Friday Links

Posted on March 2, 2018 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday! So it was cold and there was quite a bit of snow for London and almost everything got cancelled. In other news my hot water bottle after over a decade of faithful service died, yes I do have a spare but wet pyjamas are not fun when it’s -1C!

 

Then to make matters worse, I put my back out on Wednesday night and have been pain and off work ever since…

This week on the blog, there was the usual Monday miscellany, the monthly goal review and setting post and a plum cake recipe.

Here’s what I read this week:

I call on Ireland and Britain to break the Stormont deadlock I agree but the DUP won’t  and therefore neither will the Tories as the DUP hold the balance of power in Westminster. God it’s depressing….

Chasing the Loneliness Epidemic Won’t Cure What Ails Us

Somebody Needs to Make a Movie About John Shuster and His Ragtag Team of Curling Rejects.  Mr T is a curling fan, Mr. T!!

Tara Newbold’s death: 37 injuries but no murder charge. This is just unbelievable.

‘I’ve been here for 50 years’: the scandal of the former Commonwealth citizens threatened with deportation I’ve been saying, since I worked at Ealing and had to spend time talking to the Home Office, they are rubbish…this shows their incompetence in all its glory.

Icelandic language battles threat of ‘digital extinction’

‘We batter them with kindness’: schools that reject super-strict values

Why treating your depression is like learning your times tables. This is so sensible. I have ever taken anti depressants, I was miserable for a long time but not so miserable that I couldn’t get out of bed (wanted to but could force myself up) and I’ve spoken about my coping mechanisms for those times but always with the strict caveat that this is what worked for me, don’t take it as criticism of the way you cope. Be

 

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Plum Cake

Posted on March 1, 2018 by nicdempsey

On Monday night, I went to the Grace Lent meal, I had asked Jonny who was cooking if I could bring anything and he said pudding. I haven’t been doing a lot of baking recently but I am trying to use up last year’s fruit from the plot so thought that something with plums in it would be good. I came across this recipe, which I used as a base.

One of the things that I love about being at this stage in my cooking life, is that I’m happy to experiment, I didn’t have exactly everything I needed for this recipe, my eggs are always mixed sizes and I didn’t have any vanilla bean paste, the right size cake pan and only frozen plums but I am aware of how I like to cook and the original recipe is a one bowl minimal mess type of recipe so I thought I could work with it.

Using an electric whisk, I blended one cup of sugar, with four eggs, one cup of sunflower oil and two teaspoons of vanilla extract. I added the zest of one lemon, two tablespoons of yoghurt, one teaspoon of baking powder and two cups of self raising flour and whisked until I had a smooth batter.

Because I didn’t have the specified 30 x 20 cm (12 x 8 inches) cake tin, so I poured the batter into what I did have which was the next size up 33 x 23 cm (13 x 9 inches). I covered the top of the batter in frozen plum halves (about 20 whole plums) and baked in a pre-heated the over at 190C/Gas Mark 5/375 F for about 40 minutes until a skewer came out clean.

I imagine this would work well with all types of fruit and or a crumble topping on it something like the one used in the rhubarb muffins here would also be good. I’ll let you know if I experiment with it.

 

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Monthly Goals – February/March 2018

Posted on February 28, 2018 by nicdempsey

We are at the end of February already and it’s going out like a lion, with snow and cold… however it is going so it’s time for a recap.

So little goals for February.

Mind and Body

  • 10,000 steps a day. Yep
  • Vitamins every day. Yep
  • Feet and Hands. Yep
  • Golden hour. Mostly

Budget

  • Stick to the spending budgets for food and household. Yep

House Beautiful

  • Deep clean hall carpet  it took ages and I’m not convinced it’s much cleaner, I think the trick is to do it more often
  • Clean oven. Nope but I have plans
  • Put together the unit I bought at Christmas. Done, we’ll call it two have fun with a drill after drinking wine and it’s still together.
  • Curtains in the bedroom. Nope, we couldn’t get a curtain rail and I sort of forgot about it.

Allotment  (why is this the longest list?)

  • plant the rhubarb crown
  • dig up raspberries at the top of the plot
  • dig up gooseberry at the end of the plot
  • sort out the raspberry frames
  • paint the shed
  • cut the grass at the edges of the path
  • order new raised beds
  • build new raised beds
  • fill the new raised beds with compost and top up the others
  • sort out the sides of the current brassica bed
  • create sections at top and sides of allotment for flowers
  • clear that bed of broccoli and kale
  • prep the buckets and boxes for carrots, radishes and mint
  • put up and secure the cloche
  • trip to the dump
  • bonfire
  • sort out sowing supplies and start sowing leeks etc

So overall we did pretty well, my migraine this weekend and the predicted weather for the coming weekend means that we won’t do much this weekend, except sow seeds!

Year so far

Reading – I’ve read 5 books this month and the TBR list on the Kindle stands at 94 (free books and books I had on order from Christmas) and the physical pile of books is still at 34, it’s not been a great start to the year on the reading front.

Household budget – I started with £60 ended with £12.20, carpet cleaner is expensive! So I’ll go into March with £52.20

Food Budget – I have 30p left over which goes in the jar.

03/02 – £14.94

10/02 – £19.96

17/02 – £11.30

24/02 – £13.50

Saving – The jar now contains over £55.92 which makes me happy

Health – I’ve walked with Sarah and the dog, I’ve started to take elderberry syrup and avoided (so far) the second round of cold that everyone caught the big issue for me this month has been that I didn’t sleep as much as I needed, it’s not like I wasn’t trying but it’s been rubbish, there doesn’t seem to be any reason for it, I just have to trudge through and it’ll fix itself eventually. Other than that and a bad back because I’ve been slack about stretching the biggest thing that’s happening is that it’s getting lighter that’s helping a lot and it’ll get even better next month…

March Goals

So March is about more of the same. March is a busy month, next weekend which is also Mother’s Day weekend, Ma and I have the boys.

Mind and Body

  • 10,000 steps a day.
  • Vitamins every day.
  • Feet and Hands.
  • Golden hour

Budget & Spending

  • Stick to the spending budgets for food and household.
  • No card use. I need to leave my debit card at home this month

House Beautiful

  • Hoover once a week, my dislike of hoovering is well known, so I need to make it a weekly habit.
  • Defrost freezer
  • Sort out underbed storage
  • Clean oven.
  • Curtains in the bedroom

Allotment  (why is this the longest list?)

  • bonfire
  • paint the shed
  • start sowing seeds indoors (leeks, tomatoes, cucumbers, cucamelons, peppers, kale, chard, cauliflowers)
  • start sowing seeds outdoors (beetroot, carrots, radishes, peas, salad, herbs)
  • plant out potatoes
  • buy compost and fill remaining beds
  • plant out mint

 

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Monday Miscellany

Posted on February 26, 2018 by nicdempsey

Happy Monday! We are currently in the midst of a cold snap and there was snow this morning and a fire drill. The snow didn’t really settle, it’s stopped now but they are predicting more and I expect that all  of London will lose it’s mind and transport shortly!

After a weekend that was almost totally torpedoed by migraines, it was not the return to normal that I was hoping for!In other news, theatre on Saturday, the one thing that I felt I did manage, was brilliant. For a play set in 1981 in Northern Ireland (The Ferryman), it felt very topical and with the government about to go back to direct rule, a good reminder of how it could be if people don’t sort themselves out!

Not much else to say, I finally last week, managed to clean the carpet so even though I feel like the flat is a pit of filth, the carpet is clean!

This week, I’m finally making it to a Grace Lent dinner, I need to catch up on laundry and housework, Ma is coming to dinner on Wednesday and I’m finally catching up with Christelle and Mike on Saturday. I still haven’t planted any seeds, but may do that at the weekend!

 

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Friday Links

Posted on February 23, 2018 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday! It’s been a long, tiring week. I’ve not had a good week for sleep but on the other hand, my laptop has been returned fixed and I’ve actually seen people and done things. Swings and roundabouts!

In case you missed them, since last Friday, I’ve shared some of my plans for Lent, on Monday there was miscellany, on Tuesday I shared a recipe for lemon posset, which is so easy to make and very delicious!, there was the usual update on the plot, and a post on how to make elderberry syrup which is believed to help ward off colds and flu.

Here are this week’s links…

Experience: A black pudding saved my life.

I’ve forgotten how to read.

The town that’s found a potent cure for illness – community

An Interview with the Black Panther dialect coach. This is interesting, I saw the film last week and while I’m no expert on any dialect, I said that accents were more South  African than the ‘area’ that Wakanda is supposed to be.

Cape Town’s water crisis

I understand the fears. But vaccinating children should be compulsory

Marco Rubio almost got away with his routine. Then he met Cameron Kasky. I really hope that this doesn’t fizzle out but I fear it will…

The casual dining crunch: why are Jamie’s Italian, Strada, Byron (and the rest) all struggling?

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Elderberry Syrup

Posted on February 22, 2018 by nicdempsey

I haven’t had a cold since since Christmas, clearly my post Christmas resolution to take vitamins every day is having an effect.

I’m aiming to keep it that way by any means necessary and a friend of mine started taking elderberry syrup before Christmas and didn’t catch the lurgy that the world and it’s wife have had since December. He’s so convinced that it’s good for you, he sent me some dried elderberries so I could make my own. So I did.

I used this recipe, with a few changes to work with what I had in the house! I put half a cup of dried elderberries, two cups of water, a sliced lemon, two tablespoons of ground cinnamon, a tablespoon of whole cloves and two tablespoons of chopped ginger into a large saucepan and brought it to a simmer for about 30 minutes until the liquid had reduced by half. I mashed the berries a bit and then drained the liquid through a sieve and a piece of muslin making sure to squeeze all the liquid out of the berries that I could. Once the liquid had cooled a bit, I added 227g of raw thyme honey (this one) to the liquid and bottled it, it made approx 400ml of syrup.I take a tablespoon (15ml) every morning in shot form which should help ward off the nasties but if that doesn’t work and I succumb to a cold then I’m supposed to take the same amount two to three times a day.

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Allotment Adventures: A sunny day and lots of work

Posted on February 21, 2018 by nicdempsey

It felt like we really broke the back of the work list this weekend. We’d hired a car so we could get some of the big items off the list. So on Saturday morning before 9am we were up and collecting rubbish from the plot to take to the dump.

Dump run done, we went to Homebase and bought compost, 530 litres of compost to be precise and I had the ‘joy’ of wheelbarrowing it to our plot. At this point, I’m just so grateful that the allotment society doesn’t mind if we borrow their wheelbarrows provided we put them back!

I’d done some quick calculations about how much compost we were going to need and thought that we’d probably need in the region of 1000 litres just for the raised beds so I knew that we wouldn’t fill all the beds, we got four of them carboarded and composted with 120 litres of compost in each one, and then recovered them with weed fabric. The only downside to having raised beds on this site is that the foxes treat any covered with cardboard and compost as a playground. If the beds have plants in, the foxes stay away but if I’m sowing, then the beds have to be covered with nets, mulching then weed fabric has to go on, I have learned my lesson….Once the heavy work was done, we got on with the fun stuff. I took the wobbly sides off the brassica bed and Ma made ‘circles’ at the top of the plot for flowers.Because we are going to plant squash at the top here, I thought it would be a good idea to have a separate area for flowers that hopefully won’t get over run by rampant squash! We took up the kale and I put more stable sides on that bed. Here you can see the new square bed, that has been filled with compost, the bed of chard and kale that overwintered (with it’s pigeon protection netting and the new straight sides of the bed. Which will need more compost in preparation for the courgette and patty pan plants that will go in around May time and Ma chopping up old raspberry canes into the compost bin!I planted up my blueberry sticks plants into buckets with ericaceous compost. I was worried that the buckets would be too small but my plot neighbour has bigger blueberry bushes in smaller pots so I’m feeling ok about them right now!I also got on with digging up the raspberries and sorting out the frames, we are going at some point soon, take up all the metal and replace with tidier, less hazardous posts but meanwhile, I stripped out the stuff that wasn’t helping matters and dug up the canes that I’ve been saying need to come up for the last year!The netting came off the broad beans (taking some of the tops with it and I put poles that will eventually be supports for them!)Because I didn’t want to be the only one with sticks in buckets, some of those canes went in a bucket for my sister-in-law and we’ll take them up in March!

The list is looking like we’ve done some work. Like everyone else on the site, I really want to have a bonfire but really need a couple of weeks without rain, after last year’s dry spring, it looks like this year we might get double the rain this year. Next week, I’ll cut the grass, maybe paint the shed and start thinking about sowing some seeds (leeks and peas!) and sorting out the March work list. It never ends but it’s a good feeling, we’re so close to spring.

  • plant the rhubarb crown
  • dig up raspberries at the top of the plot
  • dig up gooseberry at the end of the plot
  • sort out the raspberry frames
  • paint the shed
  • cut the grass at the edges of the path
  • order new raised beds
  • build new raised beds
  • fill the new raised beds with compost and top up the others
  • sort out the sides of the current brassica bed
  • create sections at top and sides of allotment for flowers
  • clear that bed of broccoli and kale
  • prep the buckets and boxes for carrots, radishes and mint
  • put up and secure the cloche
  • trip to the dump
  • bonfire
  • sort out sowing supplies and start sowing leeks etc
  • plant out blueberry bushes
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Lemon Posset

Posted on February 20, 2018 by nicdempsey

Ever since I had the lime posset at Dark Horse, I knew I wanted to learn how to make it, and Tom was here for dinner yesterday, so it seemed as good a reason as any to have a go.

As it turns out, posset is really easy to make. I looked at a lot of recipes and adapted slightly.

Take 300ml double cream and 100g sugar and place in a large saucepan. Gently heat while stirring until the sugar is dissolved, then bring to the boil for 1 minute. Take off the heat and add 50ml lemon juice and the zest of 2 lemons. Pour into serving cups and allow to cool until room temperature, then cover and place in fridge.

This made 3 servings in my small duralex glasses and was pretty much set, when I put it in the fridge.

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Monday Miscellany

Posted on February 19, 2018 by nicdempsey

I could divide my life right now into plus and minus columns. Plus, a productive weekend. Minus, my laptop is in the shop for repair. And no, it wasn’t me, it just stopped working. Minus I’ve only had it five months. Plus, it’s still in warranty. Sometimes I feel that my entire life consists of looking for the bright side or the learning opportunity, or reminding myself that it could be worse. This is not a moan about my life, it’s a statement about how not to be miserable about the circumstances I find myself in.““””I ended each day this weekend muddy and tired. On Saturday, Ma and I did a lot of allotment work and I wheelbarrowed 500 litres of compost. Then I visited the Apple Store in Kingston and they still have my laptop, this is being written on my iPad (apologies in advance for any typos). Sunday, I walked with Sarah and Fred and we met May and Holmes and Watson. Labradors will do anything for a sausage! ““””I’m trying really hard not to sound off on social media about gun control in the US, I have many thoughts on it but at the same times look at things the five here are doing and not doing and say ‘people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’ but I have lots of strong opinions about it and I’m praying hard that Americans will do more than offer thoughts and prayers (and the irony doesn’t escape me).

More hopefully, I got my blueberry bushes, which are better describes as sticks. They’re now in buckets in the right sort of compost!“”I also got really caught up in the men’s curling and the stunt skiing on Sunday afternoon at Sarah and Justin’s. I don’t know what it’s called but it was men on skis, going down a ‘stunt mountain’ like stakeboarding but on skis…

My aims for this week are simple. A friend is coming for dinner, I’m going to see the Shape of Water on Thursday, and The Ferryman on Saturday. I will also hoover and clean the carpet! Living the rock’n’roll life me!!

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Lent

Posted on February 17, 2018 by nicdempsey

I’m trying to be a bit more thoughtful about Lent this year.

One of the things that I recognised last year was that I’ve been neglecting my practice of my faith and that I miss it. So Lent seemed like a good place to be more intentional about it.

I’m not giving anything up. I did consider all the usual things, chocolate, wine, gin but ultimately decided that this year I want to add to my life not subtract. So I’m participating in the Grace WhatsApp group this year, I didn’t get to Grace in February and I won’t get there in March (I’ve got the boys that weekend!), so this is a good way to stay connected, I’ll also try to get to the Lent meals but I’ve already got things I’m doing on a couple of them, so we’ll see how that goes.

Until they changed the words (I’m still not over that!), Mass, boring, plain Mass was important to me, Grace is fantastic but I love the repetition of Mass and communion, it’s probably a hangover from all those years of altar serving, when I went to Mass two to three times a week for four or so years. The problem has been that there isn’t a church locally, that I feel comfortable with, I won’t go to an RC church and the CoE churches are either too evangelical or too Anglo Catholic for me, I won’t go to a church that won’t except women can be priests or that pretends to be Catholic, be one and deal with having to obey or don’t.So as a consequence I hadn’t been to communion for an age. I did think about St Mary’s but it’s not happened yet, but I’m working five minutes away from St Pancras Church and they have lunchtime communion on Wednesdays (which is where I got ashed this week). So I’m going to go to communion every Wednesday because I think I need that in my life and my week.

That and a bit more time for reflection are my personal goals for Lent.

Lent shouldn’t be spent all inside my head, so I also need to do more. So every week in Lent, I’m going to donate to the foodbank. It’s easy enough to do, I donate sanitary towels every time I buy some for me. But this will be more intentional, £5 worth of goods every week. I’ll check the list in the supermarket and buy that, no clearing my cupboards (you’d be surprised how many people do), no thinking about what I would buy, but what the foodbank says it needs using my money because it’s less than a bottle of wine, for goodness sake.

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