). At 2 or 3 pounds from the shiny new Travis Perkins on the Longmead estate, good to find a home for them.

In the course of this, am reminded how much better a fix one gets with modern screws. Cross head, parallel sides and very sharp point. Putting short ones into soft wood one doesn't have to do more than mark the spot with a bradawl. (Aside: why bradawl? A brad is, I think the sort of nail one puts floor boards down with. How does that combine with awl to make a small tool for making small holes). So the question is, why were the wood screws of my youth tapered? To the extent that if one was being picky, one made the hole for them using drills of three differant sizes. They must have been more expensive to make and they did not, I think give as good a fix.

And now, in the middle of modern varnish. Milky stuff, also from Wickes, which one cleans off one's brush with soap and water rather than with white spirit. And doesn't smell as bad as the creamy stuff which was the wood glue. But it seems to do the job OK.