Category: food

Considered Trifle

A post-birthday pudding after our family lunch of curry, rice and naans which has left us bursting out of our trousers. We scored 10 on the GSQ, later upgraded to 11 when we checked that the four Chinese gentlemen flowers were also the four flowers in mah jong like we said.
A2 is reading Midnight and Blue by Ian Rankin. Third book in a row in which the hero hangs out in a library.

So This Is Christmas


The tree is lit and the presents are unwrapped. Lots of books and art stuff for A2, even more books and a computer (Pi500) for A1, coffee, a new wok and films to watch for us all. And here is our traditional Christmas dinner: potatoes, sprouts, cauliflower, carrots, Yorkshire puddings, pigs in blankets, stuffing balls, gravy and enough roast pork to last us into the New Year.
A2 is about to read Absolution by Jeff Vandermeer (thx A1). We are watching Slow Horses Season 4.

Brioche, Banana, Blueberry and Booze Bread and Butter Bake Again

Another iteration of this cheap, simple and tasty pudding which followed our family dinner of pork in cider with carrots and peas with pizza, salad and chips for the youngsters. We were ill last week so we had 2 quizzes to do and scored 9.5 on one and 13 on the other.
November was below averagely rainy and sunny and our second coldest November of all time.
A1 is rereading The Readymade Thief* by Augustus Rose. A2 is rereading Have Mercy on Us All by Fred Vargas.

Heaven and Hell

Thank you for the beer Gez. We had shepherd’s pie and Parkin with custard for our family meal and scored a mighty 11.5 on the GSQ.
A1 is reading Judgement Prey* by John Sandford. A2 is rereading This Night’s Foul Work by Fred Vargas. Can’t believe that any cat, let alone a fat indolent creature that has to be carried everywhere, would run 35 kilometres on the scent of a missing person.

Another Delicious Cake

Served up by A1 for our family dinner which also featured chicken bacon broccoli cooked in our new shiny cooking pot, homebrew minestrone soup for the veggies and a selection of soft drinks including some very fruity Percy Pig flavoured coffee (thx G&D). We were on a roll and scored a mighty 12 on the GSQ.
A1 is rereading The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley. A2 is rereading Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel, which features some of the characters from The Glass Hotel interacting with visiting time travellers from the Moon.

Dish of the Day: Pink Fairy Trifle

We had a lot of milk to use up (thx Gez) so our family dinner today was Vinyl Detective Macaroni Cheese (qv) followed by this trifle with the jelly made of milk instead of water. Here’s how it looked without the toppings:
Thanks to all the dairy produce fortifying our brains, we managed to score 13 on the GSQ, bringing our average back above 10 at last.
A2 is reading Guilty by Definition by Susie Dent (thx A1, but never pay full price for a cash-in crime novel by a beloved TV personality again). Susie knows a shitload (coarse slang; earliest known use is from 1954, in a translation by B Frechtman and JT Nile) of obscure words and uses them all, to the detriment of plot, character and reading pleasure.

Mid-Autumn Moon Festival Banquet

A feast in advance of the full moon on Tuesday. We ate fried rice, sweet and sour pork, rainbow chicken, siu mai, har gow, jiaozi, tea eggs, fish balls, lobster balls and parkin with custard and did the last two weeks’ quizzes, scoring 12 on one and 9 on the other.
Thank you for the coffee, concrete and cement, folks, and the gloves too! Oh and thank you Faye for the lovely cloud/cake badge card.
[Update]: Only found out later that it was Observe the Moon Night. Moon, consider yourself observed; we’ve got certificates to prove it.

Happy Birthday Lee

Cherry, almond and coconut cake, rum and coca-cola and SIX BOOKS: The Conspirators lead us to the Precipice overlooking the Lake of Darkness which receives some Enlightenment from Gabriel’s Moon but ends in Death at the Sign of the Rook. Thank you A1. Sadly the family cannot join us because Gez is hors de covid. More cake for us.
Meanwhile A1 is rereading Holly by Stephen King and A2 is rereading Fatherland by Robert Harris, an alternative history set in 1960s Nazi Berlin which, like so many novels set in that place and polity, features a feisty American girl reporter.

Dish of the Day: G&T Cheesecake

Last week we were musing on the existence of gin and tonic cheesecake and the next day there was a recipe in the newspaper. So here it is. It was not bad and nor were the excellent pork chops in cider with garden beans and broccoli that began the meal (with cheese omelettes for the veggies). We did the 30-question summer quiz and scored an average of 10.75/15 and then scored 9 on this week’s quiz. Average still under 10 — just.
A1 is reading Banquet of Beggars* by Chris Lloyd, the latest of his Paris Occupation crime novels. Really well written, with an absorbing plot based on the black market scams under the Nazi rule. And the detective protagonist is so well-drawn you imagine him upbraiding the author — in his usual sarcastic manner — for piling so many troubles on him.
A2 is reading Fourteen Days* by 36 different writers; a Decameron for the time of covid.
August was the third coolest, second driest and fifth cloudiest on our records.

Dessert du Jour: Strawberry Cheesecake

A delicious and extremely filling pudding which we enjoyed with both our morning coffee and our evening meal of macaroni cheese, cheesy biscuits and salad, accompanied by delicious Swedish gin (tak Lena) We had two quizzes to catch up on and scored 8 on one and 9 on the other, dragging our average back below 10.
A1 is reading The Hanging Wood by Martin Edwards, an unlikely and confusingly overpopulated crime novel. A2 is reading House of Silence* by Patricia Marques; a disappointingly dull story about a telepathic Portuguese detective.

Pineapple Upside-down Cake

This cake suffered a bit from the cook forgetting the eggs and the accompanying mushroom stroggers was started far too early and came out somewhat overcooked. Luckily they were both edible. We had 2 quizzes to catch up on and scored 8.5 on one and 9 on the other. Oh dear.
A1 is reading The Unwanted Dead* by Chris Lloyd, French noir (appropriately), set in the immediate aftermath of the Nazis entering Paris in 1940. CL has an astonishing new take on the detective protagonist: he has inner demons, a failed marriage, drink and drug problems and an estranged child. How do they come up with these ideas? (OK, I’m being a bit unfair here — it’s actually rather good, well-written and involving, even though our hero does get battered a lot. Certainly worth seeking out the next two books.)
A2 is reading Resolution* by Irvine Welsh. The ex-detective protagonist has a serious drink problem , shedloads of inner demons and wreaks apocalyptic vengance on three men who assaulted him in childhood even though in the course of his revenge he gets stabbed, thrown from a height and buried in quick-setting concrete.

Monopoly Money

City centre publicity for a school holidays event.
We had chicken bacon and broccoli (with our garden broccoli which has all ripened at once) for our family dinner, with Manchester pudding for afters and scored a sad 8 on the GSQ.
A1 is reading The Missing Family by Tim Weaver. A2 is reading The Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmyre, which disappeared up its own arse.

Garden Raspberry Cake

Gez was cavorting at a festival in France this weekend so we were not sure if the family dinner was on the cards, but she arrived home in time and we slapped together a dinner of pasta followed by this slapdash cake and managed to score 11 on the GSQ.
A1 is reading Gallows Rock* by Yrsa Sigurdasdottir. A2 is reading The Silver Collar* by Antonia Hodgson.

Damn Fine Cherry Pie and Damn Fine Coffee

A pre-birthday cake for the incomparable Chris.
Recipe: line a pie tin with shop-bought shortcrust pastry. Beat 100g of butter with 100g sugar, beat in 2 eggs, stir in 100g ground almonds and a dollop of Amaretto. Fill pastry case with this mixture, poke in 200g of stoned cherries, bake at 160 degrees for half an hour or until done.
We served this after our family dinner of spaghetti and sauces but sadly did not do the quiz because Dave was indisposed. Next time then.
Later, 23:00:
We were a bit dubious about these possible noctilucent clouds, but Space Weather seemed to think they were:

Dads’ Day

Happy Fathers’ Day, daddies! And a nice day at last with 11kWh of sunshine.
We had cottage pie and Aunt Celia’s lemon pudding for our family dinner, did this week’s and last week’s quizzes and scored 12 on each. Yay!
A1 is rereading Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell. A2 is rereading Gnomon by Nick Harkaway. “It’s not like anyone asks you for your passport at the polling booth,” it says. Yeah right!

Manchester Pudding

To celebrate our return from Manchester, A2 looked for a regional dish and found this pudding. Recipe adapted to our gadgets: warm milk, sugar butter and breadcrumbs in microwave, beat in egg yolks, air fry on bake setting for 15 mins, stir, give it a couple more minutes, slather on the jam, dollop on the egg whites beaten with sugar, nuke it at 200° for 4 minutes. Done and yum!
A2 is reading Undoctored by Adam Kay.

Fried Alaska

Our attempt at making individual baked Alaskas in the air fryer as a coda to our family lunch of porky veg and rice. It worked very well so here is the recipe:
Cut a shop-bought Swiss roll into 6 pieces and put each piece in an empty Gü pot.
Fill pots to top with shop-bought ice cream.
Beat 2 egg whites with 40g of caster sugar until stiff and spoon on top of each pot.
Put pots in freezer until after dinner, then air fry at 200° for 3 minutes.
Caramba!
We did 2 weeks’ worth of quizzes and scored 12 in one and 10.5 in the other so still in double figures.
A1 is reading Strindberg’s Star* by Jan Wallentin, a kind of halfhearted attempt at a Swedish version of Katherine Neville’s The Eight: a conspiracy involving ancient artefacts with many real-life characters and events dragged in (the titular Strindberg and his brother, Himmler, Fritz Haber, Nobel, Swedenborg, etc etc). But unlike KN’s splendidly enjoyable effort, JW gives us an incoherent plot and a useless and uninvolving protagonist, and poor writing (not helped by a US translation). Rubbish — but not entertaining rubbish, sadly.
A2 is reading Hazards of Time Travel* by Joyce Carol Oates; a boring and pointless novel in which a bolshy teenager from an ultra-authoritarian USA is punished by being transported to the 1950s.
What We Missed
Last night was one of the best aurora displays of the past 500 years, easily visible from here. But we slept through it.

2 Years On

A trifling gift of socks for the cotton anniversary, and a socking great trifle.
We had a belated and depleted (no Dave, no Faye) family dinner of Vinyl Detective Macaroni Cheese (qv), salad and the aforementioned trifle. The quiz has been postponed until next weekend.