We had some children round to play today. Ostensibly their parents were visiting our parents, but we know really that the two little boys had come to play with our Brio. It's been in the loft for years. With the youngest of us now aged fifteen, I think we're deemed to have outgrown it, but it's simply not true. Both our small visitors had lost interest and wandered off to find the Hairy Maclary books long before Ed and Thom had finished trying to make the track fit around the entire sitting room.
OK, and me too. There's something slightly addictive about Brio :)
Monday, April 30
Thursday, April 19
Insomnitractors?
Why am I awake at 5am? I guess the real reason is simply that I'm not very good at sleeping. After one or two nights of good sleep, my mind seems to rebel. 'Oh no,' it says, 'not falling for that old trick again. Sleep? There must be thousands of more interesting things to do!'
And so here I am, having spent the night reading Marina Lewycka's novel A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian and typing up notes to do with Northern Cross. I quite enjoyed the novel, in a light reading sort of way: it was diverting. The front cover describes it as "extremely funny" and "mad and hilarious". I have to say that I didn't really spot either of these attributes (although for part of the book I did get an odd feeling that I was missing something - that jokes were being made at somebody's expense, only I was not quite sure whose, and that I was missing the point by taking things too much at face value. Whether this had more to do with the increasingly tired state of my brain than the author's intentions, I cannot be sure).
On the subject of books... Waterstone's once again lured me in with their three-for-two offer. This time I had a good excuse, in the form of a book token I needed to spend (it had started falling apart). Almost every book I could see looked like it had some form of special offer sticker on it today. In the end I opted for a biography of Jane Austen which I've been wanting to read for a while, and a couple of novels I'd seen reviewed in my brother's old copy of Books Quarterly. All of which ought to give me something to keep my brain happy the next time it decides to go insomniac.
And so here I am, having spent the night reading Marina Lewycka's novel A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian and typing up notes to do with Northern Cross. I quite enjoyed the novel, in a light reading sort of way: it was diverting. The front cover describes it as "extremely funny" and "mad and hilarious". I have to say that I didn't really spot either of these attributes (although for part of the book I did get an odd feeling that I was missing something - that jokes were being made at somebody's expense, only I was not quite sure whose, and that I was missing the point by taking things too much at face value. Whether this had more to do with the increasingly tired state of my brain than the author's intentions, I cannot be sure).
On the subject of books... Waterstone's once again lured me in with their three-for-two offer. This time I had a good excuse, in the form of a book token I needed to spend (it had started falling apart). Almost every book I could see looked like it had some form of special offer sticker on it today. In the end I opted for a biography of Jane Austen which I've been wanting to read for a while, and a couple of novels I'd seen reviewed in my brother's old copy of Books Quarterly. All of which ought to give me something to keep my brain happy the next time it decides to go insomniac.
Tuesday, April 17
Nettle Soup
Yesterday morning Richard Mabey's book Food for Free arrived in the post from play.com. Paca and myself had been intrigued ever since spotting the book in the National Trust gift shop on Holy Island. It is a most interesting little volume, giving details of various different edible plants which can be gathered from commons, hedgerows and gardens, and some ideas of how to use said plants once collected. Seeing as nettles are fairly prolific in my back garden, and usually easy to identify, and had a very proper-looking recipe attached to them, we decided to begin our first foray into self-sufficiency by making everybody some nettle soup for tea.
Note that I said nettles are usually easy to identify. Perhaps this is often because you've brushed a little too close to the plant, and ended up getting stung. Well, the moment we needed to identify them (who knows what untold dangers could be caused by serving bramble soup, or unidentified garden herb soup, by mistake?) we were both seized by irrational doubt, such that we forbore to pick any until we'd got two or three stings each, just to be sure...
You can hold a nettle plant without getting stung, as long as you only grasp the centre part of the leaf between two fingers - the stingy white hairs are only on the stems and around the edges of the leaves. However, actually picking a sufficient quantity for soup might have been a bit painful without taking some precautionary measures. I wore gloves and used scissors; Paca picked carefully, with the aid of a tea-towel. It didn't take long to gather the requisite 'four handfuls of nettle-tops', and we headed back into the kitchen.
The first step of the recipe is to "Strip the nettles from the thicker stalks, and wash". That seemed pretty tricky to us, without resorting to rubber gloves, so we contented ourselves with swishing them around in a colander for a bit, and carefully pulling out some of the stems. Once added, with chopped potato, to the fried onion in the pan, the nettles began to wilt, very like one would expect spinach to do. Indeed, as we added the vegetable stock, the nettles continued to behave like spinach. They reduced a great deal, and began to come apart just about enough for one bowl of soup not to end up with all the nettles in it. However, to give the soup a smoother texture we decided to liquidise it a little bit anyway, which turned out to be a good decision.
For seasoning we used nutmeg (recommended by the recipe), as well as pepper and a little ginger and cinnamon (not mentioned in the recipe, but good anyway). The potato made the soup nice and thick, and along with the flavours of stock, onion and seasoning the nettles were rather delicious. Other members of the family were somewhat dubious of our new delicacy before tasting it, but I think in general it was found acceptable - certainly there wasn't any left over! Nettles are apparently very nutritious, containing lots of iron and protein. To me they do taste a bit like spinach - I think better than spinach. And quite apart from that, I'm sure knowing some of the ingredients to be gathered from your own garden will always make a meal taste better.
Note that I said nettles are usually easy to identify. Perhaps this is often because you've brushed a little too close to the plant, and ended up getting stung. Well, the moment we needed to identify them (who knows what untold dangers could be caused by serving bramble soup, or unidentified garden herb soup, by mistake?) we were both seized by irrational doubt, such that we forbore to pick any until we'd got two or three stings each, just to be sure...
You can hold a nettle plant without getting stung, as long as you only grasp the centre part of the leaf between two fingers - the stingy white hairs are only on the stems and around the edges of the leaves. However, actually picking a sufficient quantity for soup might have been a bit painful without taking some precautionary measures. I wore gloves and used scissors; Paca picked carefully, with the aid of a tea-towel. It didn't take long to gather the requisite 'four handfuls of nettle-tops', and we headed back into the kitchen.
The first step of the recipe is to "Strip the nettles from the thicker stalks, and wash". That seemed pretty tricky to us, without resorting to rubber gloves, so we contented ourselves with swishing them around in a colander for a bit, and carefully pulling out some of the stems. Once added, with chopped potato, to the fried onion in the pan, the nettles began to wilt, very like one would expect spinach to do. Indeed, as we added the vegetable stock, the nettles continued to behave like spinach. They reduced a great deal, and began to come apart just about enough for one bowl of soup not to end up with all the nettles in it. However, to give the soup a smoother texture we decided to liquidise it a little bit anyway, which turned out to be a good decision.
For seasoning we used nutmeg (recommended by the recipe), as well as pepper and a little ginger and cinnamon (not mentioned in the recipe, but good anyway). The potato made the soup nice and thick, and along with the flavours of stock, onion and seasoning the nettles were rather delicious. Other members of the family were somewhat dubious of our new delicacy before tasting it, but I think in general it was found acceptable - certainly there wasn't any left over! Nettles are apparently very nutritious, containing lots of iron and protein. To me they do taste a bit like spinach - I think better than spinach. And quite apart from that, I'm sure knowing some of the ingredients to be gathered from your own garden will always make a meal taste better.
Thursday, April 12
Pilgrimage
Northern Cross is a great way to celebrate Easter. We walk for all of Holy Week (i.e. the week before Easter), carrying an eight-foot cross, and arriving at Lindisfarne on Good Friday. Easter weekend is then spent on Holy Island. Anyone's welcome to come, and there are various different legs - one aimed at families, one more contemplative, and some more strenuous routes - with lighter or heavier crosses to carry and different amounts to walk per day as appropriate. It's great: you meet interesting people, walk through some really good countryside, experience very warm hospitality, and hopefully come closer to God by celebrating Easter in a meaningful way. Even if you don't want to walk every year, I'd recommend trying it once! Visit the website for more information, or have a look at my photos.
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