Saturday 23 January 2010

kitchen disasters and other disasters



It's been a bad week in the kitchen, though it has provided me with some quotable quotes. Like when I sort-of-apologised to Katie for putting too much lemon juice in the coleslaw, and she consoled me with the reassurance that "If it's any help, I wouldn't have liked it however you served it."

And then I put a loaf in the oven and got engrossed with a drawing, and three hours later Katie noticed the smoke, and...

..and then I dropped the pan of cabbage (fried up with garam masala, since you ask) as I was preparing to dole it out onto the plates. Katie had not tried very hard to hide her dismay, earlier, when she realised that cabbage was on the menu. "Ha! Served just as you like it," I said, surveying the steaming mess on the floor.

I'd been shamefully procrastinating over giving money to the Disasters Emergency Committee for the Haiti earthquake appeal. Then I heard on the radio that the sum of donations in the UK was £38 million. Which is a bit less than 50p per person, by my rough and ready reckoning. Which I thought was very shameful. So I got onto the DEC website and did something about it. And so can you, dear reader, if you have not done already. Follow the useful link above!

7 comments:

  1. Blimey. They make it easy to give these days, don't they!?

    One text and then a bit of Gift Aid.

    Thanks so much for the nudge.

    There's concern in the library/archives community (or bits of it) about the amount of official documentation that's been destroyed or at risk. Things like birth certificates for children who are said to be orphans... Terrible, terrible consequences in the longer term.

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  2. Oh dear, not a good week in the kitchen then (although it sounds like Katie didn't mind all of it :) )

    I have to admit to also procrastinating with donating to the Dutch Giro 555 for Haiti. Seeing as I got paid yesterday I guess I should do it today.

    Stace

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  3. Have you tried grated carrot with a squeeze of lemon?

    We had a baker who used to save loaves that looked just like that for my mother - she loved the burnt crust. I think that I agree with Katie on the cabbage. What tells me that cabbages are in season?

    We bought special postage stamps - yes out already - a bit more expensive, with the money going to the Red Cross.

    Webrarian: The first orphans arrived in France yesterdazy evening, but these were children already destined to come to France - real orphans - not like the Zoé's Ark children that had a lot of publicity a couple of years ago.

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  4. Ha! Or you can text the word DONATE to 864233 as many times as you like to give £2.50 a time. You can on Orange, anyway. A couple of texts on Thursday salved my guilt and self-loathing.

    That loaf looks nice and crusty! I made my pork & game pie last week (a little late for Christmas, I must say) and it was a delight. It all got eaten very quickly.

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  5. I haven't had a stove with an oven for years, but yesterday began experimenting with my brave little toaster-oven. I am now fairly confident I can make biscuits---one at a time---but the second requires less time than the first and so on. Best not to leave the kitchen while baking that way. I didn't take the black ones to church. Then, over our after-service dinner, Pastor half-kidded about wanting his study painted black.

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  6. Now *that's* a knife!

    I must try chou sauté au plancher - always looking for new ways to spice up the veg.:-)

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  7. Thank you for your comments, everyone. Sorry, I've been a bit preoccupied.

    Grated carrot features sometimes in our diet, Anji, with caraway seeds too. They are eaten by young K, if reluctantly.
    The loaf in the picture, Graham, is not the same loaf as I burned, which resembled a cinder but didn't get photographed. Pork and game pie sounds good to me. I made variations on pork and chicken pies from a Jane Grigson recipe and they were spectacularly tasty. But took ages to prepare.

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