Chris was out on the terrace with his camera ready to catch the sunrise this morning and this is what he saw…
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The River Teign in the Morning Sunshine
Photographs of the River Teign at low tide. The sunshine made us realise that we are still in autumn, not winter.
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- Low Tide
The Birds and Other Flying things
There were some strange sights in the air above Trago Mills this morning…
Not a Walk in the Park
At about eight o’clock this morning Chris beckoned me to the window to look at some magnificent clouds, glowing as if on fire, out on the horizon of the sea; as I took photographs I noticed the man, perhaps finishing his night shift, on the sea wall.
And tonight, as I go to bed, another man in orange takes his station. I can’t help but admire those men working in all weather at all times of night and day.
Three Birds at a Time!
You could call Roly a bit of a “bird-magnet” – must be because he has plenty of bread!
The Masterchef Birthday Dinner
Inspired by one of last weeks episodes of Masterchef (for the Professionals) – the one where the chefs were asked to make a feast from old scraps like fish heads, peelings, bones and skin – I decided to look in the back of the fridge for the ingredients of my birthday feast this evening.
“Don’t worry too much about me, I’m still full from your wonderful scones,” said Chris as he saw me pull out the old left-over burgers from the Bonfire Night celebrations on Friday.
“I think they’re still okay,” I assured him. (The scones were consumed at eleven-thirty in the morning!)
“Well, just one, I do like your home-made burgers,” Chris tried to sound more enthusiastic.
“I know,” I had a brainwave, “I’ll call it ‘Deconstructed Burgers’, or spaghetti, as you’ve never known it before!”
“Oh? Alright, but not too much then. You know how I find spaghetti rather filling,” said Chris warily.
And this is how to make “Deconstructed Burgers”…
Deconstructed Burgers
Ingredients:
3 four-day old beef burgers
1 spoon of old fried onion (which were in the Tupperware container with the burgers)
2 sticks limp celery
5 fresh (but old) mushrooms
1 floret fairly fresh broccoli
1 tin chopped tomatoes
2 Oxo cubes
1 handful dried linguine pasta sticks
Grated parmesan
Method:
Boil water for linguine in large saucepan. Forget to add salt. Do not worry about timing.
Take a slightly smaller pan and add a little olive oil. Cut the mushrooms and the limp celery before frying in the hot oil.
Deconstruct the burgers (cut into small pieces) and throw in with the vegetables. Add tin of chopped tomatoes and sprinkle in some dried oregano (or similar, if your glasses aren’t at hand and you can’t read the labels).
Grind some Himalayan pink salt over the sauce (then take the top off the grinder); add some white pepper, which Chris doesn’t care for (but he will never know); add the old onion rings and, if it still tastes funny, add one (or more) crushed cloves of garlic.
Finely cut the floret of broccoli and throw it in with the deconstructed burgers. Cook for ten minutes on a low heat.
Fork out the pieces of broccoli.
Drain the linguine and rinse with hot water. Leave to dry while you fork out more bits of green floret. When nearly cold serve the pasta onto similarly cold plates (you may need to use two or three sturdy implements to separate the mass into strands.
Spoon the deconstructed burger sauce onto the pasta and sprinkle on some Parmesan cheese (or cheaper substitute from Lidl’s).
Et voila! Bon appetite!
We did eat well, so well that, we felt quite full very quickly; indeed, most of the pasta and half of the sauce were left at the end of the birthday feast.
“What was the funny green stuff in the sauce?” asked Chris. “It wasn’t mold – was it?”
“How skeptical!” I laughed, “I’ll have you know that the broccoli was about the only thing that really was fresh!”
Don’t Drink and Fly
My friend, Janine, in Australia had this on her Facebook page and it made me laugh.
A Bit of String and the Hard Stuff – Jokes
Two jokes from Darren, who will soon be leaving for Australia with our daughter, Susannah.
A Bit of String
A thin piece of string went into a bar and asked the barman:
“May I have a pint of beer please?”
“No. Certainly not,” replied the barman.
“Go on, this is such a nice pub and I’m dying for a pint,” he cajoled.
“It makes no difference what you say – I’m not serving you,” the barman folded his arms across his barrel chest.
“Why won’t you serve me?” asked the piece of string in his rather high-pitched voice.
“Well, you’re a bit of string – aren’t you? I don’t serve bits of string,” he said with finality.
The piece of string, crestfallen, drooped his shoulders and walked out of the bar; but when the barman wasn’t looking he sidled back in unnoticed (which was quite easy because he was so skinny) and he went to the Gent’s. He looked at his tiny frame in the mirror and wondered what he should do. Suddenly he had a brainwave; he tied himself into a big knot and pulled at both his ends until the ends had frayed into hundreds of strands. Then he went back into the bar.
“I’ll have a pint of beer please, young man,” said the piece of string in the deepest voice he could summon up.
“No, you’re that bit of string that was in here a few minutes ago, aren’t you?” responded the canny barman.
“No,” came the reply, “I’m a frayed knot!”
The Hard Stuff
Oddly enough, in the very same bar on the same day that the bit of string tried to get a drink…
A huge lump of concrete came in and heaved himself up the bar, and he said to the bewildered barman:
“I’m the hardest hunk of concrete going and I want a pint of the best.”
Unprepared to quarrel with the hulk before him, the barman poured the beer and the customer took his beer over to a large table.
A few minutes later a lump of tarmac, as black as the ace of spades, dragged himself up the bar and said:
“I’m the hardest lump of tarmac going and I want a pint of ice-cold lager.”
The barman, who was English, resisted the urge to scoff at the tarmac for ordering the preferred drink of Australians, and he poured him a reasonably cold lager. The tarmac took a sip and shook his head (if indeed that is what the big ugly lump at the top actually was) but he was in no mood for a fight and he went over to the big table where the concrete was lolling.
A short while later the biggest imaginable piece of red tarmac squeezed through the five-foot wide doorway and went up to the barman.
“I’m the biggest, hardest chunk of red tarmac going,” he began, “give me a pint of beer pronto little man!”
The humongous red tarmac shot a quick glance over at the biggest table but went with his beer to another table and sat alone. The barman wondered why the elephantine trio did not sit together.
“Why don’t you all sit together?” the polite barman asked the slightly more agreeable hard concrete and the black tarmac.
“We ain’t sitting with him,” they answered, horrified, in unison, “He’s a cycle-path!”
Birdbrains
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- No, Let’s take a look at the sandwich boards over there – something is free…
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- You know I always wanted to be a stunt rider…
Lolita
Lolita, light of my life (for a month or so). My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: lo, what a shocker and affront to womanhood; lee, to the side, protected from the wrathful wind of public opinion by the sheer genius of the writing, the humour, and, ultimately, the morality; ta, thank you Vladimir Nabokov, in Heaven, surely?
In answer to Diana’s question (she couldn’t make it to bookclub this month), the bookworms were not able to come to a unanimous conclusion, mainly because at least three of them couldn’t bring themselves to finish the book. I would not have continued reading past the death of the character of Charlotte Haze had it not been for Chris urging me to read on. Actually, Jeremy Irons read it to me on Youtube whilst I painted (as you may know I paint for a living), and when he had finished I made him read it to me all over again; and then I started to read the book for myself, which is when I truly began to appreciate the beauty of the writing and the humour. No, I don’t think Nabokov had an unnatural interest in prepubescent girls, I think he was fascinated by Humbert Humbert, his anti-hero creation. In Nabokov’s own words (from a television interview), “I don’t know any little girls…”