pumpkinstrokemarrow

We still have water, so, assuming it really was cold last night, the new water main house has done its job. No need to fork out for emergency plumbers from somewhere in eastern Europe. Or perhaps north Africa.

The lentil soup turned out pretty well with only a very modest number of dead flies floating to the surface (see 19th December). No where near enough to put one off the soup, to the point that there is now only a bit more than a pint left of the original gallon. But for the accompanying bread, a bit let down by what passes for a split tin white loaf from the in-store bakery at our local Waitrose. Might just as well have been one of the much derided loaves of Mother's Pride which used to be delivered by the milkman: crumbly, stale tasting after just a day and nothing much like the product from Cheam, which remains icily inaccessible. At least for me.

The crumbly texture might also affect the stuffing for the festive chicken: the bread for the stuffing having gone down to bread crumbs rather than the more fluffy product you get from real bread. And having forgotten to get the nuts, reduced to using some left over mixed nuts, also from Waitrose. Some not very good hazel nuts - maybe three duds out of twenty nuts - supplemented by some almonds. One dud out of twenty there. It will be interesting to see what difference using almonds makes - something I have never done before. Nor have I ever done mixed nuts before, not believing in the melange of a melange of flavours which results. Palette can't cope.

Maybe next year we will get the vermin people in to get rid of the grey squirrels from our garden so that we can have proper hazel nuts from our own tree, rather than the elderly, kiln dried continental nuts one buys. Different animal altogether. But I suspect a fair amount of slaughter would be needed to get this result; even to the point where our squirrel hating neighbours cry foul, never mind the squirrel loving ones.

I mentioned the other day that I had actually bought a book that Amazon proposed to me - the winner of this years Goncourt, 'La Carte et le territoire', by one Michel Houellebecq - of whom I had not previously heard. And I am not much the wiser now as it does not seem to be the custom of Flammarion to include a potted biog. of the author, in the manner of an English book. But I think he might be a bit odd: the book seems to be about rather odd people - anti-heroes even - including the author himself. Can't remember when I last read a book which included the author as one of the characters, in the third person, in this explicit way.

It is also clearly designed for the Christmas market as not very joyous Christmas Days figure quite prominently. So part 2 (page 127) opened this real Christmas morning on a fictional Christmas morning. The French is not too hard and I am learning some interesting new words. For example, the word 'people' seems to be used somewhere in the personality, celebrity, fashion leader area. A people is the sort of person who might exhibit him or herself in a fashionable and expensive restaurant. The word functioning equally as either singular or plural. Rather harder to decipher was 'bourrelets'. First I find that bourre is the sort of fluff that is scraped off of furry animals like sheep and goats onto prickly bushes like gorse. Be extension the low grade fibre used to stuff mattresses and cushions. By extension, a particular sort of cushion in the form of a tyre or do-nut. By extension, the tyre like folds growing around the neck of a middle aged chef in a wannabee fashionable and expensive restaurant. I least that is where I have got to. Not completely convinced that I have got it right. But rather a splendid word if I have; better than we have in English.