Irrationality - the enemy within

This is not my quote but the title of a book by Stuart Sutherland first published in 1992 when he was Professor of Psychology at Sussex University.  He was also a journalist writing for many prestigious publications - hence the book is both erudite and readable.

I first came across it in the middle 1990s when I was struggling with a particularly irrational situation.  I had always believed that if I explained something properly to someone then they would understand it whether or not they agreed with my point of view.  Especially the facts of the situation (not talking about "my truth" here!)

I had become involved with an organisation.  There were inconsistencies in some behaviour. At one point a member of staff challenged the reporting structure in what was a very small organisation.  I did the business-like thing and found their employment contract in which the member of staff to whom they reported was explicitly laid out. They had signed the contract which had been formally countersigned.  I pointed this out and was told "it wasn't mean to be like that".  I went through it again and received the same reply.  When I asked if they had signed the contract freely, I was told "Yes, but it wasn't meant to be like that".

This was just one of the irrational behaviours I encountered.  I had never dealt with a situation like this before and many months followed with many sleepless nights and much self-doubt.  This book saved my sanity.  The situation was ended with a parting of the ways and a successful restructure.

I see that the book was reissued a decade ago with a foreword by Ben Goldacre, author of Bad Science and Bad Pharma and an afterword by James Ball covering developments in our understanding over the  two decades following publication.  The book is still available and on kindle as well. 

I should have reread it during the Covid lock-downs - or perhaps it would have been too depressing to understand more fully the irrationality of so many of the decisions being made.

A quote from Oliver Sacks on the front cover of the early edition "Stuart Sutherland has surveyed the entire range of human irrationality, its experimental investigation, its root causes and its attempted cures in a book which is terrifying, sometimes comic, very readable and totally enthralling.  It makes one wonder how Aristotle could have called man a rational animal."

An extraordinary photograph - nine Kings

This extraordinary photograph appeared on Twitter a few days after the death of the Queen.  It shows nine Kings at the funeral of Edward the VII in 1910.

In the back row from left to right:

Haakon VII of Norway, Ferdinand of Bulgaria, Manuel II of Portugal, Wilhelm II of Germany, George the I of Greece and Albert I of Belgium.

In the front row from left to right:

Alfonso XIII of Spain, George V of the UK and Frederick VIII of Denmark.

They were all related and a few years later their countries were at war with each other.  

Thanks to @Piwowarczyk for posting this.  

An historic day, in an historic place

When I first heard that Her Majesty the Queen was seriously ill and that members of the Royal Family were on their way to Balmoral, I was standing outside the Cromwell Museum in Huntingdon. It is home to the most comprehensive collection relating to Oliver Cromwell and is located in the former Huntingdon Grammar School building where Cromwell was educated as a schoolboy (as was Samuel Pepys).

We were there as part of a visit to Cambridge arranged by the current Master Needlemaker specifically because the Worshipful Company of Needlemakers received its first (Commonwealth) charter from Oliver Cromwell in 1656. After the execution of Charles I at the end of the Civil War, Cromwell was appointed “Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland”: the first commoner to be Head of State. The Restoration of the Stuart monarchy took place in 1660 when King Charles the II returned from exile in Europe. (The preceding years of the civil war and the Protectorate were known as the interregnum – rather as if it didn’t happen.)

 

The date of 1656 has special meaning for me personally. The Edict of Expulsion was a royal decree issued by King Edward I of England on 18 July 1290 expelling all Jews from the Kingdom of England. While some Jews remained in England they did not practise their religion openly. This persisted until 1656 when they were permitted to return.

 

When the monarchy was restored the Needlemakers petitioned King Charles II for a new charter, which was granted in 1664. 

 

What an historic day to be there. We acknowledged the execution of one King Charles and the restoration of another King Charles.  That evening, as we were seated in the dining hall of Magdalene College, Cambridge the Master announced that Her Majesty the Queen had died.  We held a moment’s silence and then the Master gave the Loyal Toast – God Save the King – acknowledging the third King Charles. As this was shortly after the announcement we were possibly the first City Livery Company to do so.  

 

The Master and his Consort were in attendance at the Royal Exchange, in the City of London, on Saturday morning to hear the second Proclamation of Accession read out sharing the news that the monarch has died and the heir has acceded to the throne. 

King Charles III

Do you remember where you were….?

Many of us still can't quite believe that the Queen has died. While expected it still seemed sudden, especially having seen her two days before, greeting the new Prime Minister.  Hearing of her death on Thursday reminded me of the day of her Coronation. I was only a few years old, we had a day off our primary school in Johannesburg and we could listen to the ceremony on the radio. We then went to the cinema on Saturday to see the newsreel from London.

I had grown up with stories of the two princesses and it all seemed very magical, far away and yet personal. I had a Coronation money box and a replica little carriage and horses – would I still had them!

I have seen the Queen close up on two occasions – at a Buckingham Palace Garden Party and when she came to Southwark Cathedral to see the new Bishops’ copes that the Worshipful Company of Needlemakers had subsidised and the Jubilee (Diamond) window. I also remember rushing to the window when I was at a conference overlooking the Mall to see her drive past with Nelson Mandela.  He said he called her Elizabeth as they were both of royal descent.

Tracking back I remember where I was when I heard that President Kennedy had been shot. I was at the cinema in Johannesburg with my parents and they announced over the loudspeaker after the film had finished. No car radios in those days so we had to wait until we arrived home to learn that he had died.   

When Henrik Verwoerd, the then Prime Minister of South Africa (reputedly the architect of apartheid) was assassinated in the South African Parliament I had just left my office in Regent Street in London and saw the headlines in the Evening Standard.

The remainder of my memories “where were you when…” were from television. When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in the early hours of morning UK time, my husband woke our daughter of a few weeks, propped her on his knee and told her that, although she wouldn’t remember it, she was witnessing man landing on the moon. 

I also remember the greatly revered Royal (and any serious event) commentator Richard Dimbleby saying “Jesus wept” when covering the Queen’s visit to Germany, when he found that the satellite link had broken and he would have to do it all again – not realising he was back on air.  And finally – oh, innocent days, the first use of the f*** word on television – Kenneth Tynan, a critic and writer. I believe that the last two caused thousands of complaints to the BBC.

 

There is also a strange irony about where I was the day of the death of Her Majesty – that’s for another day.  

Travelling again

It’s almost two years since I stopped writing my blog.  There was just so much a person could write about the uncertainty of the pandemic, the lack of social interaction, the constant stress of watching every sneeze and cough. (I am fully vaccinated – I had Covid in October 2021 – I have had worse colds but I was a bit grim for a few days.  I had it again in February 2022 and my symptoms were so mild that had I not had to test for another reason, I wouldn’t have known I had had it. Others were not so fortunate.)

We have started travelling again – Amsterdam and S-’Hertogenbosch in June – for the wonderful International Vocal Competition – Opera – Oratorio. It is a lovely town: we had beautiful weather and such talent.  We attended the finals and also two Master Classes.  Opera-goers are assured of great performances in the years to come if these winners are examples.  https://www.ivc.nu/en/news

I have been to Amsterdam several times – a very walkable city and almost every teenager in Europe seemed to be there. Apparently it has something to do with different attitudes to smoking noxious stuff…..

The Rijksmuseum is always a joy but The Nightwatch is a disaster to try and view. It has been the subject of a mammoth restoration and conservation project – you can see it on the Museum’s website and it is still ongoing.  The picture on the website is deceptive – the photograph below, even though of poor quality gives you an impression of what viewing it is really like. For reasons I can understand, it is behind thick sheets of glass. What I can’t understand is why they didn’t do something about the reflections of the windows at the other end of the gallery, let alone the people viewing it, as well as the thick lines joining the panes of glass.  In the photograph they show as white and you can see the reflection of the windows in the middle. It is on a par with viewing the Mona Lisa these days.

We did spend a few lovely hours at the Mauritshuis in The Hague: a feast of Rembrandt and Vermeer. The famous “Girl with a Pearl Earring” is there – not my favourite Vermeer but catches the imagination. It must do because the gift shop sells about a hundred different items with her image.  I understand the earrings, I usually buy a fridge magnet (we are running out of space) I can even deal with the tote bag, perhaps a Covid mask is of the moment, but a cat dressed as her on a T-shirt, an apron, a set of kitchen towels, socks – yuck. 

 

New since our last visit was the Dutch Holocaust Memorial of Names, which Polish-American architect, Daniel Libeskind’s studio designed. It commemorates 102,000 Dutch victims of the Holocaust, predominantly Jews but also Roma and Sinti people.  Each name is inscribed on a brick with about a 100 left blank for those who have never been identified.  As with all his work it is deceptively simple and very powerful.  There were people checking lists and looking for names. 

Having read all the reports of chaos at UK airports we had an untroubled journey, our luggage arrived: Schipol however is another matter – piles of suitcases, delayed and cancelled flights, KLM were cancelling flights at the last moment and not taking any further bookings for some weeks – chaos.  We stayed at an airport hotel the night before so we could walk across – just as well, protesting farmers blocked some of the roads. We checked in three hours early (at 5 am) for our flight and the queues started outside the airport. So lucky to be travelling again though.

And so the baton passes…..

A lovely and very meaningful part of the Barmitzvah and Batmitzvah ceremony is passing the Torah (scroll) through the generations. When the Torah is removed from the Ark, many communities invite the grandparents and parents of the child to the pulpit to physically hand the Torah from one generation to another, symbolizing the chain and continuity of the Jewish tradition within families. 

At the batmitzvah of our granddaughter and barmitzvah of our grandson, both sets of grandparents were present to hand the Torah from one to the other to the parents and to the young person. It was very moving.

There are other more mundane things that happen that make you realise that the responsibility for other things is also passing.  I have written before that my mother always made the chopped liver for our Jewish holidays.  She died a few months before Passover and the realisation that I would have to make it was not only a punch in the gut about how much I missed her but also a panic as there was no recipe. I managed, at least I knew what it should taste like and I make it every holiday.

This year I realised that the baton is passing further.  Our daughter made challah for their New Year in Switzerland as I did for ours. Traditionally it is not the usual long plaited loaf but is round.  Hers was so stunningly better than mine – no prizes for guessing which was which.

We went to our son and family to celebrate. He cut the apples and Number Two granddaughter drizzled the honey. We had a delicious roast chicken and trimmings and Number Two granddaughter, with a little help from Mum, made banana bread with chocolate chips  (the New Year is all about starting with sweetness so you can’t have too much of it.)

 

FaceTime isn’t the same as being together but the baton is passing – we are very blessed with our family.

Old bad habits are quick to resume

When I knitted a lot I always had a few things on the go – I like the knitting part but hate the finishing off and tidying up the loose ends (this is not a parable for my life!) 

I used to wander around The Needlewoman in Regent Street (yes I am that old) or John Lewis haberdashery department but now we have the internet and the temptation is too great – a pattern here – some yarn there…….

I have finished this neck thing – not quite a scarf but will keep one’s neck warm – will go to Number One Daughter if we ever see each other again….

 

I mentioned in my previous blog about Knit for Peace and these are the squares I have knitted for a full size blanket – just need to sew them together….

 

There is a “Next Door” neighbourhood group for our area.  Someone posted that she is collecting clothes and toys for some refugees who have nothing but what they stand up in.  There were so many replies that she has had to put people on hold as she can’t store any more for the moment. I had a bag of clothes ready to go to the charity shop and added some toys, which now the grandchildren have outgrown which went. There are several pregnant women so I am back knitting blankets again – one down and one on the way – but I still have to sew that other blanket together. 

 

I have just ordered some fabulous looking yarn for scarves and shawls – getting carried away again.

 

 

 

Baking on hold - knitting again

I used to knit – first for Number One Husband in the days before central heating.  He still has two of the sweaters but they are so heavy he is unlikely to wear them again unless the heating fails! 

I then knitted for my children: those were the days when a home knitted red and white scarf sufficed for an Arsenal supporter unlike today when the kit changes every year at great expense. I remember knitting a chenille jumper for my daughter - my mother in law bought the yarn at the Knitting and Stitching Show.  It was horrible to knit with and M&S brought out something very similar at half the price.  She still wore it to shreds.  Number One Son had a Fred Flinstone jumper - I still have the pattern somewhere. 

I then knitted for the grandchildren – each one had a blanket when they were born and some sweaters etc when they were little. Home made is not so desirable – my label can’t compete with the trendier ones.  

Early in the lock down the former sheriff and Past Master of the Framework Knitters, Liz Green, put out an appeal for knitted squares for blankets to be distributed to those who need them at the start of winter.  This seemed like an excellent idea especially as someone else was going to make them up, the tedious part.  We are watching TV or listening to music and being rather more sedentary than usual so anything to keep the hands occupied.  

In August Liz wrote, “This blanket was made by seven people and includes members of six different Livery companies.  We have received such a positive response to the project and we now have sixty blankets either completed or in production.”  This one included some of mine.

Having reminded myself how relaxing knitting is I looked for more very simple projects.  There is a charity called Knit for peace and they collect knitted goods (and spare needles etc) to distribute where needed.  This prompted me to dig out all my old knitting kit and go through it all.  As in sorting out anything this was a trip down memory lane as well.

I found packs of Milward sewing needles which were my mother’s – still in perfect condition.  Henry Milward is a Past Master of the Worshipful Company of Needlemakers and the family had a very long association with the trade going back centuries, ending in the 1980s and some of the brand names still exist.  

I also found the lovely rosewood knitting needles which I was given on the visit, lead by Henry Milward in his year as Master, to Needle Industries in OotyKamund (Ooty) in the beautiful Nilgiri hills.  I have several pairs of their bamboo needles, the nicest to knit with. The brand name is Pony – available in all good haberdashery departments and I didn’t realise that that was a Milwards brand as well. In fact many of the original engineers at Needle Industries trained in Redditch and when we visited they were still using some of the equipment. 

Here is some information about the company Henry Milward and Sons. Here is a short documentary which the Needlemakers Company sponsored about the craft which is interesting to watch. 

More about knitting later….

A Very Big Adventure

The last time we left the house other than to visit a very few local friends and family or to buy food was on March 9 to attend a most enjoyable Needlemakers' function: see Last Gasp of Freedom

Apart from the real live face-to-face contact with friends and family, the two cancelled holidays, what we have missed most have been concerts and visits to art galleries.

 

Some weeks ago we booked to visit the National Gallery Titian exhibition “Titian, Love Desire and Death”.  It is the first time that several of the paintings have been shown together since the late 1500s.  I cannot fault the National Gallery for the organisation.  Everyone was wearing masks and socially distancing, the gallery was comfortably busy, quite a few families with children which is always a joy.

We drove in and paid not only the congestion charge but the parking fees (eeek). I think I might risk the Underground next time as I believe it is not busy.  However, I needed to return my library books to the Barbican Library so it was useful to be in the car!

Perhaps I have been locked down too long but while I could admire the artistry and the exhibition is very well curated, I found myself very offended by the subject matter of several paintings. Titian called the paintings the poesie because he drew on Classical poetry for their subject matter – these were his visual poems.  His patron, Philip of Habsburg, King of Spain, gave him total freedom. I would imagine this was every artists dream.

Of course this is Greek Myth, classical poetry, Ovid - but why is it OK for a woman to be raped by a God?  Danae is impregnated by Jupiter (he enters her chamber as a golden shower!!); Jupiter rapes Callisto; he carries Europa to Crete where he rapes her too.  Yes there are other paintings but these annoyed me.

 

There are three “tours” around the gallery after the exhibition and I rejoiced and remembered how wonderful the National Gallery is.  I have nothing against nudity – the exquisite Toilet of Venus by Velazquez. I rejoiced seeing Rembrandt’s Belshazzar’s Feast and Rubens portrait of the family of Jan Breughel and on through past the Turners into the Impressionists and my equilibrium was restored.  The Gallery is also looking stunning.  

Blowing hot and cold? No mostly hot and humid.

When we first moved to London central heating was not the norm. Our flat had electric radiators, which were hugely expensive to run.  We tried a paraffin heater which was cheap and effective, problem was our badly built 1960s apartment had very poor ventilation and it created condensation (and mould in the cupboards!)  I had no idea that it generated as much moisture as it burned paraffin.  We muddled along and envied our friends who were able to install storage radiators (drew electricity off-peak and generated warmth when required).

Back to Johannesburg in the 1970s where sun-filter curtains, tiled floors, air-bricks and many windows allowing cross draughts kept us cool.  Additionally in Johannesburg rain was almost guaranteed to fall every evening in a short thundery shower which cooled the air.  

Back to London and central heating making for toasty winter days and nights but when it gets hot it gets hot and humid and at the moment it isn’t cooling down much at night either.  Sales of domestic air-conditioning are soaring and I confess that I spent some of our cancelled holiday money on an installation in the bedroom; there is a limit to how long you can spend in the bedroom.   

I have never tried to fry an egg on the bonnet of a car but the temperature seems to be heading that way.  The lawns are yellow but I know from Johannesburg winters where the lawns died every year, one or two showers and they soon come back. 

This is the perfect hot weather dish and a family favourite.  I used to make the croutons but now they come in a packet! No cooking required and good use of tins.

 

Gazpacho  

Serves 8

 

2 large tins tomatoes                                2 cloves garlic

2 onions, sliced                                           1 tin/jar pimientos

2 green pepper, sliced                              1 cup soft white breadcrumbs

1 cucumber                                                  6 – 10 Tab olive oil

6 Tab wine vinegar                                     250 ml chicken stock

2 Tab tomato paste                                   salt, pepper, Tabasco and parsley

Additional raw tomatoes, peppers, red onion, cucumber – all chopped

Croutons

 

This is a very approximate recipe and you need to adapt it to your own taste.  

 

Combine tomatoes, onion, pepper, pimiento, cucumber, bread/crumbs.  Season with salt, Tabasco and pepper and marinate in olive oil and vinegar for at least an hour.  Blend with stock and parsley.  Serve chilled with bowls of tomato, green pepper, red onion, cucumber and croutons. 

 

You can add a clove or two of garlic, mashed or garlic salt, I am not keen on raw garlic so I don’t.

 

Don’t knock social media until you have tried it….

😡

I have resorted to social media (either Facebook or Twitter in my case) when complaints have failed. It infuriates me how difficult some companies make it to return goods or get refunds (airlines? holiday companies? the list goes on.) Unfortunately for them I have time on my hands right now.  

 

The most recent incident happened last month.  I ordered some goods online from a chain of health food stores. I have ordered before and it has been fine. The order took a week to arrive (also fine) and was delivered by a courier agency.  We have got to know the driver very well over the last few months!!

 

I opened the box to find that some of the contents – almond flour, various nuts had been partially eaten and, by the teeth marks, clearly by rats.  Fortunately the courier was still here delivering to a neighbour and he showed me where the box had been resealed on the corner, presumably where it had been eaten into. He took the parcel back.

 

I contacted the online store (not easy to find email addresses etc) and heard back the following day to say that the box had not been returned.  I left it a couple of days and then emailed again. The saga began – I was repeatedly asked for the same information and after several days was told that it had been referred to head office.  Days passed and no response.

 

After two weeks I found their facebook page and posted on it. Within hours I had a response – asking for further information.  Sent it and then they asked for my email address via private message which I supplied.  I was then asked for the same information that I had sent several times.  At this point I lost my cool and posted the following:

 

“I am really fed up with supplying the same information over and over again and repeating the same answers. Read my Facebook entry and then ask your customer service department for all my emails. This has been going on for two weeks. I would have thought that something which was a serious public health hazard would have been made a priority.”

 

The money was returned to me within hours. 

 

However much anyone may justifiably criticise Amazon (and I wish they would pay their fair share of taxes or should I say that the government would legislate to ensure these companies do) their returns policy is exemplary as is Groupon’s.  John Lewis, which used to be excellent is no longer. 

 

Big shout out to my local butcher Graham's who has handled the crisis brilliantly, taking orders for delivery: adding picking up the order from outside the shop from a numbered cool box and now serving customers at the door as well.  Also the first shop in London to sell South African specialties including their own boerewors as well as biltong and many imported goodies.  

It’s just not cricket!

This may have no meaning to most people outside England and the former British Empire – now Commonwealth countries, it means – it is unfair, just not done. Cricket is rarely played outside the Commonwealth – the great cricketing nations include India, Pakistan, West Indies, Sri Lanka, South Africa and Australia. 

 

As for “the sound of leather on willow” that is meant to represent the quintessential English summer’s day in village life: the sound of the leather ball hitting the willow bat – something that has not yielded to modernisation. 

 

While growing up in South Africa I listened to cricket commentary on the radio.  Not sure why but it became quite a thing in high school and I have an autograph book with all the signatures of the MCC team that visited South Africa in the 1950s.  I sent a piece of paper with a request and back came the signatures on my piece of paper.  No PRs doling out signed photographs. 

 

Like many sports cricket has a baffling list of terms which are completely unintelligible to anyone outside the game. I can follow a cricket match, even catch when someone is out LBW (leg before wicket) but please don’t ask me to explain where on the field silly mid-off is standing or for that matter silly mid-on, square leg, short leg and so on.

 

The commentators were all frightfully well spoken – even Charles Fortune who commentated for the SABC.  I remember John Arlott too.  Cricket loves nicknames – Ian Botham – soon to be Lord Botham - is Beefy, David Lloyd is Bumble and the list goes on. Commentary is always delightful to listen to, full of anecdote and humour (it isn't a very fast-moving game...) Of course there was Brian Johnston who is credited with these two: “The bowler’s Holding, the batsman’s Willey”  (Michael Holding bowling to Peter Willey) and then “As he comes into bowl, Freddie Titmus has got two short legs, one of them square”.

 

Michael Holding, commentating on the current Test was one of the finest fast bowlers ever and he was nicknamed " Whispering Death" due to his quiet approach to the bowling crease.  He has a wonderful voice to listen to and even makes me think I understand all the intricacies of what is taking place.  

 

We are at home more than usual at the moment so Number One Husband is watching the cricket – England vs the West Indies.  While rain stopped play (not that unusual) Holding was talking to the other commentators and made an impassioned speech on racism in reference to Black Lives Matter. "Racism," he said, "is taught". "No one is born a racist. The environment in which you grow, the society in which you live, encourages and teaches racism." At the end he said hoped that things were changing "Even if it's a baby step at a time, even a snail's pace. But I'm hoping it will continue in the right direction. Even at a snail's pace, I don't care".

 

 

 

Friends for supper (!) and a sugar biscuit recipe

No big deal?  Normally there would have been eight or more of us but in this case only the four of us – and we ate inside instead of in the garden – baby footsteps towards normality.  

 

I have forgotten how to cook for more than two – and to schedule a meal.  I know this sounds pathetic but I haven’t been very creative and certainly not more than one course for the two of us.

 

We started with some grilled fresh prawns with the good old Marie Rose sauce with our drinks.  We then moved onto Pickled Fish followed by a chicken tagine with a tabbouleh salad made with freekeh and bulgur wheat and a berry crumble to finish off.  

 

It was a bit much for four of us – the good news being that we ate leftovers for the rest of the week – the crumble was the first to be finished! 

 

Cucumbers are so cheap at the moment that I have invested in some preserving jars and will be making a big batch of Bread and Butter Pickle.  I have made a couple of batches recently but they went very quickly.  (I’m channelling my mother here – we had a pantry full of jars of preserved fruits, vegetables, pickles, chutneys and homemade tomato paste – I won’t go that far.)

 

This biscuit is a favourite with everybody. They are called Nut Shortbread but the grandchildren just call them the Sugar Biscuits.

Nut shortbread aka the sugar biscuits - Bella’s

225 grams butter                          

4 tablespoons caster sugar 

60 chopped almonds*          

1 teaspoon vanilla and a pinch of salt

280 grams plain flour (include 4 tablespoons of cornflour)

Sugar for coating

 

Cream butter and sugar (I find this works best if the butter is cold). Add vanilla and then salt and flour and pulse.  Add nuts and pulse.  Knead well. Refrigerate for one to two hours**.

 

Heat oven to 150°C.  Roll into balls about 2 cm in diameter.  Place on a lined pan and then press with a fork to give a ridged appearance.  Bake for about 45 minutes until lightly coloured.

 

Put some sugar into a bowl and roll the biscuits in the sugar while still warm and leave on a wire rack to cool.

 

*       the original recipe called for walnuts but I use almonds as no one in the family is allergic to them – you can use any nuts.

 

**      longer than that makes it difficult to work, less than that the mixture will spread too much. 

I usually put the tray in the fridge for half an hour before baking.

It's been a bit quiet

In the beginning of lockdown, friends were telephoning each other often. That has worn off somewhat.  We don't have much to say. We have exhausted the subject of Covid-19, our government, anyone else's government, what's on TV or Netflix or anything else. Just not a lot of conversation.......

However, a useful piece of information - wearing a mask causes your glasses to steam up (who knew?).  Take a tissue fold it in half and put it under the nose bit, it works. 

The excuses for not wearing a mask are legion.  One person complained she wore a mask and the next day had a cold sore. Yup, nothing to do with that other virus, herpes. One woman complained on social media that she nearly fainted.  Just as well she is not a doctor, nurse, any other kind of health care or care worker. That was before the hairdressers etc opened and they have to wear masks. I just don’t know how my father could have operated for hours on end in an operating theatre wearing a mask.  

I rather overbought disposable gloves.  Have realised that they are excellent when doing messy baking/kneading.  

I don’t go out much but my only trip to supposedly upmarket Waitrose, no hand sanitiser, very few masks and no social distancing.  Tesco on the other hand had a huge dispenser, more people were wearing masks and far more disciplined. 

Zoom meetings are excellent. Happily I am not spending hours every day doing this but the few meetings I have had have been very efficient.  Institute of Health Visiting, where I chair the trustee board, had its annual meeting with the auditors.  We were all calling in from home.  Normally this is at least a half a day for me and I am the closest. Others travel in from far further afield.  At least one person has travel delays and starts the meeting stressed.  Our board meetings draw trustees from around the country - I am not sure we will return to face to face for regular meetings.  

FaceTime and WhatsApp have their uses.  Wonderful to see family and friends we can’t meet physically but somehow I end up feeling slightly depressed afterwards as it brings home what we are really missing

Our local nail bar opens today.  It is a family run business, husband and wife and her sister, all from Saigon.  Spotlessly clean and they are competent and just lovely.  Very excited to see sister’s wedding photographs from her wedding at the beginning of the year.  Whole family was cleaning the salon from top to toe when I walked past Sunday morning. I’m quite excited.....mani pedi here I come!

 

I’m still baking – more of that tomorrow.

 

Homesick for food……

Proust may have been transported back to his childhood by the taste of the “petite madeleine” dipped in tea and wrote most eloquently about it in Remembrance of Things Past, but there is nothing like the longing for the food of childhood – especially when it is 6,000 miles away.  

When I first moved to London when we married in the 1960s I was overcome from time to time by homesickness. Telephone calls had to be booked 48 hours in advance and cost £1.00 a minute at a time when my gross salary was £15.00 a week.  Only birthdays and anniversaries were important enough – and tragically in extreme circumstances when you could put a call through in two hours, which is how I learned of my father’s death. (Note to grandchildren – we did not have the internet, email, FaceTime, WhatsApp – landline or nothing!)

I learned to cook some of the foods of my childhood but there were some things like boerewors, biltong, Peppermint Crisps, Chocolate Logs, dishes made with Peri Peri – the list is quite long – that were not available.  

Strangely enough I was never nostalgic for cakes and biscuits – we certainly had them.  My treat was a “shop-bought” biscuits especially chocolate.

I grew up in Johannesburg – city girl – Number One Husband grew up in the country – Upington, on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. No shop-bought there – everything was made at home. This introduced me to some traditional South African dishes which we had never had at home.  While there are several butchers in London and mail order companies that sell South African specialties (including all the ones mentioned above), these are best home made. They are called Boere Beskuit – literally “Farmers’ Rusks” but normally known as Buttermilk Rusks.  They keep for weeks, in any climate.  I have added a few tweaks and here they are.

 

Buttermilk Rusks

 

300 grams butter                                   

200 grams brown sugar

200 grams Bran flakes (Fruit and Fibre works!)

75 grams raisins 

80 grams bran

125 grams sunflower/mixed seeds 

500 ml buttermilk

2 eggs

1 Kilo self-raising flour                          

15 ml baking powder

 

Melt the butter and sugar and cool slightly. Mix the flour, baking powder, bran, seeds, raisins and bran flakes in a large bowl. Beat the eggs and buttermilk

Add the butter mixture to the buttermilk mixture and pour into the flour mixture. Mix well – add more flour or milk if necessary.

Form the mixture into balls and put them next to each other in baking trays (I find they all fit into an oven/roasting tray).  Bake at 190 C till light brown – about 25 – 30 minutes.  Remove from the oven and break apart and put some onto a second baking tray so that they are separate. Reduce heat to 100C for 4 hours, switch off the oven and leave overnight.

Note: if you don’t have buttermilk you can substitute with one tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar per 250 ml of milk. 

Store in a tin. They are best eaten dunked into tea or coffee – eat your heart out Marcel….. 

Cucumber sandwiches anyone?

It seems extraordinary now that we have (pre Corona!) multiple restaurants, cafés, coffee bars and fast food chains, that there was a time when there were very few places to go out to eat.  Certainly growing up in Johannesburg, apart from hotel restaurants and the main railway station, there were very few places to eat out.  There were tea rooms in the department stores and one or two restaurants in “town”.  

Pasta was macaroni or spaghetti, rice was white and bread was white or brown and rye bread from the kosher deli. My parents adored food - if we wanted asparagus we grew them and if we wanted lasagne my mother, with the cook, would make the sheets of pasta by hand.

We had over an acre of vegetable garden and as the keen gardeners out there will know, everything ripens at once. My sister in Los Angeles is in a similar situation but with the addition of goats, chickens, quail and a miniature cow so has a pantry full of bottled fruit, jams, chutneys and everyone who visits receives food parcels including cheeses and – honey from the beehives.

What do you do with cucumbers? My favourite was “bread and butter pickle”.  I don’t know why it was called that – the original recipe came from The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer, first published in the USA in 1931 and my mother’s now very tattered edition was bought in 1945. The sub-heading is A Compilation of Reliable Recipes with an Occasional Culinary Chat. Before the internet you could find out how to cook almost anything from that book.

Rombauer’s recipe starts “1 gallon firm cucumbers”.  My mother’s recipe is probably scaled down from that for my more modest requirements but I am sure she used gallons of cucumbers when they were picked and she certainly preserved them in sterilised jars.  Here it is:

Bread and Butter Pickle

1 kilo cucumbers (small ones are best, must be very firm)

½ kilo small onions very thinly sliced

50 grams salt

300 ml cider vinegar (if you have it substitute 50 ml with distilled vinegar)

175 gms sugar

1 tab mustard seeds

1 teas celery seeds

1 teas whole cloves

½ teas turmeric

Wash but do not peel the cucumbers. Cut into slices about 2-3 mm thick  and similarly with the onions. Layer in a glass or ceramic container, sprinkling the salt between the layers.  Cover with cling film and place a heavy weight on top and leave for about four hours in the fridge.  

Drain and rinse under cold water and leave to dry on kitchen paper. Put the rest of the ingredients in a saucepan on a medium heat and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Add the cucumber and onion and bring to the boil again. As soon as it is boiling take it off the heat and cool.

You can eat it immediately but best left for a day or two in the fridge where it will keep for a couple of weeks. If you are going to store it for longer it needs to be bottled in sterilised glass jars.

Note:  I have reduced the amount of sugar in the original recipe but you need to taste and decide.

A chicken by any other name…..

I am uni-lingual.  I used to be able to speak Afrikaans and can still understand a bit but other than that never really learned any other languages. However, my restaurant French, Italian and German are not too bad.

We seem to have moved from menus having everything in French to having lyrical descriptions of each dish. I remember an hilarious dinner with (British) colleagues in San Francisco when the waiter came to our table to tell us the specials for the evening and started with “Smoked Scotch Salmon from Norway”.  I am not sure he quite understood even after we tried to explain it to him

One of my mother’s favourite dishes was Chicken in Red Wine. There seem to be many different recipes for Coq au Vin so this is as good as any. I use a mixture of olive oil and butter.

Coq au Vin - Norma’s recipe

1 chicken, jointed into 10 pieces                   

110 grams butter

4 Tab sherry                                 

1 tab tomato paste

3 tab flour                            

12 shallots peeled but left whole

12 button mushrooms                   

350 ml red wine                            

350 ml stock *

salt, pepper, garlic and bouquet garni

Salt and pepper chicken.  Put garlic into butter and brown chicken.  Pour over sherry and cook for a few minutes.  Take out chicken. Cook onions and mushrooms for a few minutes and put with chicken.  Add tomato paste, herbs and flour.  Cook for a few minutes, add hot stock and bring to boil stirring all the time. Add 150 ml wine and taste for seasoning.  Strain if necessary and pour over chicken. 

Simmer for 1½ hours, adding rest of wine gradually – can be cooked on the hob or in oven – probably around 160C.  Leave to cool, skim off fat: reheats and freezes well. 

If you wish you can strain the sauce and reduce it before pouring over the chicken and reheating thoroughly.

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 *if no stock was available she used half Oxo and half Telma chicken cubes– works for me