Friday Links

Posted on September 29, 2017 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday!

Are you ready for that jelly? Why it’s time to start eating jellyfish. I think it’s safe to say I am not ready to eat jellyfish…

Mystery seeds produce record breaking squash.

Sex toys at Poundland. My mind is struggling with this a bit!

Do we really need therapy? I did. What it really taught me is that I had the answers to my issues but the question wasn’t what I thought it was. Which is why I needed it.

Ever, Jane is the Jane Austen game you have been waiting for. No it is not, because I find the fetishisation of Jane Austen and the Regency disturbing.  It’s not that I don’t love both Jane Austen novels or Regency fiction I do and I’m generally fascinated by the period. John Kincaid is on the list of my fantasy dinner guests for crying out loud. It’s lovely to imagine yourself as a regency heroine but the truth is that the majority of us wouldn’t be the educated Elizabeth Bennett but the unnamed servants who may or may not have been able to read. Modern life is not rubbish, we don’t live in slums (well the Tories are working on it but still, we do live in a word with antibotics where very few women die in childbirth and no-one dies of VD. These are things to be proud of and harking back to a time when those things did happen and womens lives were restricted is sick..

Elizabeth Warren Is Getting Hillary-ed

The US just picked a nasty trade fight with Canada — and it’s likely to backfire I hope it will backfire mostly because only the most deluded of Brexiteers actually believe that a UK/US trade agreement post Brexit will be good for the UK

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Allotment Adventures: Ma does all the work

Posted on September 27, 2017 by nicdempsey

Not a huge amount to report this week. I was volunteering at the Ealing Half Marathon this Sunday, so I left Ma on the plot at 7:30 ish with coffee and malt loaf and picked her up at 12-ish.In that time she tidied up the front of our plot and weeded Dionne’s plot for 2 hours. She is amazing.

We collected pak choi, chard, kale, salad leaves, a crookneck and two patty pans. We are entering the everything is green and leafy stage of produce collection and I am kicking myself for not doing late summer sowings of peas and beans but you can’t do everything and I’m learning for next year.

The thing I need to do is work out how to stop the bastard fox doing this to the beds that I covered for next year. I’m not amused by this, between the pigeons and the foxes, I’m going to need more netting!

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Housework for One: The Winter Plan – Kitchen

Posted on September 26, 2017 by nicdempsey

Following on from my cleaning plan from a couple of weeks ago,  I wanted to carry on with this because it’s good for me to carry on as normal, so winter plans to help my SAD brain for the kitchen.

My kitchen is the most used room in the house. During the week, it’s where I spent most of my time and it’s where I cook and create mess, it also has the world’s most annoying tiny sink which doesn’t help me at all. The kitchen table can also become a dumping ground because it’s the first flat surface I encounter when I come up the stairs. It’s also the worst lit room in the flat, the window is off to the corner and the light is not great, especially in the winter and especially near the counters. Which is something I need to work out this year because I’ve really noticed that my light perception is off lately (another thing they don’t tell you about middle age!).Since the mouse disaster of 2016, the kitchen has been more tidy because I’m paranoid about it. The counters are clear of junk and clean the washing up is always done but there are areas that need more work. Floor, clutter and deep cleaning.

I will break this down into daily, weekly and monthly tasks but most of the problem with the kitchen is my not doing things when I see them. So I really need focus on the five minute rule. Which is that if I see something that needs doing and will take five minutes or less, I need to do it then and there. An example of this would be putting an empty jar back in the cupboard of doom, rather than leaving it on the side in the kitchen, taking the recycling downstairs rather than leaving it on the side and so on. I’m much better at it than I was but I’m still not as good as I could be!

Daily

  • Wash up and put dishes away
  • Wipe down counters and clean sink
  • Sweep floors
  • Don’t let clutter built up

Weekly

  • clean fridge
  • empty rubbish
  • empty recycling
  • empty food bin (cooked food)
  • take compost bin to plot
  • mop floors

Monthly

  • clean oven
  • defrost freezer
  • descale kettle (if needed)
  • clean cooker hood and filters

Quarterly

  • empty clean and declutter cupboards
  • scrub floor and skirting boards

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Friday Links

Posted on September 22, 2017 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday! It’s been quite the week for me and I’ve not really been paying as much attention to the news as usual. However, in the face of crisis, I do embrace routine, so here are this week’s links.

Trump’s Oracular Sermonizing at the U.N. Is a Real Head Trip Yes it was…

It’s often said that politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Trump campaigned in insult comedy and, at least on the world stage, wants to govern in Wagnerian opera.

The vilification of drunk teenage girls exposes a depressing double standard I’m not sure that I agree with all of this, I think teenagers of either sex, getting drunk and have sex in bushes is pretty terrible because good decisions and being hammered on vodka rarely go hand in hand. I am tired of the girls are responsible, boys are just being lads. If as Dawn French thinks, boys who do that are awful, we should be working on educating our boys and girls to think more of themselves and their sexual partners. I remember someone telling me that where sex is involved, there is always a price and I think I understand what he meant. Sex even casual sex has a emotional impact, before you have sex with another person,  you need to be clear about the impact it may have on you and whether you can cope with it. The impact doesn’t have to be negative, but if you are looking for affection/love/care/connection then casual sex may not provide what you need and if you just want an orgasm with someone else in the room then your ex might not be a good choice for that and if you are old enough to have sex, you are old enough to think about this stuff. And now you all have a front seat to the kind of conversation that I get to have with the godchildren (aren’t I lucky?) but we have to teach our children about that so they can make good choices and not choices that make them feel bad about themselves. That applies to our boys as well as our girls….

With a liar like Boris Johnson as foreign secretary how can Europe trust Britain?

Politicians have been lying for as long as they have been around. But with the exception perhaps of Silvio Berlusconi, they always did so surreptitiously, at least pretending to speak the truth. Johnson, however, displays an almost psychopathic pleasure in shamelessly telling lies.

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Quick and Dirty Guacamole

Posted on September 21, 2017 by nicdempsey

I’m not a huge fan of avocado. It’s not the taste, it’s the texture, never say never but I can’t see me ever being a huge fan of avocado toast. The only form I eat avocados in is guacamole which I usually buy in tubs from the supermarket. But last week when I went to buy some, there was no guacamole but there were avocados.

I’m not a food purist as I’ve said before the great culinary tradition of my country is to take a food culture and adapt it for our tastes. This is pretty much what I decided to do when faced with a guacamole shortage in Tescos on the way home from work on a Wednesday night.

I googled guacamole recipe, got a rough idea what to do, breathed a sigh of relief because I already had lime, garlic, red onion, tomatoes and coriander at home and bought two little avocados for 49p each. Then I made it up as I went along. I did not use chilli because I’m a wuss about hot things.I peeled two garlic cloves, roughly chopped the two plum tomatoes (these were home grown) and one red onion, peeled and chopped the two small avocados (that peeling with a glass thing really works) and squeezed the one lime. All of this went, with a handful of coriander leaves (more than shown) into a mini chopper.It was blended until it looked like this. Like I said, it’s not authentic but it tastes better than the tubs I usually buy and it works for me.

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Allotment Adventures: A Tidy Up

Posted on September 20, 2017 by nicdempsey

My loss of nephew time this weekend was definitely my allotment’s gain. It’s been about a month since I’ve done any work beyond collection and watering. So it was past time for a tidy up.

The first thing to do was deal with all the dead and dying tomato plants, I’d collected all the tomatoes in the week so it was just the poor blighted plants (more like sticks) to deal with. We cleared the square bed and buckets, the compost from the buckets going to the two tomato beds that are done. I took out the tomato plants from the last bed but we didn’t cover that because the marigolds are still going strong.

Ma then went to tackle the weeds at the top of the plot and I attended to the summer squash plants, cutting back mildewed leaves and weeding the beds. The big butternut squash plant is done and brought in the four squash in the week, so I just cleared it.The little one at the back of the plot has got three baby squash on it and they had better hurry up and grow before the frost hits. The herb patch is thriving and the borage came back and is flowering, I hope that it does this every year!I also brutally cut back the nasturtiums because I couldn’t see my paths and made the decision not to sow them next year, if they self seed, I can live with them but no more planning to be overwhelmed by them!

I also tidied up the greenhouse, I need to make a decision about the strawberry bed extension!Then I admired Ma’s handywork and finally planted the day lily outside.Ma and I  also discussed the ‘top of the plot situation’. The area in front of the raspberries to the main path has a plum tree, two rhubarb plants, two gooseberry bushes, a shed, a greenhouse and a whole of space that grows weeds. We’ve planted some flowers, there were other plants that came up. This year we sowed peas there and put the buckets of spare tomatoes there. Overall though, it’s a bit of a wasted area. So we are going to do a couple of things. First move one of the gooseberries up there (yes I have been saying that for over a year!), second pave the area outside the shed and greenhouse. This gives us a proper sitting down space, we can plant flowers etc around a patio area and we can pull more tender plants in pots that can be moved in and out. Decision made, now all we need to do is get it done (and paint the shed and do a heap of other things that we’ve planned)

 

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Bugger

Posted on September 19, 2017 by nicdempsey

Yesterday, I went into work and was told that my team was being rearranged and that we were all under threat of redundancy.

Which was not the start to the week I was hoping for.

I’ve been here before, it’s not fun.

Last night was grim, this morning, while nothing is clearer, I’m calmer. I would like it all to be done now because to quote CK Dexter Haven in The Philidelphia Story, “when you’re through with a boat, you’re through”.

I’m going with ‘no-one died, it’s not a disaster’ but it feels pretty horrible, there will be an upside and I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve found it. Meanwhile, things may be quiet around here because…well because…I’m not sure what’s happening or what’s next.

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Best/Worst 11 to 17 September 2017

Posted on September 18, 2017 by nicdempsey

Happy Monday!

Best

 A day on the plot. So we didn’t have the boys this weekend, I was a bit sad about that but it did give me some time to sort myself out. Ma and I did a solid 4 hours on the plot and it’s looking good.

Worst


Return of the light lamp. I don’t enjoy the encroaching darkness that begins in Autumn sure the weather is ok and there are some stand out days but it’s not a fun, happy time for me, I don’t relish the coziness or the return of tights and boots. Instead I start to feel tired all the damn time, my sleeping goes haywire and I get miserable. I don’t like it. I’ll cope but I not happy about it!

Honourable mentions to work meeting from hell, the last of the tomatoes, babysitting for the Baxters, the joy of a really good book, allotment neighbours, organisation, a trip to the library, having friends for dinner, birthday cake and planning.

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Friday Links

Posted on September 15, 2017 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday! I’m ending this work week with a half day off work to sort my life out. I was preparing for a weekend with the boys but Ben isn’t working this weekend so Ma and I aren’t being put to work. Instead I’m going to enjoy spending some much needed time on the plot, reading a new book and possibly eating cake.

Here are this week’s links….

Sleep: How much do you really get? This time of year, not enough!

What the pope should tell Jacob Rees-Mogg: ‘You ain’t no Catholic, bruv’

Natural disasters and opioid addiction. I don’t know how we’d do it here, I’m assuming that the NHS makes it easier to access, but it had honestly never occurred to me before that natural disasters could make recovery harder in that way.

A Nobel Peace Prize winner is standing idly by as her country moves closer to genocide. I’m always wary of the general living saint portrayals of anyone, Princess Diane, the Pope, Mother Theresa and Aung San Suu Kyi. I think that humans  are frail and often fail to live up to this kind of adoration. This is a case in point.  Aung San Suu Kyi suffered for what she believed in but she has never spoken out in support of the Rohingya or any other oppressed minority. I don’t know if she’s not saying much because she’s frightened that if she criticises the military, then Myanmar will go back to a military dictatorship and what’s happening to the Rohingya is a small price to pay. Or if she believes that the Rohingya are outsiders who don’t belong in Myanmar. Either way it’s bad and if she doesn’t speak up, what does it say about the nation she’s trying to create?

Stop talking right now about the threat of climate change. It’s here; it’s happening 

The inspiring story of a 48-year-old, mother-of-three intern Up to a point, Lord Copper. It’s great that she got this but Katherine Forster, hasn’t worked (outside of children and home) since she got her degree and raised her children. Now presumably with them out of the house or a bit more self sufficient she can think about what she wants to do. It’s great that the Spectator picked her but the amount of class privilege in that life. A partner with enough or earning enough money she could stay at home with her children for 25 odd years. Enough money that at 48 she can intern. I’m always a bit chippy about stories like this. A victory for feminism, maybe but a clear case of privilege. Money doesn’t make you happy but it does give you the opportunity and time to find out what makes you happy. As it has for Katherine Forster.

How often should you wash your pjyamas? I wash mine every other day. The only time that changed was when I was recovering from my osteotomy and I had a clean pair every day but then I wore them for 24 hours straight. I change the bed once a week. That seems about right to me. Not to clean, not to dirty…

Megan Whalen Turner talking about the Queen’s Thief series. This is important to me because I have just got my hands on the latest and I think I’m going to have to re-read all of them this month!

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Cooking from the Allotment: Tomato Sauce

Posted on September 14, 2017 by nicdempsey

Not content with preserving whole tomatoes, I thought I’d branch out a bit. Last year, I made a fresh tomato sauce from the cherry tomatoes. This year I did the same, peeling them and really cooking them down with just some salt. Because we have loads of cherry tomatoes this year, I’ve done the same and inspired by my recent preserving success, and this recipe, I decided to have a go at canning it.

There were some issues, I don’t have a food mill and I didn’t have 10lbs of tomatoes. So I improvised a bit.

I started with 3lbs of cherry tomatoes, peeled them and stuck them in a pan (a skillet) with half a teaspoon of sea salt and mashed them a bit, having looked at them, I got out the immersion blender and blended. The sauce wasn’t entirely smooth because I like texture. i cooked the sauce until it had really reduced down and thickened (about 90 minutes to 2 hours of cooking). I then put a quarter of a teaspoon of citric acid in warm sterilised jars (some people say you don’t need to sterilise but I did so the warm sauce wasn’t going into cold jars), added the sauce, stirred to remove air bubbles, put the lids on and then processed for 30 minutes.

It didn’t feel like a lot of work as once the tomatoes had been peeled, most of the work was hands off. The first batch was a really thick sauce and made two jars.The second batch was slightly more tomatoes and not just cherries and was cooked for about 30 minutes for a fresher and looser sauce.That made five small jars.I’m very pleased with myself, I’m never going to grow or buy enough tomatoes to get me through a whole winter and I’m mostly happy with tinned tomatoes in winter but it’s nice to know that I can and in the winter, I think I’ll be feeling pretty smug!

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