Looking for a circumflex with a less fattening centre....

If I use more than two herbs in my cooking, then I regard myself to be on a culinary roll. So using three this afternoon, I tell you, I was on fire. Homemade beef soup. Not stew, as such. I was using the remnants of the Sunday roast. Everything hubbling and bubbling on the stove, I was light in spirit when I got the message.
"On way. It's pancake day!!"

Talk about throwing an iced bucket on my joie de vivre. That little message signalled all the boyish enthusiasm of my Dearest husband for pancakes.  Like today is the only day of the year he feels he can request them. And in his mind's eye, this will be the year that they will fly, paper-thin in the air, landing on his plate, lathered in lemon and sucre. The reality is that every year, I scoop together glutinous dough from a pan that resolutely refuses to submit to my vigorous tossing, squish it into a pancake shape and smother it in ice-cream.

But not tonight, pardonnez moi, my loyal French readers, I had to try something different. In The Sunday Times Nadiya Hussain (previous winner of Bake Off) gave a recipe for American pancakes. . Described as small, compact and plump. They had my very name on them. I even made the fruit sauce to go with. Apple and blueberries. Shape-wise, the pancakes bore a passing resemblance to the picture. If you shut your good eye. And held the magazine at arm's length.

After thirty six years of practising, I am sadly resigned that I am crap at crepes (with or without a circumflex).

These are Nadiya's....shadow is mine

Phoning a friend...

I did something novel today. I picked up the phone and spoke to an old friend. I hadn't spoken to her for about twenty years, I'm guessing. We keep in touch by sporadic email and by an exchange of  pucker communications on the Christmas card. You know, ones that gives you the juicy highlights of the year in handwriting.

What prompted this spontaneity at 9.05 this morning was that I heard about the Oscar debacle on the wireless. What a mess up. La La Land (my least loved film of the moment) believing that they had received yet another reward, were interrupted in their acceptance speech by being told an error had been made with the envelopes, and that Moonlight had won that category instead. Oh grandissmo cock-up. Nobody hurt. World still turning. But embarrassment factor reaching record highs on the blushometer.

So this morning, I thought of dear Janice who was an Assistant Floor Manager with me in BBC Scotland in the late seventies. She is still in the business and annually does the National Television Awards. She has made mention of the nerve-wracking business of envelopes on the night, and how she becomes their  fiercesome guardian. Terrifying younger colleagues whose mothers were not even born when she first started out in theatre. So I called her to tell her that, at last, the importance of her job had finally been publicly acknowledged.
Well, that is to say, a very old friend delighted in sharing the moment and hearing that wonderful voice again.
                                    

Trouble With the Wind...

Imagine an old lady. Tartan sheepskin-lined slippers with dangly pompoms, apron always on, curlers in hair, partly covered by headscarf. Meet the kindly old Doris of my youth.. Her only puff would be on a Players Number Six (or a Numby as I recall fondly they were called in my student days).

Today's Doris, with gale-force winds and worse, is a bit of a hell-raiser. Everywhere I've been, there are bins, if emptied, blown-over, or if not, the lids blown-open and their contents disgorged along the pavements. This is the South East where we are experiencing a less tumultuous visit from Storm Doris than the rest of the country. If I weren't such a sturdy girl, I could have been felled this morning. 

Talking of which, you could have bowled me over with a feather, when I read in today's papers that no longer are 5 portions of fruit 'n'veg good enough for healthy living. Now, if we wish to circumnavigate the potential deathtraps of life, we have to double the number we first thought of. Yes, 800 grams of fruit and vegetables is what is being recommended.  

I would regard myself as a generally healthy eater who has a small (but pronounced) predilection for quality alcohol, and the occasional (highly calorific) nibble, but even I quail at the sheer volume we should now be contemplating. 

Dear Lord, if, as a nation, we put this into practice we'll all be giving Storm Doris a run for her money.

Food to blow you away....

                       

Salad Days...

On the eve of my weekly weigh-in, I ruminate about food. By this time of night I am usually sated. Full of natural yoghurt and mixed berries. What? You're saying I'm full of something else?
Anyway, as I was saying, before you rudely interrupted, I am generally thinking about food. Food already scoffed during the week, and wondering with trepidation whether or not it will have any impact when I hit the scales tomorrow morning. If smelling paint fumes had any calorie-burning properties then I should float above the vibrating dial tomorrow.

I have to say that my eye was caught by an article yesterday about pizzas. Now, of all red-light foods, I genuinely find pizza highly resistible. So I was quite interested to see how pizza sales in this country are on the increase. The new angle is to develop toppings that contain healthy food groups. If I were to have one at all, I would go for a Margherita, nothing too fancy. I cannot begin to imagine how I would cope with finding beetroot, kale or broccoli as a topping. I would turn into some picky eater who carefully removed them, to eat them from the side.

A friend sent me this. No, it really wasn't me, eating the pizza. But it did make me smile.

Wong shade of white?

Dunnarf. A hark back to my youth. I was too well brought up to use it, but I have used it several times this week. 

Firstly, to describe my Annie Sloane project. Cor! That chalk paint dunnarf stink! Its pungent malodour hung around for days. I had to cut up raw onions and leave them on a plate in an attempt to restore some olfactory order.

And so today, once again with painters back in residence, the wong of Dulux hangs in the air. Wait a minute, did I say Dulux? Come closer. Let me whisper in your ear.. The white paint-work will be Dulux ; the walls will be Farrowed and Balled. Let's face it : bright white is white, surely? 

That's what I think anyway. But if I'm wrong, then I ain't arf gonna be in the khaki.

                                                            Versus....

Footnote 8: Bunion bulletins bore for Britain...

I'm suffering from Bunion ennui. Yes, I am truly bored with banging on about bunions. But I have  the issue of nomenclature. I named this blog The Great British Bunion and thereby shot myself in the foot, so to speak. I have a duty of care, therefore, to those poor buggers who limp to my blog in search of useful information. So for the rest of my dear precious readers, please bear with.

The second operation to straighten my second toe does not appear to have worked. It seems to be as angular as ever. Another medical visit beckons, but frankly, short of going though the whole schamozzle again, I am tempted to call it a day. Meanwhile the bunion on the other side is giving intermittent gyp.
I would like to have that hewn at some point in the future, because when all is said and done, shoes fit more comfortably now on the left foot.  That is a positive.

Just returned from a few days away in Hampshire with the family, great and small, and four-legged. The Feraro Rocher mountain was divided unequally between eight of us, and Petersfield had its own Farrow and Ball stockist. A little something for everyone. So we added two more sample pots to our new mountain of paint pot testers which reaches a critical tipping point tomorrow when our decorators return. I have got to the stage where I only have to look at a colour chart to feel queazy.
"Well, we've narrowed it down to 28," said my Dearest husband, breezily.
"So, I'll leave that with you then."
Great.

Says it all...

                                       

Re-Cycling Valentines...

I've been unearthing crud. Interesting crud. Naturally. How could you possibly imagine it would be dull crud? I have a spare room full of memorabilia. Spent Sunday silently weeping over letters of condolence written to my mother when my father died in February 1982. Why do it to yourself? Should these letters be kept as part of a social history to hand down, when emails and the internet will render ephemeral family memories? Or should they be disposed of? Or should it be someone else's decision?
Came across a handwritten card from my father to my mother which he gave her presumably on their wedding day. It gave me joy.

                                             

I then came across a Valentine from my Dearest husband. No, not one he'd written recently. Oh, my lovelies, surely you didn't think that? One he'd written, or not, as was the case, back in the seventies.
No handwritten message, as obviously he believed a Valentine should be anonymous. But what a whopper! HYB it had on the outside. All these years later, I pondered. What could that stand for? "Hi, You're Beautiful"? Obviously.

I opened it up. "How's your bod?" it asked.  How's my bod? What the heck? I felt as bewildered as I must have done, forty years ago.
In the absence of any other acknowledgement of the day (cool with that, totally) I shall put it up in a prominent position for when he gets home. It might slow down the scoffing of the Ferraro Rocher mountain he intends scaling, once the grandchildren arrive.
Or maybe not.

Mine's a big one. So is the card.