A Friday night bottle. It being Bonfire Night, we spent our evening indoors reassuring the cat that all these loud bangs and fizzes did not mean that she was required to poo on the landing carpet (which is what happened last year). Instead I opened this bottle of Rhubarb, Mint & Elderflower and cooked Tuna Surprise. The wine is a decent white, with elderflower being dominant.
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| A Google lion in our kitchen |
It was my first full day back home after two glorious weeks on holiday, and it was a restful, relaxing near-ordinary day. Okay, so I did about two and a half hours work, but I also made a cake (gooseberry orange drizzle), had a short walk, bathed with Claire, started my blackcurrant wine and watched an episode of The Crown. We also drank this bottle of orange wine to smoked haddock fishcakes, which was an excellent combination. Both are strong flavours and I could understand not liking either. However, I think both are fab!
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| Gooseberry & Orange Drizzle Cake |
Baked fish requires a citrus wine, and ginger very nearly fulfills that role. The wine was perhaps a little robust, but there was no struggle involved in finishing it. Nor in finishing the current book: Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty. I picked this up from one of the Little Free Libraries dotted around Leeds, expecting it to be trashy, badly written yet fun. It only matched the last of those - perhaps not Great Literature but extremely engaging and written with knowing humour. It was not what I expected - more Romance Structure and less Murder Mystery than anticipated.
Somehow Thursday nights have become a Full Bottle Night and that is not necessarily a Good Thing. When Lockdown eventually ends my liver is likely to breathe a sigh of relief.
The wine was chosen to go with Kittery Baked Fish and accompanied it nicely. Sharp citrus flavours go well with cod. Earlier in the day I watched a tree surgeon swing from ropes, taking branches off the hated Sycamore. Before he left I asked him to take another limb off our awful Goat Willow. I do actually like trees - quite a lot - but it helps if they bear fruit.
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| The Awful Goat Willow |
Sunday felt like the second day of Spring. There were blue skies all day and it could have been late April. It was a perfect day to walk 13 miles, taking in Newlay Bridge, the Leeds-Liverpool canal and Kirkstall Abbey. The population of Leeds was out, enjoying the release that good weather brings.
Once home I made a chocolate cake and we spent the evening eating fish pie and watching The Crown. A bottle of rhubarb wine figured, and during this Claire floated the idea of maybe drinking real wine more often than we do might be nice.
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| Kirkstall Abbey behind a carpet of crocuses. |
Claire and I are both working really hard at the moment. By Thursday evening our brains were still full of the day just gone and this 500 ml bottle of Prune & Parsnip seemed like the perfect amount with which to blur the edges. I cooked a family cookbook recipe - Kittery Baked Fish - which was both easy and delicious. Turns out that bacon and white fish is a winning combination and I shall definitely make this again. It being a Thursday, we watched Taskmaster which is gloriously, addictively silly and just the tonic for the day.
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| A new shirt |
Two things of note happened today: I gave a training session to the Sales Department in the morning, and I made a smoked haddock risotto in the evening. For the former, because it was outside my comfort zone, I wore my battle-armour - a nice shirt with Uncle Gerry's waistcoat. It worked, and I found myself enjoying giving the talk. For the latter, no special clothing was required and the result was delicious. I can now do Risotto! The wine went well with it: an ordinary white wine strangely not dissimilar to one made from grapes.
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| Some of the ingredients for the risotto |
My hypothesis that Claire can drink batch C of this wine without complaining appears to hold water. There were no comments about its terrible flavour, and it was no effort to finish the bottle. We drank it to haddock & chips from the chippy round the corner, which was a treat. It was a cold night to wait outside for them - but better that than being huddled with strangers inside the shop. At home we had no tomato sauce, so I made do with damson ketchup instead.
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| I took no photos on 22 January, but here is a photo of a new shirt that I bought recently from Blake Mill which I absolutely love. It's called 'Statues' apparently. |
This week I have been Chief Cook and that is an unusual state of affairs. On Wednesday it was "Hot Tomatoey Garlicky Seabass" and on Thursday it was Lentil Curry (and this time I remembered the poached egg). Over the last eight months or so, where our world has narrowed, we have expanded our standard food repertoire beyond the usual five meals, and this is a Good Thing. The wine was also fine - a delightful colour and a refreshing taste. The current Archers' storyline of Alice's desperate alcoholism, done in the most traumatic fashion, only gave me slight pause before I opened this bottle.
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| A fabulous sunrise taken earlier in the week |
I've done it again - left a bottle many days before writing about it. Always a mistake. As far as I can remember, it was a decent wine and we drank it to Tuna Surprise. The highlight of Sunday evening was chatting to Todd & Anne via Zoom. If there is one good thing about this pandemic it is that we have spoken to a greater number of distant friends and family more often than we might. Though going into central Leeds would now be an adventure, chatting to someone in Oregon feels normal. Because of the time difference I flaked out somewhat earlier than ideal - and we hadn't even finished the bottle. That was done on Tuesday to The Great British Bake Off's semi-final.
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| Taken on an 8 mile walk done on Sunday |
The combination of it being a crisp autumn day and being on holiday meant that the day was perfect for a long walk. I chose an 8 mile walk from Wistow to Cawood and back along the banks of the Ouse. Whilst it was not the most dramatic scenery, it was a lovely few hours being alone under large skies.
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| Alone under large skies |
At home I made a salmon, new potato and spring onion flan and opened this bottle of rhubarb wine. It being most like a white wine, it went well with the food and there is little else to say.
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| Along the banks of the Ouse |
Saturday was one of those days where I could have achieved far more than I actually did. But what I did do was lose spectacularly at Scrabble to my mother (418 to 282) and make a yoghurt & raspberry cake. We have been collecting large pots of plain yoghurt - three at last count - and Something Needed To Be Done.
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| The cake before it went into the oven. |
In the evening we drank cold and delicious Apple Wine to hot and delicious Fish Cakes, and watched The Lost Boys with the Snarkalong Film Club: a ridiculous film with too much going on in terms of genre. Not one that I will bother watching again.
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| The cake after it came out. |
This orange wine is too sweet. The base taste is good and certainly the wine is easy drinking, but orange wine should be dry and this is not.
I was adventurous with my cooking on Thursday night: I did a Mexican fish-dish which involved a spicy marinade with many ingredients, and both frying and grilling. The result, other than filling the kitchen with smoke and setting off alarms, was spectacular - if I do say so myself. Otherwise both Thursday and Friday have been unremarkable, though my morning walks both days have started with walking Claire towards work.
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| Taken on 4th September |
Being on holiday is great. The week I am back at work is somewhat less so. There is a feel of continual fire-fighting where everything appears more urgent than it probably is. On Tuesday night, which was when most of this bottle was drunk, I was cook for the evening and made a fish pie. Fish is meant to be good brain food - and by the end of that particular working day, anything to help my brain was welcome. The orange wine probably did less of a good job in that respect, but was just as appreciated. There was only half a glass each left for Wednesday.
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| Some Victorian piano music found lurking on our shelves Taken on 4th August |
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| Taken on 11 July - some allotments |
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| Our Rockery - taken on 20th May |
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To relieve the boredom, however, I dressed up as Michaelangelo's David |
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| A Graffitied Exclamation Mark near me |
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| Dead Nettle in our Garden (30th March) |
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Taken on 20 February. If you look very carefully
you should see a rainbow.
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