Tomorrow is World Gin Day and there’s loads of gin related stuff happening, this year the lovely Gin Monkey is in charge.
I have a prior appointment to get my haircut so won’t be attending any of the events that are popping up. I will of course be drinking some gin. So this week, I thought I’d link to all of the various cocktails that I’ve made for FNC that have gin in them!
Happy Friday, it’s been a difficult week for me and I’ve spend an lot of it feeling that I’ve been hit by a bus. So only two links because I just haven’t spent much time at the computer.
1) Stuart Maconie on Michael Gove and education policy. Spot on…
Tory activist Tim Montgomerie smirked yesterday: “While I would love the nation’s children to be taught History Gove style – all Henry VIII, Shaftesbury and Churchill – I wouldn’t like Ed Balls having that power
2) The bedroom tax, isn’t having the affect the Govt. thought it would. That’s what happens when you don’t listen to the people who actually have knowledge and go off half cocked..
And so it has proved, because the obstacles are as immovable as scores of people said. One- and two-bed flats in particular are impossible to come by and, in any case, people are understandably reluctant to leave behind the networks of family and friends. So, they are staying put, and suffering – as proved by a slow trickle of human stories, which have already included one suicide.
Today’s post was supposed to be about World Oceans Day and sustainable fish. I know you can hardly contain yourself and if you hang on that post is coming, it’s just going to take a little time because there is so much to say and I haven’t really had the time to sit down and think about it.
Instead, I’m going to write about dying. Which sounds even less exciting than a post about fish! However, it’s on my mind, so bear with me.
There was a period of time when it seemed like everyone I knew was dying or had died. That’s mostly Dempsey melodrama, it was about 4 people that I was close to over about 8 years, it wasn’t exactly a plague but did it seem as if every time I was getting back to a ‘normal’, someone else was sick.
I was also for much of that time, depressed and involved with a bunch of people that were not good for me. The dead people didn’t help but they were only a small part of the problem.
Anyway, in the last eight or so years, I’ve got over myself, which is why when I read Jenny’s wrote a post about her dad, I was surprised about my reaction to it.
And on this journey to death there is a drawing in, a needing more, a silencing of a once-strong voice, a diluting of a dominant personality. There is a sadness at what is being lost and a deep gratitude for all that has been.
It’s a beautiful post, Jenny’s experience with her dad, is the opposite of my experience. Grandad died after he’d been in hospital for a week, Stef was diagnosed and died within 3 months, my Dad had a heart attack.
I have no experience or understanding of the gradual decline into dying. For me, having people in my life that are dying has been all about the stuff that needs to be done.
With Grandad it was about being with him, making sure that he was clean shaven and helping Mum. Grandad was 83, once he was told he was actually dying, he was very calm about it. Certain that he was going to a better place, he said goodbye and was at peace with it. Death didn’t hold any fear for him, being with him when he died wasn’t good exactly but it felt right.
Stef was different, he wasn’t even 40 yet and there were the twins and we kept getting overtaken by the cancer, we’d plan this and realise that no that wasn’t going to work because the cancer was somewhere else or he was having problems walking. About a week before he died, he had the ‘worse case scenario’ meeting with family and lawyers and put everything in place assuming he wasn’t going to wake up in the morning. That done, he asked us to refine the plan. He’d reached an understanding that there was never going to be enough time and we were just going to have to suck it up. There wasn’t a drawing in, he spent that week talking, telling the kids and everyone else how much he loved us and wanted to be around but that there would be a point were he would stop because he’d rather be dead than not know who he was. Stef died like someone who didn’t want to leave a party but knew that if he didn’t he’d end up being sick in the host’s bathroom and ruin the night.
Last night, I went to see Tina. She’s still Tina but has over the last couple of months gone from being sick to dying. Last night was the first time we’ve ever spoken about it, she said it could pretty much happen anytime. She was very Tina about it. Which boils down to “don’t be soppy about it” and for heavens sake “don’t emote all over me”
So I won’t. I’m going to remember what I said last week about tragic deaths. What’s happening to Tina is not nice and it feels like a tragedy but it’s not. Not for her, because she won’t bloody let it be, it’s sad for me because I will miss her and it’s terrible for Charles and Christina and Tom. However, it’s not about me, Tina wants her life to be about other things and so it is and so it will be. So I’m going to go and bake her a cake and take her some sourdough because those things would make her happy and drama and emotion would not.
I don’t know that this time is an invitation to patience and love, I don’t want T to be in this place and I can’t make anything better, there is nothing I can do to make any of this easier for T or Charles or their children.
What I remember about the time before Stef and Grandad died was that it wasn’t about me. It was about them and our relationship and the need to do the right thing. For Grandad it was knowing how to say goodbye, for Stef, looking after the things he couldn’t, for Tina it’s about getting on with it and hugs! So I’d better get a move on with that bread…
I’ve been thinking about trying sourdough bread for a while. I like making bread and sourdough tastes great. Also in May I found and now follow this blog by Annalisa Barbieri who waxes lyrical about sourdough and likes the same duralex glasses as me!
It seemed a bit complicated though, with making a starter and feeding it and then working out how to make the bread, if there’s one thing I’m pretty much allergic to in cooking, it’s complication. I kept the article from the Guardian a few weeks ago but didn’t do anything with it in, largely because it required wholemeal bread flour which I didn’t have and chucking half of it away which seemed a bit fussy not to mention wasteful, wholemeal bread flour is quite expensive and I was in a funk and it was all too much effort. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that there was a recipe on the back of the white bread flour packet for a starter that seemed easy. 70g flour with 70ml water in a jar, add the same amount every day for 7 days, then you can either use or stick in the fridge. It didn’t say that the flour had to be wholemeal or organic, it didn’t want you to chuck half of it away. So I pulled out a jar, gave it a quick wash and started.
I was so proud when after 2 days there were bubbles and a slightly funky smell. Every morning while I was making coffee, I added flour and water and gave it a stir. By day 5, I had bought some wholemeal bread flour and started to add half wholemeal, half white flour. I was and am ridiculously attached to my starter, I fed it for two weeks and then got worried, was it bubbling enough? It smelled like ripe bananas, was that right? There were two days when I forget to feed it, would that kill it? Did I need to start throwing it away? The jar cracked, I needed to make some bread and soon.
Starter
On Saturday morning at about 8am, I took 150g of my starter, added 250g of strong white bread flour, mixed it together and left it for the day.
On Saturday evening, I added 300g of bread flour (250g white, 50g brown wholemeal), a tablespoon of olive oil and 10g of sea salt and made a rough dough. I hate kneading dough. Hate it, I wish I found it therapeutic but mostly I find it a pain in the arse and tiring, so I decided to follow the Dan Lepard method as described in Annalisa’s blog. Partly because Annalisa seems to know what she’s talking about and I love Dan Lepard’s method for baps which is similar and has never let me down, in fact I was baking a batch of them for the freezer at the same time as I was faffing with the sourdough.
So the method is mix the dough, rest for 10 mins, knead for 10 seconds on an oiled surface, repeat twice, rest for 30 minutes, knead for 10 seconds, rest for an hour, knead for 10 seconds twice. Then follow the recipe. It’s easier than it sounds but it takes three hours. Then I was supposed to prove for another couple of hours and give it an overnight rise. However, I was totally out of time and one of the things, I’ve become very relaxed about with all sorts of dough is just leaving it on the side in my kitchen and letting it do it’s thing. This is because I’m mostly quite forgetful and I’ve only had a ‘that bread done riz’ (if you can guess where the quote is from, I will love you forever!) disaster once in the last four years.
After it’s first rise
This is a really long winded explanation of why the dough only got an hour and a half to prove before I stuck it in a container for it’s overnight rise and didn’t put it in the fridge. Long story short, I ran out of time, which I kind of knew was going to happen and left it out on the counter overnight, praying that it could handle this kind of treatment because if it couldn’t it would be the last sourdough loaf I ever made!
Going to rest overnight
On Sunday morning, it looked pretty good and ready. I heated the oven and put two baking trays in it. Then I turned my dough out onto one of them, put a glass of ice cubes in the other and put everything back in the oven and left it for a bit. I didn’t have a spray to spray water on it, so I didn’t do that.
It’s alive..
Finally about 40 minutes later, I had bread.
Yes is was amazing, yes I should have let it cool a bit more before I started to eat it!
Since then I’ve made another two loaves, one above that was mostly white flour with a bit of wholemeal and one that was mostly wholemeal with a bit of white.
I started them on Thursday morning and baked one on Saturday morning and one on Sunday morning. The white turned out better than the brown but both tasted amazing and I can see this being a regular part of my weekly cooking.
Years ago, before they became really popular and therefore really hard to get, I had an allotment.
I loved it but it was a lot of work and stuff was happening and I had to give it up. Now I live in a flat with no garden and I really miss the opportunity to grow food. Even with a garden or an allotment, I wouldn’t really be able to grow all or even most of my food but I miss the sense of achievement that eating something I grew gives me. It’s better than eating toast and jam when you’ve made both the toast and the jam!
Given my recent success with my house plants, I decided that at the very least I could grow some herbs, I had a pot of parsley and rosemary bought from the supermarket. I add a pot of basil and planted them up. I think that the rosemary will last longer than the summer, but I’m more than happy to dig up and grow the basil and parsley again if needed! Eventually, I’ll add thyme and sage to the mix too!
Two weeks later, I filled another window box soil and taking advice from H (who was very happy to give me all the wisdom she gained last year) put carrot and radish seeds as well as mixed salad leaves and spinach. There’s a bit more room for some more salad leaves in a couple of weeks time.
I don’t know if it will work but I’m enjoying the process of growing stuff and it’s the best I can do until I get another allotment (which given the waiting list will be in about 20 years!)
So it’s been a week. One of things I love about this challenge is that it encourages a bit of effort every day. Each day I can do something that’s good for me and it’s been great to remember that when I have an off day or as right now when I’m in the middle of ‘migraine fortnight’, the two weeks that I’m more likely to get them and when I can only really focus on getting through the day and straight into sleep.
The challenge has reminded me that even on the days when my body and mind have been possessed by the spirit of a sloth, there are things that I do that are good for me and that it doesn’t take a lot to add to the good.
I’ve made little efforts that have made a big difference to how I feel. On Monday night, I finally got around to hoovering the hall and mopping the kitchen floor, I spent Tuesday night completely screen free, on Wednesday night I went to bed early with a book, I’ve taken 10 minutes to put a wash on or hang one out, I’ve written postcards, I’ve made bread. I’ve moisturised my feet and painted my nails.
As I said, I am in migraine fortnight, so I feel tired all the time and the best way I can describe it is ‘heavy’, it’s just like everything slows down. I also have terrible body image. Seriously it’s like a hall of mirrors, I can’t see anything in my appearance that I like at all, by the end of next week, I’ll enjoy my reflection again. Yes it is nuts and I know that, but knowing what’s going on and feeling ok about it are two very different things. This week, it’s been easier to be at peace about it. I’ve been able to say “yuck but that’s ok, it’ll be fine next week”, instead of spending the day feeling discontented and angry, I’ll just try and do something that gets me more points and adds to the good.
So with week one done and 12 more to go I have 815 points for body and 1215 points for mind.
My challenge for next week is to work on my body points and up my exercise.
How is everyone else doing with their goals and plans?
Friday Night Cocktails have been thin on the ground recently. I haven’t stopped drinking, but tend to have one perfect G&T and call it done.
However, this came up in my feed and I thought I’d try it. It’s a great cocktail, you should try it too!
Welcome to Friday, I hope you’ve all had a good week? Here are this week’s links:
Oxfam says “changes to the benefit system are the most common reasons for people using food banks”, but the Department for Work and Pensions disagrees, saying the benefits system leaves “no one having to struggle to meet their basic needs”. And that must be true, as long as you don’t include food as a basic need.
2) Why Finnish babies sleep in boxes. And have Europe’s lowest infant mortality rate..I wish the UK was so enlightened..
3) Now I need to go and re-watch A Prophet. You should too, it was a great film.
4) Zoe Williams on the ‘me-first’ parents. Also have a look at the comments for Diane Abbot defending her decision to send her son to private school. I get when Tories do it, but when Labour politicians do it, I get really cross. I went to a ‘bog-standard’ comprehensive and if at any point Ma had felt that my failure to succeed was down to more than my laziness (I was very lazy!) or that there was stuff going on at school that wasn’t right for me, she got involved and sorted it. If it wasn’t right for me, it wasn’t right for anyone else’s children either! Se worked full time but was one of the few parents that come to parents assemblies and so on. That’s what you do, you get involved and make sure that everyone gets a decent chance and it’s the ‘me-first’ parents that only fight for their children, claiming that their children are a special exception to what they believe in, that are the issue.
5) Things Boris Johnson should actually be doing instead of writing a Churchill biography. I’m not sure that we really need another Churchill biography, I would recommend Roy Jenkins’ Churchill which is brilliant, but as Mayor, Johnson gets paid £143,911 a year. I don’t begrudge the money, it’s a major and important job running London. You know what else it is or at least should be? A full time job. Johnson doesn’t have time to write a book, a column or arse about on have I Got News for You. He should be busy running my city. If he’s not or would like to do the part time, he should either take a pay cut or resign and let us elect a mayor that will commit themselves to the job full time.
6) David Sedaris on the joys of having a guest bedroom (and guests to put in them!)
Though there’s an industry built on telling you otherwise, there are few real joys to middle age. The only perk I can see is that, with luck, you’ll acquire a guest room.
7) This looks good.
I’m rubbish at remembering things. I forget simple things, when to take something out of the oven, where I put my keys/earphones/phone/shoes/lunchbox, what time I’m supposed to meet someone, what train I’m supposed to catch, the name of the new person in accounts that I’ve been introduced to three times.
I’m your basic nightmare for things like that. My mind just doesn’t work to help me remember that stuff. What I am good at remembering is odd information, cocktail recipes and birthdays and anniversaries, even if I don’t get around to doing anything about them, I do remember them.
Sometimes that ability can feel melodramatic and/or very sad, should you celebrate the birthday of the people that you loved who are dead and how do you do that?
Today would have been Kier and Stef’s birthday and it’s been a long time since this day was a day involving cake, candles and cards but we will remember. I’ll spend some time with Michael and we’ll talk about his boys and how we miss them.
I do miss them, we all miss them. We miss them because we don’t just miss the things they did or the things we did with them, as time moves on, we miss the things they didn’t see or do. I miss them most when the twins do something they haven’t done before, when I hear a new song and can’t share it, I’ll miss them today when we all sit down to dinner and talk and eat and feel like family because they would have loved that and we are still family because of them.
It gets easier each year to move through this day, which is as it should be although that has it’s own sadness too, I remember Stef saying that the worse thing about grief was knowing that you’d feel better eventually. It’s true, we’re getting to nearly a decade now and it’s not such a sharp pain now and I know that they would be glad of that. When I tell people about them, sometimes people tell me that it’s tragic, because the two of them died of the same disease and were be so young. I used to agree, it was tragic, it felt tragic.
Keir and then Stef chose not to have a headstone or plaque, we scattered their ashes and use the headstone in Brompton Cemetery and the grave above as the place we go if we want to ‘talk’ to them. We used to talk about ‘Annie’, who she might have been, why in this cemetery which is full of poems about angels and grief, all this one had was a date and an age. I always thought she was someone’s mistress but maybe the truth is that you can’t tell anything important from a gravestone, age, date, marital status don’t tell you who they really were or what impact they had on the people they knew.
You can’t determine whether they were loved, how they lived, what really mattered to them, who they changed from a headstone. Today though, if you see us, sitting at the table, talking and laughing and missing them, you’d know and although it was an awful thing to lose them and we’re not the same as we were, we were lucky to know them and to have them change and shape our lives.
Friday Night Pizza is a tradition at my house, on the Friday’s I spend at home, which is most of them! It’s easy, cheap, doesn’t require too much thought and is delicious. Generally, I use whatever vegetables are left in the fridge and cook them a bit and sun dried tomato paste as the sauce and whatever cheese is on hand. The major effort is making the dough but to be honest, that’s not that hard and you can make it in the morning before you go to work, leaving it on the side to rise during the day or if you find that too much work, you can make the dough at the weekend and freeze it, just make sure that you take it out to defrost before you go to work, I do both depending on how much energy and how busy a week it’s been!
Friday Night Pizza has become such a tradition that we took dough up to Northumberland with us for it and we’ve made it a couple of time with Oli, although he’s mostly interested in the cheese.
I’ve even convinced Ryan that it’s better than buying Domino’s and it’s great to eat cold as leftovers.
I’ve used lots of different versions of pizza dough and the latest and so far the best has been the one I found in Dinner, A Love Story. It’s actually Jim Lahey’s Pizza Crust with more yeast and less rise time, the original is all over the internet, but you should check out the DALS blog or cookbook both are excellent and full of good ideas, even if you don’t have kids!
It’s really easy to make and use, which is essential to Friday Night Pizza joy. I use 2 cups of bread flour and 1 and 3/4 plain flour although it’s good using just one type.
I really don’t like soggy pizza and I really don’t have the energy or the money to play about with pizza stones and peels especially on a Friday night. So I cook the pizza dough by itself for about 10 minutes and then flip it over, add the toppings and put it back in the oven for another 10 minutes, when the cheese is nice and melty it’s done.
