Friday Links

Posted on September 19, 2014 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday, so yesterday Scotland voted on independence and decided to stay in the Union.

I have been ready for the vote to be done for at least a month, there were too many articles saying that independence would be the best/worst thing ever. So I mostly opted out of reading the newspapers this week and listened to Radio 4 (which according to the SNP was hugely biased in favour of the No campaign – I couldn’t see it but I’m sure that’s  ’cause I’m English not because the SNP was in a snit about being asked hard questions like “What is you plan if the Bank of England won’t let an independent Scotland into a currency union?”).

Now it’s about to get really interesting, we have England makes up 87% of the Union and has no devolved Parliament, with Welsh, N.Irish and Scottish MP’s get to vote on law in England. I think that it’s time to have a properly federal UK. Westminster for defence, finance etc and devolved Parliaments for each of the countries with equal powers. Currently Wales and N.Ireland have less powers than Scotland. The English Parliament is a risk but it needs to be somewhere other than London. Then all we need to do is sort out a financial settlement!

There is one more thing to say about this, it’s extraordinary that we can do this, if Ireland could have done this, history would have been way different. 97% of those that could vote were registered and 86% turnout, the highest since the 1951 general election. Proof that when people think they can make a difference they will vote, something for the political classes to think about.

1) Build landmarks into your life. I knew Friday Night Pizza was important!

2) This is a marathon, I’d happily sign up for!

3) A restaurant for tinned fish. Mmm, I’m not entirely sure about the concept, despite having fond memories of tinned salmon sandwiches and a thing about tinned mackerel in brine…

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Farro tomatoes, spinach and peas

Posted on September 18, 2014 by nicdempsey

I’m a creature of habit when it comes to food and I’ll often eat the same thing week in, week out. Partly that’s me, if I like something, I like it a lot and I’ll keep eating and putting it in the menu rotation until I go off it and then I stop eating it for a while. Partly it’s because food that is easy to make, good to eat and affordable are like unicorns, very rare, so if I find something to eat that hits all of the above three criteria, then I use it a lot and it get bonus points if I can use it for lunch the next day!

Which is why this recipe from Back to Her Roots has been getting a lot of use in my kitchen recently. As it goes, I’ve never quite made it according to instructions. I used different herbs and red onion because I have very little time for white onions (unless it’s onion soup – seriously pink onion soup would be so very, very wrong) and I added a couple of blocks of frozen whole leaf spinach because I am all about extra vegetables.

But I don’t have a herb garden, I have a pot of rosemary that survives my neglect but no garden and there are about 100 people in front of me on the allotment waiting list and fresh herbs are expensive. So I started to play about with it and this was born.

I like any meal that you could make without having to buy food that you wouldn’t normally have in the house and I generally have everything I need for this at home. I would imagine that it would work perfectly well with tinned tomatoes too although you’d need to reduce the amount of water to cook the farro.

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Please excuse the very bad photo that I took halfway through dinner last night, I’m going to add decent food photography to the list of things that I’m not very good at and/or add this meal to my list of ugly dinners!

Farro, tomatoes, spinach and peas (adapted from Back to Her Roots)

What

1 cup farro

2 cups water

2 medium red onions, sliced thinly

1 packet baby plum tomatoes (250g), halved or quartered depending on how much of a baby you are about large chunks of tomatoes.

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground pepper

5 blocks frozen whole leaf spinach

Big handful of frozen peas

Grated parmesan

How

1) Put everything except the peas and parmesan in a pot and bring to the boil.

2) Lower the heat, cover and simmer for about 25 minutes, until most of the liquid has absorbed

3) Add peas and parmesan, give it all a stir and cover for another five minutes or so until the peas are cooked through and the parmesan has melted in.

4) Serve. Eat. (I added more cheese at this stage because I could but that is entirely optional!)

 

 

 

 

 

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Stuff right now.

Posted on September 16, 2014 by nicdempsey

1) I’m trying to adjust to real life after a week of sleeping as late as I like and doing what I want, having to get out of bed at 6am is tough, especially as it’s getting darker in the mornings but the hardest part is getting back into a routine. I know it’ll come but it’s been an effort to get my brain to remember the things I need to do. Yesterday night I sorted out my food for today, this morning I realised that I’d managed to make breakfast and snacks but hadn’t made anything for lunch, yep, I’d forgotten that I needed to make lunch! It was easily sorted but I just feel like I’m learning how to be a grown up again and I was only away a week!

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2) I came back from Northumberland with a better attitude. Which is helping right now because my back decided that I haven’t been treating it well enough and is sore. Yesterday afternoon I went to see the physio, which was painful. After making me stretch and helping release the various tight muscles, I got a well earned lecture on making sure I do my stretches or yoga every day and preferably do them both every day.  Lots of yoga in my future.

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3) I also came back from Northumberland with damsons for damson gin and now I have to stop with the infusing!

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4) Is it wrong that I’m already thinking about Christmas? I think it is, but part of my role is booking the department Christmas lunch so it’s on my mind, also Ma and Ben have already had a discussion about where we spend Christmas, it involves maybe having to sleep in Oli’s bunk beds. I’m on leave from 19th December and don’t go back until 5th January so maybe I’m just looking forward to the rest!

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Weekly Recap and food this week

Posted on September 15, 2014 by nicdempsey

Monday really does come around to soon!

I had a brilliant week last week, it was so relaxed but looking back on it, we actually did quite a lot…

We visited 4 castles – (Middleham, Belsay, Warkworth and Dunstanburgh)

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Some beaches

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Three visits to Spurreli’s, so good, my favourite flavour is the Cherry and Vanilla

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Ate fish and chips

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We went to Barter Books and spent nearly two hours wondering around, I bought six books and I’m claiming it was restraint!

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There was even a trip on a boat and we saw seals, which almost made up for the seasickness.

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We even went into Newcastle for a visit to the Baltic, which is always worth a visit.

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So the thought of my usual routine and work this week is tough, I managed to unpack and sort my clothes out for this week but I’ve not done any shopping yet and my fridge has some cheese, a pot of yougurt, 4 sausages and a cabbage in it, which is not the foundation of a happy well balanced diet!

This morning, I grabbed some fruit and soup on the way into work to cover breakfast and lunch today. I will need to shop tonight but my plan for the week is to keep it simple, I’ve already cooked some lentils and quinoa and will use them through the week..

Breakfast

Some form of breakfast pot and the Friday pain au raisin.

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Lunches

Leftovers or soup

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Dinners

I’m only home for 4 nights this week and I really want to keep it simple, I’ll use the freezer for one night, there’s some vegetable stew so I’ll defrost that. The other three meals will probably be easy staples, stir fry with lentils, chickpea and spinach and roasted vegetables with lentils or quinoa.

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Not terribly exciting but perfect for the first week back to reality…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Sunday Music

Posted on September 14, 2014 by nicdempsey

Last night was the Last Night of the Proms. The Proms are a funny thing, they’re a part of British culture that doesn’t really translate and I feel that I’ve always known about the last night even though I’m not terribly keen on Land of Hope and Glory or Rule Britannia and the flag waving (and bobbing) that it seems to provoke.

I only turned it on because of the Mary Poppins medley (and I still maintain that no Londoner would feel pigeons!). But it went into Plymouth Hoe and then Rule Britannia and then Pomp and Circumstance and then Jerusalem. Then God Save the Queen and then Auld Land Syne, and in the week before the Scots vote on independence, that all felt quite significant, in fact if the Scots do decide on independence, all those people in the RAH will be waving different Union Flags, because they won’t be red, white and blue anymore. Maybe we can sing the 1745 version of God Save the Queen which includes this verse:

Lord, grant that Marshal Wade

May by thy mighty aid,

Victory bring.

May he sedition hush,

and like a torrent rush,

Rebellious Scots to crush,

God save The King.

Anyway all of this is a way of saying that this week’s Sunday music is Pomp and Circumstance because I’m quite fond of the bits that aren’t Land of Hope and Glory (yes I know Elgar, at some point I’m going to have to admit that I have no natural musical taste!) and because there is something about cultural traditions that is reassuring, even when we’re not certain that we like them. This is from 2012 and if you don’t already know about the Last Night of the Proms, here it is in all it’s madness….

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Homeward bound

Posted on September 13, 2014 by nicdempsey

Today we leave Northumberland and travel all the way down the country and back to London. One of the things that we say a lot is that we’d spend more time up here if it was nearer!

I’m beginning to think that the journey up and down is part of the appeal, Ma and I spend the time travelling, adjusting to the new reality, either of going on holiday and getting to Middleham and then on the way back getting back into a London state of mind.

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This June, I did Krissie’s BeFULL course and we started off by thinking about a word that described the feeling that we wanted to feel and a time when we felt like that. I chose peace and I wrote this:

My word for this feeling is peaceful.
But I struggle with using one word, because that word means a whole bunch of other things. It also means feeling calm and secure and content and trusting and joyous about God’s plan for my life and it’s also the place where I accept that I don’t understand or control all of it, which a big deal for me…

The place were I feel that most, is standing on a beach in Northumberland. There is something about the sky up there and while I suck at being serious and holy in the ‘thin space’ of Lindisfarne (I just want to think about the ‘teeny tiny’ monks) looking out to the sea from the ruins of Dunstanburgh, I feel it.

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So taking what I learnt in June and what I felt over the last week, I’m going to use today’s journey to remember how I want to feel and how I’m going to keep that feeling and use it in the next couple of months (and also eat jelly babies and sing songs with Ma!) .

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Stopgap furniture

Posted on September 10, 2014 by nicdempsey

When I was looking for a place to live 5 years ago, the estate agent asked me what my dream place looked liked. Top of the list was that it was unfurnished. I didn’t want to deal with other people style choices and I had quite a bit of furniture in storage.

Given how much furniture I did own, it was slightly weird that there were so many things I needed to buy.

One of those things was a wardrobe. I had owned a wardrobe but because I didn’t need one when I lived at Sarah’s and Craig did when he moved into his new flat, lending him the wardrobe until he got one he really wanted seemed like the thing to do. What I didn’t realise was that our friendship was going to crash and burn and that he would decide never to talk to me again. Along with the friendship went the wardrobe, a couple of books and some other stuff, most of which I really don’t miss, but the wardrobe would have been handy!

As a stopgap measure I bought one of those canvas and wood wardrobes from Argos. In my plan, it wasn’t going to be there long, I was going to sort out the bedroom, it’s a great room but it’s awkwardly shaped and the bed and other furniture were bought for different bedrooms with different requirements.

 

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This is the one picture I have of the horror that was that wardrobe! It was not pretty and five years on, only remained upright because of the judicious use of shoeboxes wedged against a chest of drawers.

It was time to buy a wardrobe. I had a plan. I was going to buy a corner wardrobe that would be the first step on my grand bedroom furniture re-design. I’d measured the space. I’d dismantled the old wardrobe, cleared out a lot of stuff, I conned poor Mike into coming over to help me put the thing up.

People plan, God laughes. The one thing I hadn’t given too much thought about was getting the wardrobes to my house, Ma had hired a car, we’d go to IKEA and pick them up. Except that one look at the car convinced me that it wasn’t going to work, the car was too short.

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Plan B. Go to Ikea, find another stopgap solution. Re-evaluate bedroom furniture issue. Save some more money to implement new plan. Meanwhile be grateful that the new stopgap wardrobe won’t fall on your head and that you’ve managed to donate 3 bags of clothes and two hats, that you weren’t wearing to the charity shop.  Also on the gratitude list that your mother didn’t punch you when you were all PMT’d up and throwing things because of  the stupid IKEA instructions for assembling the new stopgap.

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Oh and patch the hole you managed to create in the throwing of said things.

 

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Hubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble

Posted on September 8, 2014 by nicdempsey

This year, along with the cocktail cherries, I made cherry brandy. It’s still steeping away but having made that I didn’t stop there. I’ve also had a go at raspberry and plum gins. Although there’s no actual hubble or bubble, it’s still seems like a witchy thing to do, leaving fruit to seep in alcohol and making something altogether different.

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They are all pretty simple to make and will be ready for Christmas. My plan is to decant into miniature bottles and box up all three as a ‘set’  for Christmas presents. If you look up fruit gins on the web, you’ll see loads of recipes.

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The general consensus for cherry brandy seemed to be a litre of alcohol, 1 kg of cherries and 300g of sugar. It’s steeping nicely and it’s good but if I had a criticism it’s that it’s a bit sweet. So I knew that with both of these I wanted to use less sugar. My original plan was to use gin for the raspberries and vodka for the plums. Although the consensus is to use cheap alcohol and I will confess that the brandy I used for the cherry was half Waitrose’s 3 Year Old stuff  and half Lairds Applejack (which is probably why it’s tasting a bit sweet). I know nothing about vodka and have no idea about what represents good value in cheap vodka, but the Bombay Dry Gin, which I quite like and is much better than the Bombay Saphire, was on special offer and cheaper than the same amount of Sainsburys Own Brand Vodka. I opted to use that for the plums. In retrospect, I feel I should have gone for my usual choice of ‘cheap’ gin – Beefeater, because I like it and the alcohol by volume is 40% not 37.5% as the Bombay is (I presume to keep the price down, as it used to be 40% abv).

I ended up using a litre of gin to a kilo of plums and 200g of sugar. I’m going to leave that for 3 months so I’ll strain and bottle it in November which will give it a while to mature before Christmas. DSCF4777

There is more riding on the raspberry gin, my friend Jonny makes really good raspberry gin from his allotment raspberries and the first year he made it, I tasted it, told him it was good but that he shouldn’t ever use Gordons for this ’cause of the ABV.  I was considering Tanqueray (also on special offer) or Beefeater for this  but decided to use the glut of Plymouth that I had in my cupboard (I bought a bottle on special offer a while ago, forgetting that I already had a bottle in the cupboard!) because it’s my trusty gin staple and everyone knows how much I love it! To make this I ended up using less sugar because the gin isn’t going to steep for very long. According to Jared Brown, no more than two weeks. So I’m going to decant when I get home from holiday.

So a litre of gin, 500g raspberries and 100g sugar.

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I’ll update you on them as I decant them and if there’s time and I can pick them, there may be a small batch of blackberry gin too!

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Friday Links

Posted on September 5, 2014 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday, this week was busy and social and although I’m mentally ready for a holiday, in terms of actually being ready, I’m not sure! Here are this week’s links…

1) As I’m heading up North today (nearly to Scotland) I found this, about how the independence debate is changing attitudes, interesting.

2) Whatever happens in Scotland there does need to be some change in English governance. My solution would be to devolve the English government (putting it’s authority somewhere north of London, Birmingham is right in the middle of the country, and make Westminster a federal government. That way some of the regions will get more of a say and more attention. I love my city but we need to address the issues of investment elsewhere in the country, the lack of balance isn’t good for London or the rest of the country.

3) Barbara Ellen on how childless women are seen as less. The debate in the comments is truly appalling and devolves into fighting. The problem as I see it is that being single and childless seems to mean that I count less. I pay more council tax than a couple but use less services, my cost of living is a higher proportion of my salary. I don’t really mind that I’ll pay more in taxes than I’ll ever get out of the system because that’s what societies should do. I do mind that all political debate and policies seem to be aimed at ‘hardworking families’, because I work hard and I’m part of society and it would be nice for my contribution to be acknowledged. If political debate is biased, socially it’s even worse.

4) Finally some creative thinking about housing. And shame on Labour central office for not doing anything as interesting.

5) Israel and Russia are doing the same thing but the US only imposes sanctions on one of them. This.

6) I’ve been saying this about the ‘privatisation’ of the trains in the UK for years!

Imagine having a landlord who did up your flat, chucked in a wetroom and some top-of-the-range white goods – then reduced your rent, so that he was really paying you to live there. You have just dreamed up Britain’s privatised rail network. Except it’s not all that private. Instead, you could call it the Great British Rake-Off: the state makes the investment; the train firms and their shareholders rake off the cash. And if the sums don’t work out, an operator can do the business equivalent of binning a runny baked Alaska by walking away – just as GNER did with the east coast main line

7) People who refuse to sell to developers. This turns into the story of Edie Macefield and it’s fascinating.

8) Holidays and what to do with your sourdough starter. Mine gets fed and put in fridge, so far I’ve never had an issue, but I’m pretty laid back about it and have rescued it from oblivion more times than I’d care to admit.

 

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What I’d Tell You

Posted on September 4, 2014 by nicdempsey

If we were out for drinks or coffee and you asked what was happening with me right now, this is what I’d tell you….

My week has been fuelled by coffee, berocca and mild (not really mild at all) panic about how much there is to do before I go away and yes I do realise that this has made me significantly less fun to be around this week.

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Because work has been so busy, I’ve been leaving the house by 7.15am and leaving work somewhere between 6pm and 7pm, I don’t much care for the hours but being in the office before 8.30am has been good and I think that I’ll try to get into the habit again.

I’ll also tell you how happy I am that we’re getting a third person in the team and that the person we’re getting is the person I used as the model of what we need. Sometimes things just work and I’m so pleased that we have the right person and that they are excited about working with us. I’ll also tell you that the whole having to step up and manage a team without actually being their manager is going to be a stretch but it’s what my manager wants me to do and it’s a good stretch for my work brain!

While we were talking about work, I’d tell you that I really loathe mardy* people but I especially loathe it when it’s in a office setting because work is not the place for mardy-ness and yes I have been dealing with someone acting like this all week. Also isn’t mardy a good word.

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I’d tell you how much I’m looking forward to tomorrow and our holiday. I’d tell you that there are very few people I would happily be in a car with for 7 ish hours but Ma is one of them.

I’d tell you about how much I’m looking forward to old castles, big sky and Barter Books

It won't be this sunny but I don't really care...

It won’t be this sunny but I don’t really care…

I’d also tell you about the various children running around the edges of my life. That Oli is starting school next week, that the twins went back to school yesterday and are not happy about it! That I babysat for Kathy and Adam’s two on Saturday and got kissed goodnight (there are reasons that this is a big deal and it’s more than I get from Oli!). Also how strange it is, that combination of sad and right that they are all growing up and getting big and turning into themselves. It’s a privilege to watch them (and watch over them as needed) but it really makes me aware of time passing and I now I get how our parents feel about us!

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Which would lead neatly on to Ryan because he’s all grown up (well as much as he’s going to be) but part of me can’t shake the feeling that he’s actually still little. We had coffee on Saturday because I basically ambushed him at work (he works in Ealing so it’s easy to do) and that’s probably the most effective way of getting to see him.

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Then exhausted by the effort of talking for so long, I’d probably fall asleep because I tons of fun to be around at the moment!

What would you tell me?

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*Mardy is a word that I get from my mum who got it from her mum, it’s a midlands/yorkshire word for and used for people who are (this is what wiki says) awkward; uncooperative; bad tempered; whiny; aloof; stroppy, moody, miserable or sulking like a small child.

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