pumpkinstrokemarrow

I wonder how long it will be before I am moved to make another purchase? All very convenient when you actually want a specific something, but not as much fun as Hook Road Arena on a warm summer's morning. I suppose one could have a differant sort of fun devising and applying all kinds of cunning bidding strategies, but not the same as herds of people of all shapes and sizes milling around junk of the same sort.

Moving on, for some time now, I have had two clear plastic covered seed trays as window boxes. The idea was stick a bit of wet compost in the base of the tray, cover, leave and see what happens. Lesson 1 was that whatever happens, happens fairly slowly. The stuff growing looks healthy enough, but it grows very slowly. The stuff included grass, several kinds of moss and various small weeds. Plus some odd small green plants, with something like the shape of a daffodill flower, but entirely green and growing up to about 1cm across, sessile.

However, I made the mistake of thinking that as long as there was condensation underneath the lid, there was water. Lesson 2, this is not the case. The compost can be pretty dry even when condensation is present. As a result most of the moss has died off, although the grass seems to be doing OK. So much watering over the last couple of days. Maybe the moss will take off again. In the meantime, the trick is to water the things through the access holes without taking the lid off and without making a prodigious mess. Once the lids were off it would be quite a business to get all the plants tucked back inside again in order to put the lids back on. A proceeding to be avoided.

But the most important event of the weekend was the test driving of a new-to-us carving knife. It seems that many years ago, FIL collected lots of coupons from Symington's table creams - still obtainable from the better food shops, although I don't think Symington has been around for some years. As a result, he was given a carving knife made by one John Turton of Sheffield, established 1800. Rather a handsome thing with a white handle, presumably either bone or some elderly imitation. Most important, old enough to have a blade made out of steel, rather than stainless steel. So although the thing has been resting, very blunt, at Exminster for many years, it is now in Epsom and with a bit of elbow work with the oil stone the thing now has quite a decent edge. Better than I can usually manage with stainless. So tried it out on the Saturday fore rib and both it and the rib did very well. This last weighed in at around 10 pounds and we more or less did the lot in one sitting, the first time such a thing has happened. Just a little corner left over, enough for a snack when the fresh bread was in the following day. Now was this the beef itself, the cutting of the beef, the cooking or the new knife? Or a combination? The cutting was novel to us in that as well as sawing through the chine, the butcher also cut most of the way through between the meat and the large sawn bone - not the one he had just sawn through though, rather the one sawn through by the wholesaler, this being, I think, the one that is vertical on the live animal. Before tying it all back together again. It certainly made carving easy, but there is, I think, a significantly increased risk of the thing coming apart in the cooking. Which it did not on this occasion, but the risk is there. And the whole point of fore rib is for it to look entire, large and splendid. I shall ponder before buying another.