<< july & august 2004 >>
Monday 16 August 2004
Well long time no see - where have you been? Mercy, you've missed all my news.
- have discovered reason washing smells funny: Stan put the half load button on, so for weeks my sweaty running stuff's been boiling away in old foosty water. Yes, I smell like an old woman. But so does he.
- bought 1950s plastic jelly moulds off eBay - one telephone, one bear, one clown (eeks, scary) and one castle. For £1.70.
- Took Stan's two nephews to the Science Centre but was most concerned with getting to the ageing machine on the top floor. Apparently as a child I looked like an elf, and as an old woman (smelling, naturally, of foosty washing) I will look like an elf mask made out of teabags.
- made myself ill with worry and stress of maybe not passing exam - this is an example of how well one can convinced oneself of falsehoods: I knew I'd done ok when I finished said exam but by last tuesday morning my puggy (Ork.,n. belly or stomach) was a bubble of trapezing elephants allowing little to be held down
- passed exam (swotbags: A), as did T, a friend also off to learn to do good, though she is to become a Midwife.
- have written resignation letter, but will have to de-floralify it: one cannot finish such a letter with Yours sincerely, with a tear or some other rather choice phrase I had in stock.
- Became outraged, intrigued, amazed, bored, immune and sad at myself - Big Brother Compulsion Disorder: a disease newly classified by me by virtue of having been given my firm offer of a place at Nursing School.
- Alternate between obsessions: peach & mango smoothies or carrot, apple & ginger juice.
- went to dentist for first time in 5.5 years.
The dentist trip was pure terror. Always being a child who liked going to the dentist (I loved stickers as a child, that and the orange tooth polish was enough to buy me) it seems odd to reflect on all those years of terror. It began when I was told I may need some wisdom teeth out. So, like you do, I ignored any pain. It was never that bad, but really, how awful can it be to get them out? Anyhoo....3 years down the line & I have a terrible cold. I can't sleep for coughing so I get some sticky sweet lozenges, so both Stan & I can sleep. They work a treat, but ooh, that tooth up there's sore. I'll keep quiet about it & not even think about what could be festering away - that's the best way to deal with things, isn't it?
Hmmm...seem to have odd brown bits on the teeth where the little sweet lozenges help lay me to sleep - acht weel, that'll no matter a hoot.
Yik...have odd lines at root line of canine teeth. My god - my teeth are snapping off at the root: teeth trotters, stumpy fangs, jagged calcium pegs. Acht weel - they'll grow back together if only I ignore it all.
Tra-la-la-la-la....
'What's that Debbie? You've got tooth problems...oh I just couldn't cope with that'
'Oh my Dawn, that sounds sore...oh dear'
'Oh Geraldine, a brace?'
I remember so clearly my mum saying to me 'look after your teeth - I wish I had' and I, smug as always, thought, bah! of course I will. All this time, that exchange has boomed down through the years, accompanying my stump terror. So I went, finally, two weeks ago. I need one filling replaced - because I hacked a bit out during a frenzied floss session two days prior to my appointment. As for my stumps, that's called getting long in the tooth: my gums are receding, due to the pressure of time and is thus revealing a mountainous ridge of enamel.
Sunday 24 July 2004
Two lovely farm shots: while in Orkney Stan liked to help with the chickens, giving them food & water every morning and taking them into their stinking hut at night. I find chickens sinister, though tasty, particularly my new moroccan chicken extravaganza (related further down this page).
The cow-birth was an amazing night: what was astonishing for us - a tiny (yet leg-crossingly huge) cow being born - was rather less so for Robbie and my mum, his occasional assistant in matters farm-ish. My mum & I arrived just as the hooves poked a bit further out: we were enlisted in Robbie's cunning plan of rope-birth: loop rope round said hooves, loop rope round gate then get assistant to pull gate. My new pink birkenstoks were not meant for such things, sliding as they did through warmly wet shit, but out plopped the little baby cow - so clean and fully formed.
Looking at this photo again I remember this real awe I had that I'd never seen animals giving birth before. While I grew up 'in a town' (Stromness) my uncle was a beef farmer: I think I must've gone 'eww' and never thought about going out to help. I remember my aunty, Eileen, going to the 'calving' years ago when I used to go to visither & her family: perhaps I thought this cow-birth business was conducted with the poor cow lying down flat like a human on a bed of clean straw while Eileen & Alastair boiled kettles and unfolded white towels.
While through at my Aunty & Uncle's house we got to looking at old photos - a favourite pastime of all folks I know. Amongst these I saw my granny's wedding pictures: I'd seen many years ago one of her & Dad (what me & my cousins called our Grandfather) walking down a road in their wedding outfits with a long line of guests behind them: her face was obscured in the sepia bloom which movement was represented as 'in the olden days' of cameras.
To me, Granny was a granny, a woman I loved who made jam from her strawberries, who loved the daisies she was named after, who wore headscarves to keep her hair bonny and drank many a weak cuppy o tea. In her wedding photo I saw a dark-haired beautiful girl beside her striking and tall new husband, a small smile on her lips: nervous maybe? excited? This was not a woman to be only thought of as the purveyor of boiled sweeties, hugs and swing-pushes. I remember Eileen recounting a story she'd been told about her mother: that she'd been witnessed with straw in her hair when she was still unmarried - the implication not needing to be said. Granny looked so coy at being told that and her smile I can now see was because she was recalling her non-Granny life when she was Daisy Stanger, person with secrets not Granny, woman who loved us all even though we could see her only as a granny.
Our new favourite food is one I invented all by myself (except for the chickpea smash - that's a Jamie Oliver idea), though I must've got the notion from somewhere - a person who's not traveled far in their life doesn't just come up with morrocan-inspired food. Anyhoo, this is a many-part dish, really more of an opera of food, a meal made of many parts. Take & use which bits you fancy, change them to your own tastes. Sorry about the rather rubbish amounts - a trickle and a scrunch are hardly Delia-approved terms for cookery demonstration purposes!
Morrocan-ish chicken with lemon herb potato salad, smashed chickpeas and minty yogurt dip.
the chicken:
- one breast per person, slash three times across top
- zest of one lemon
- one teaspoon of cumin
- garlic, crushed (one clove or more, to taste)
- olive oil
The amounts of lemon and cumin above relate to two chicken breasts so increase/decrease as needed. Let down the lemon/cumin mix with a little olive oil to give a paste. Slather this into your hen tits and leave for half an hour or so. Cook in oven at 200°C for 20-30 minutes or grill. Environmentally it might be sounder to do your chicken at the same time as your tatties, below: I do this as I tend to like my chicken colder in this dish and because our grill sets off the fire alarm. If I could be bothered cleaning it, I'd grill the chicken on both sides for around 20 minutes in total.
the potatoes:
- tatties, as many as you fancy, but err on the liberal side. (I tend to use loads - perhaps 20 small ones - this salad can be eaten the next day if you don't have a Stan around who hoovers up all known left-overs.)
- cumin, crushed if not already crushed (a good 3 heaped teaspoons)
- three garlic cloves, crushed
- zest of two lemons plus juice too
- one red chilli, chopped finely (deseed if you prefer a not-too hot taste)
- olive oil
- two red onions, cut into wedges with root intact so the wedges retain shape
- quarter of a cucumber, cut into sticks
- punnet of cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
- large scrunch of coriander leaves and of flat-leaf parsley
- small scrunch of mint leaves
- bunch of spring onions, sliced
- salt & pepper
Pre-heat oven to 200°C. Boil the tatties.
During this time, get a frying pan & lightly brush with olive oil. Set your onion segments into the hot pan and leave to blacken slightly. Turn over then remove.
Once the tatties are cooked, allow to cool slightly so that they can be handled. In the meantime, in a large roasting tin/oven-proof dish scatter the cumin, chilli, garlic, lemon zest and onion segments and trickle over a good drizzle of olive oil. When cooler, chop the tatties up into bite-sized chunks. Toss about in the lemon cumin oil and stick in the oven for around 20-30 minutes.
While the tatties roast, assemble the herb part of your salad in a large serving bowl: pile the cucumber, tomatoes, spring onions and chopped herbs into the bowl. Once the tatties are done, leave to cool for 10 minutes or so then combine with your herby stuff. Add salt & pepper, more olive oil and some lemon juice, dependant upon your tastes. Yum.
the yogurt & mint stuff
- quarter of cucumber, cut in sticks then into cubes
- small scrunch of mint leaves, finely chopped
- a good scoofle of plain yogurt, 4 or so tablespoons as a basic amount
Mix all this together in a nice bowl. If you find you need more, add more stuff!
the chickpea smash (after Jamie Oliver)
- a tin of chickpeas, drained and well rinsed
- two teaspoons of fresh chilli, chopped finely
- good pinch-icle of cumin
- olive oil
- salt & pepper
- garlic, crushed
crush the chickpeas in a large, flat-bottomed dish or pot. Use a tattie-masher, or get lurking boyfriend/husband/partner to do job. Scoop this into a nicer, more serving-type dish.
Mix through all the other ingredients until you have a lovely paste.
We have started to add a tablespoon of natural yogurt to this - it makes it beautifully creamy and less tongue-sticky.
These four dishes can be set out with some pitta bread and will happily feed lots of people. Yum indeed. Note no authentic morrocan anything, something about the combination of lemon & cumin screams NORTH AFRICA at me. Ah well, Stan's been there - and bought several suitcases of olives by mistake too. Idiot.
During our Orkney stay, we went to St.Maragret's Hope, down on South Ronaldsay, to stay with Mr & Mrs. Dearness. Mrs.Dearness is a child-hood chum with whom I had my first kiss, amongst bluebells in Binscarth woods. It's documented on film, though the hazyness of the shot makes me suspect we were unwitting pawns in our mother's plans to make us look cute, and to have blackmail material when we were older. Stan, drunk at half three in the morning with Andrew, took the shot below: imagine having this as your view:
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