What I done this weekend, by English Mum aged 38 and 3/4: Bodies Dublin
So this weekend was darned exciting. We had a little English family outing down to Dublin to see the Bodies Exhibition at the Ambassador Theatre with Jen, her son C and a couple of her nephews (I was going to say little nephews but they’re both about 15 foot tall – must be something in the water down there).
I’d read about it already and earmarked it as one to see after Glitter wrote about it a while ago. As soon as we talked about it, Jen and I were of one mind, both being of the blood and guts/ ‘Bones’/serial-killer novel loving variety, we HAD to go. But I know what you’re thinking: dead bodies, stripped of their skin and flayed open for all to see, it’s got to be puke-makingly gory, right? Er well, no, actually, it’s suprisingly tame. I mean, of course it’s realistic, because they’re real people (well, they were – and there’s a bit of controversy over exactly how they came to be dead in the first place, but that’s another story altogether), kind of plasticised and preserved forever. What it is, undoubtedly, is highly educational. Imagine how much easier your biology lesson would have been if you could have seen the heart/lungs/liver/whatever, displayed in 3D in front of your eyes. The boys were completely riveted, and really enjoyed pointing out which of the bodies had smoked (‘ooh look, his lungs are black!’), and looking at the muscles, nerves and bones all displayed under glasss. One exhibit showed just the blood vessels of the body and it was fascinating – feathery and ethereal. Other highlights were the single leg, which looked disturbingly like belly pork in places, the individual hearts and lungs, and the babies, which I admit are not for everyone (there’s a warning before you go in).
The highlight for me was the body completely divided into slices in a similar way to an MRI scan. Enthralling.
So all-round, yes, I’d definitely recommend this exhibition as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see just how beautiful, intricate and clever our bodies are on the inside. My one moan was the merchandise – 40 quid for a t-shirt? Come on. Oh, hang on, two moans: you couldn’t take photos. Why not, for goodness’ sake? – I’m hardly going to try and recreate it at home, although, on the other hand…
Sunday lunch: roast lamb, layered potatoes and rice pudding
Sunday lunch, then, and even though I say so myself, this one was rather a cracker. Given a unanimous 10/10 (unheard of in our house) and with the added bonus of being one of the easiest too. First up then is the main course:
Roast lamb with creamy layered potatoes
½ leg lamb (about 1kg)
1 kg potatoes
50g butter
300ml milk or cream
So for the lamb, just preheat the oven at about 180/gas 4, rub all over with a generous slug of olive oil ( a clove or two of smooshed garlic wouldn’t go amiss here either – or a handful of rosemary if you have it) and sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Now just bung it in the oven and forget about it for about an hour and a half . For a whole leg, or a joint any larger than a kg, allow 1 hour per kg, plus ½ hour for well done meat (I know, I know, but I just can’t prefer not to eat my lamb pink – sorry and all that).
Remove from the oven and reserve somewhere warm, covered in foil. Place the roasting tin on the hob, add a dessertspoon of plain flour and whisk all the juices in with the flour. Now, add 500ml stock, transfer to a saucepan and let it bubble away gently until you’re ready to eat. Oh, and season to taste.
For the potatoes (I hesitate to call them Dauphinoise – I think they’re probably more cheesey), peel and weigh them, then slice thinly (aim for about 5mm slices, but don’t amputate your fingers trying):
Butter an ovenproof dish, then arrange the slices into a thick layer on the bottom of the dish. Dot with butter and season generously with salt and pepper:
… then continue with the next layer, again dotting with butter and seasoning well. Continue until you’ve used up all the potatoes. Pour over the milk or cream (or combination of both, or even chicken stock if you’re off diary), dot with the remaining butter, season well and cover. Stick into the oven next to the lamb. It should be ready at about the same time (an hour and a half). If it’s not quite there, remove the lid and continue to bake while the lamb is resting.
Now for English Mum’s Mum’s creamy rice pudding (hmm, might have to work on that title):
100g pudding rice
800 ml milk
2 tbsp caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
To cook on the hob (I had no room left in my oven): mix all the ingredients in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Turn the heat down low and let the rice pudding simmer very gently for about an hour. Don’t cover it, and do watch it. Mine boiled over all over my hob and caused an almighty mess. I really must get myself a diffuser. We have bottled gas that comes rocketing out like nobody’s business and it’s difficult to get a really low heat.
Me Ma’s original recipe calls for all the ingredients to be placed in a buttered ovenproof dish and cooked in a low oven for a couple of hours. It’s honestly much nicer this way, although you have to stir the skin in occasionally (sorry there, skin haters).
Serve with fruit compote (I used frozen berries warmed up with a tbsp sugar and a big slug of blackcurrant liqueur) or a big dollop of raspberry jam.
This is really nice made with coconut milk as well (thank you, Bill Granger!). Just as a matter of interest – this amount serves 4, but we could easily have eaten double. If you’re greedy sods like us then I suggest you double up.
There you have it. Now retire to your sofa with a fat greyhound and the Sunday papers, while your willing, full-up peasants do the washing up. Bliss.
The Friday photo: lap(top) dog
So here’s Bert, then, doing a bit of blogging by the fire, while the smalls play with their new toy, a SNES that they got on Ebay complete with Mario World. And yes, he’s on my lap, which is somewhat uncomfortable as he’s a bit heavy and somewhat bony. Still, he makes a handy laptop rest.
Bourbon biscuits: homemade heaven in a little chocolatey sarnie
Right, so. Enough of this doom and gloom. As self-elected President of Chocolate for Ireland, I prescribe a healthy dose of feel-good… erm… fattening stuff. Here, then, to cheer you all up, is a big fat stack of Bourbons. This is adapted from an old Mrs Beeton recipe so it must be good.
First, then, grease and line a baking sheet, or use the wondrously fantastic non-sticky stuff that is Bake-o-glide. Preheat your oven to gas 3/160, grab your Homer Simpson apron (woo hoo!) and roll up thy sleeves.
You’ll need:
100g butter
100g caster sugar
2 tbsp golden syrup
200g plain flour
30g cocoa
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
and for the chocolate creamy stuff:
100g butter
150g icing sugar
2 tbsp cocoa
2 tsp vanilla extract
First, then, beat the hell out of the butter and sugar until it’s lovely and light and fluffy, then beat in the golden syrup (dip the spoon in boiling water first).
In a separate bowl, sieve the flour, cocoa and bicarb together :
and then carefully mix it into the butter and sugar with a fork, and then dive in with your hands. Bring it together into a slightly crumbly dough and roll it out (here’s where the Bake-o-glide comes in, you can roll it directly onto the sheet), pushing the edges straight with a knife, until you’ve got a rough rectangle about 1/2 cm thick.
Now gently cut the rectangle in half right down the middle and put it on your baking tray:
Bung it into the oven for about 15 minutes (it won’t change colour but will just feel firmer to the touch). When you take it out, gently cut each strip into fingers:
Leave them to cool while you make the creamy filling stuff by beating the butter until very soft, then carefully adding the sugar, cocoa and vanilla (watch out for low-level icing sugar clouds here). Beat it until it’s lovely and smooth and then sandwich your little bourbons together generously with the filling.
And yes, I know it’s easier to buy packet ones, but think of the satisfaction of making something better than Mr Tesco. These amounts will make around 20 biscuits (I divided my dough into two batches as my bake-o-glide wasn’t big enough). So that’s 19 for me and one for the dog, then. Result.
Jade Goody: time to look away now
So I’ ve written this post and deleted this post and re-written this post quite a few times. Every time I thought I’d got my feelings across, I re-read it and decided that I sounded judgmental, or harsh, or just… whatever. I can’t get it right. You know me, I’m not a celebrity-basher and my motives for writing this aren’t to criticise, more to share my discomfort at this awful situation.
Unless you live in a box with duct tape wrapped around your face, you can’t fail to have noticed the story of former Big Brother (reality TV) contestant, Jade Goody. She is dying of cervical cancer and is being followed by TV cameras, possibly, it’s claimed, continuing right to her final moments. Last week she married her boyfriend (lovely chap, security tagged as he’s waiting sentencing for assault), again in front of the cameras, and sold the rights exclusively to OK Magazine. You can’t blame the girl – as she herself admits, she’s lived her adult life in front of the cameras and will continue to make as much money as possible for her two small sons while she still can. And if a by-product of all this is that people will learn by her mistakes (she ignored an abnormal smear test as she was too scared to go to hospital), then all well and good.
But will I be buying a copy of OK Magazine (they trebled their print run for this particular copy)? No, but not for any other reason than that I never normally would, and I’m not going to start now. I never watched Big Brother or anything else she was in, so should I start now because she is dying? Of course not. But have I watched TV coverage of her? Read the articles in the newspapers? Yes, I have. And that’s the crux. What’s wrong with us all that we’re all glued to this awful car-crash scenario? I mean, it was the very first item on Sky News yesterday, for goodness sake. Given more prominence than Gaza, Afghanistan, the current financial crisis… Why, as one fellow blogger wrote recently, are we all fighting the urge to look the other way whilst simultaneously feeling the need to grab a bucket of popcorn and watch as it all unfolds?
The papers make me so cross though. There’s the News of the World, once gleefully describing her as a ‘bully’ and a ‘racist’, and reporting how, during a row in the Big Brother house, Indian star Shilpa Shetty was called a ‘paki’ and a ‘c*nt’ , now fawning all over ‘brave, tragic Jade’. It’s all so very, very wrong. As Hubby says, ‘it sells papers – what do you expect?’.
It’s ten months since my friend C died of cancer. Cancer is an awful, insidious illness. The treatment is exhausting, painful and soul-destroying. To watch someone we cared about slowly decline, suffer terribly and eventually die was truly one of the worst experiences any of us had ever had to deal with. Worse, to stand by and watch C’s two children witness their mother’s slow, painful death was truly, truly awful: the saddest, most terrible, heart-rending thing. Should something like this be lived out in the public eye? I’m just not so sure.
I’ll leave the last word(s) to the Disreputable One’s favourite satirist ’organ’, Private Eye:
The oldie but goodie photo challenge: results so far
First up, there’s little teeny Don’t Bug Me - isn’t she cute? Who’d have known she’d grow up to be a really clever doctor of insecty stuff (erm, bit foggy on that bit). And she assures me she didn’t receive any splinterage to her tender places…
And here’s me Ma, frolicking in the surf with her cousin. Ahhhh….
And finally, here’s a little #1 telling his Disreputable Grandad something of vital importance:
And here’s Val’s Kodak moment - ooh, sparkly!! How’s your hunt going? Anyone else found some crackers?
Ooh, and here’s Natalie’s one over at Eire Rules – cuteness!!!
Easy home made brown bread
Ah, Sunday morning. The perfect time for pottering in the kitchen. There’s coffee on the stove and a satisfying stack of papers to get through. This morning I fiddled with my recipe for brown bread and it came out rather well, even if I say so myself. This recipe is an adaptation of one of Rachel Allen’s, but as usual I’ve fiddled and twiddled just a little bit. I can’t help myself. Have a go. You won’t be disappointed.
100g white bread flour
450g wholemeal flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp salt
400ml milk
Juice of 1/2 lemon (or use buttermilk and omit the lemon)
1 egg
2 tbsp oil
1 tbsp treacle
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees/gas 6 and oil a loaf tin. Now put the flour in a bowl and sieve in the bicarb (omit this step at your peril – nasty green lumps don’t add to the flavour). Add the salt and stir it all together.
Now, measure out the milk and squeeze in the lemon, or just use buttermilk. Add in the egg, oil and – while you have a nice oily spoon – the treacle. Whisk this lot together until it forms a completely revolting-looking brown gooey liquid (persevere, the treacle takes time to mix in). Now, just slosh the liquid into the dry ingredients and mix into a big wet mud pie. Thinking about it – this would be a great recipe to make with children – lots of mess and goo involved here.
Pop it into the preheated oven and enjoy your pot of coffee and stack of newspapers for an hour while the kitchen fills with the droolworthy smell of baking bread. As usual, make sure the loaf is done by tapping its bottom (ooer) and making sure it sounds hollow, otherwise give it a bit longer.
This doesn’t keep well, being yeast-free, but if you slice it and freeze it, you can toast it straight from frozen (if it lasts that long). Feel free to fiddle with this by adding seeds or nuts, or even dried fruit (use only 1 tsp salt if you do). Everyone should make their own bread, and when it’s this easy it’s criminal not to. Go on, then, off to the kitchen with you.
Oh and PS, I’m on Desked! Fame at last, eh?
