Who’s Who?

So the boy David has cast aside his role as Dr Who.

I’m not normally someone who complains about change, but I liked Eccleston so much as the first of the revamped Dr’s Who that it took me till the end of the first Tennant series to accept him in the role. Then I really enjoyed Tate as the companion only to have her forget all her wondrous adventures at the end of the last series. There is not much hope of her coming back from that in the way there could be a convenient resurrection had she only died, rather than have her memories and experiences obliterated. This means I am not looking forward to getting used to yet another Dr, especially as there will be a new producer and new companion as well.

Parts of the blogosphere are in full speculative mode about the next doctor. Lots of names being bandied about, but what is all too clear is that we won’t be getting a woman doctor any time soon. At least not if the producers listen to the multitude of sexist comments in response to anyone suggesting women for the role.

Best suggestion I’ve seen so far is Joanna Lumley. I’d be in favour of her, with a suitable pretty boy as sidekick. In fact any woman of mature years to bring wisdom, grace and elegance instead of frantic running around hoping to avoid nasty aliens.

There is a depressing and predictable parallel to the rejection by loud (mostly non-female) bloggers/commenter's in all of this and I fear we are as likely to get a woman Dr Who as we are to get a woman as president of the US of A voted in on her own ticket. Not until the prevailing levels of sexism dwindle, but I can't see that happening any time soon, not given the permanent backlash against women's liberation.

SFX for the Cardinal

I often admit that my mind is affected by the quantity and quality of the science fiction I read. But it does mean that medical experiments and ‘life sciences’ do not phase me – much!

Prolonged reading about cloning, aliens and future fantasy societies means that I’m likely to be more open to modifying humans than those who freak out at the thought of cloning.

Conversely, maybe even perversely, I am not in favour of GM crops. This is because while we can elect (maybe eventually) to clone ourselves, this is going to be limited and unlike crops, individual humans cannot be released into the atmosphere to pollute existing strains of crops. Or at least not without some even more far-fetched scenarios a la Boys from Brazil. However, I wonder if that is what our own home-grown auld boy in a frock is thinking when he considers life sciences?

I feel it would do everyone a huge favour if the Cardinal was given a lifetime subscription to SFX, the science fiction magazine.

http://www.sfx.co.uk/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boys_from_Brazil_(film)

Screechin’ n’ cookin’, an’ screechin’ wheels

This is what happens when there is an extra hour on a Sunday!

I’m daft enough at times to even try to fool myself about cause and effect. So when my eyes were watering while I was gently and so slowly heating mint, lime and red onion chutney I blamed the fumes of onion, chilli, lime and cider vinegar for my streaming eyes and sore throat.

It couldn’t have been the strain of singing ‘Angie’ along with Mick, but an octave higher, could it? I’ve never been a soprano, and now, with only sporadic singing attempts and 15 years after smoking for fifteen years, there is no way I’m going to hit these notes without tears.

Anyway, the reason for the so very slow cooking was to give the hemp oil protection from over heating so that the precious omegas of assorted numerals would be safe from destruction at higher temps. And the chutney is because of the success of my kiwi, mint and lime marmalade in a recent recipe experiment and another surfeit of mint and limes. Sensible souls would have plumped for the alternative use for limes and mint and made cocktails.

While all this was going on I was also making chocolate sponge pudding with free trade organic cocoa powder and raspberry jam through it. Absolutely scrumlicious. There was more of it than expected, so I’ll freeze it and keep it until I buy really good vanilla ice cream to go with it.

Further screechin’ (of gears) occurred as I went to forage for a new car. I took some little green coloured kind of car plus its intrepid salesperson for a spin round the Edinburgh by-pass while trying it out. Said salesperson was calm about my driving and entirely respectful of me and my requirements for a new car.

This was in stark contrast to the not-all-that-bothered salesperson I saw last week or the completely smarmy and patronising one of the week before. Guess which one got my business?

Upshot is I am, or will be when they get it delivered for me, the possessor of a new car. I am still waiting for the excitement to kick in, but as I find car buying one of the worst tasks in life, I am relieved just to have made a decision.

My existing vehicle is the bane of my life as I cannot drive it to my satisfaction because the seat is too low for me to see well enough to reverse. It also has me screechin’ and shrieking at it regularly as it never seems to work for long without expensive car-doctoring, which just gets me down. I want a mechanical object to work to the specifications it describes in the owners manual. I have to think optimistic thoughts that this latest vehicle will serve me long and faithfully.

Coddled eggs - mostly harmless

Prepare to enter an alternate universe.

This is a recipe I used to make in the early 90’s, but have no recollection of where I found it. In the interests of accuracy, I began an innocent search online where I found an entirely hidden (in plain sight, where all the best secrets are kept) world of people who are into all things egg-coddleable.

If you thought the Jane Austin fan-club were a tad other-worldly, believe me, they are considerably more C21 than those whose lives have room for the matching of egg coddler patterns and swapping of recipes arcane. For me, in an entirely non-non-judgemental mind-set, I was nearly tipped over the edge by the requirements for those selling on their unwanted egg coddlers, to be clean and – oh dear, I’m losing the will to live!
http://www.egg-coddlers.com/

An example of an egg coddler (not to be confused with egg caddies, egg cookers or egg warmers)
Oops! Having basked in the warmth of the belief that I am apart from such concerns, I scrolled further down the egg coddler site to find that I am in possession of an (almost) proscribed kitchen implement.
Apparently to call these objects egg coddlers is “pushing the envelope too much”. However, I feel quite unabashed at being judged by someone willing to use such a trite cliché. My perfectly adequate excuse is that my mother bought a set of these plastic implements and deciding that her life was too short to microwave eggs, foisted them off onto me. I suspect they still languish all but forgotten in a cupboard in my kitchen.

Actual Coddling
Coddling eggs could not be simpler. Grease a ramekin dish, unless you actually possess an actual egg coddler (in which case do you want to swap for a completely unused, almost unique modern, plastic, hygienic egg cooker that is dishwasher proof and microwaveable?); break an egg into the container of choice, surround with single cream, carefully place as much Gruyere cheese as will fit on top and season to taste. Place in a Bain Marie in the oven for less time than you think while making toast from your favourite posh bread.

I should say, that even though the tenor of this leans towards scathing, the egg coddlers site does have a heart-warming story about its raison d’être. And in a free world, why shouldn’t those so inclined divert their attentions from the present day and all our political struggles into something that, to borrow a phrase from an equally unlikely universe, is ‘mostly harmless’.

Nae-pressure cooking

I made the first lentil soup of the season today. It marks the passage of the seasons when I dig out the pressure cooker, look it over to see if wear and tear means a trip to the hardware shop for a new gasket or other little fiddly bits. But it seems to have survived the last few months in its cupboard.

Pressure cookers are a great long term investment. This is only my second in thirty years and I can't begin to calculate how much gas and electricity I've saved by using this form of cooking in preference to boiling soups conventionally.

Its not just soups I make this way, but steamed puddings, suet puddings (using vegetable suet of course) and baked custards. My favourite is Stovies a traditional dish which is made quite differently depending where you live. There is yet another Scottish east /west divide here as some folks make it with only potatoes and onion, maybe with a little gravy; some add corned beef so that it becomes some odd Pictish version of corn beef hash, while those who grew up in the centre of the central belt do it the correct way with potatoes, onion and sausages.

This presents a challenge for a vegetarian. Most veggie sausages don't have the texture for this, so I use a combination of Linda McCartney sausages and vegetarian burgers in a ratio of 2:1. So my veggie stovies in the pressure cooker is a process of frying the sausages and burgers then cutting into pieces, chopping potatoes into cubes and chopping some onion. I only use half an onion but that is easily adjusted to taste. Put everything into the trivet with some water and cook according to the pressure cooker instructions. If doing this on the hob, it takes ages and needs a lot of stirring so nothing sticks, but creates a softer texture to the dish.

As for lentil soup, everyone has their own recipe, but mine is made with vegetarian stock, red lentils and anything I feel like putting in that day. Of the few foodstuffs that would temp me away from the veggie straight and narrow, it would be my Granny's lentil soup even though she made it with some dead beast or other - probably ham bones. I still miss her soup even after three decades.

Teeny tiny surf and shrunken heads

Such is the outcome of a saunter along the beach this morning. In a wholly unusual burst of enthusiasm I went to Portobello for an amble beside the waves.

I wanted to try out some things with my camera. I have a basic digital camera and have never read the instruction book, so everything is a learning experience with it. It doesn’t help that most of the time I can’t see exactly what I’m photographing in the screen at the back of the camera.

My aim was to capture the little wavelets rippling up the beach rather than my usual expanses of sky and sea with a thin strip of land on the horizon. I produced the picture here, using Picasa which gives a collage option I’d not tried before. I like to think it gives a whole lot of otherwise boring pics more emphasis together rather than individually.

I walked up towards the far west end of the beach past the back of the car salesrooms and the cat and dog home. The returning tide scrunched the wet dogs, the weans and the winching couples into an ever decreasing patch of dry sand. I moved off the beach and decided to walk a bit further along the prom until I got hungry enough to turn back and go home to hot kale and coriander seed soup.

This was the first time I’ve ever walked along as far west as this, even though I’ve been going to Portobello all my life. My great grandfather had a large house near the beach and I was taken there for short holidays from birth. There are tatty old photographs of me shivering in the paddling pool and chasing great grandfather’s old Boxer dog in the large walled garden at the back of his house.

The house was still in the family into the late 1980's. When I took my daughter to see my, by then, elderly great aunt, this was the fifth generation of the family to spend days out at Portobello beach followed by dinner in the wonderful old kitchen, still with its black and white floor and probably original fittings.

Various members of the extended family lived in the rambling rooms in that house, and I have a curious memory which I need to check out with my mother, about a second cousin. I recall being taken into his bedroom when I was young, probably around 7 or 8, (when the cousin was a young trendy hippie in his 20’s) and being shown the weird objects he had gathered. I have a distinct vision of a pair of shrunken heads he had on display.

This was a considerable number of years before it became accepted practice to return human remains to their rightful lands, but I have to hope these were not real artefacts. On the other hand, who makes fake shrunken heads and what conceivable market could there be for them? Also, that cousin did work for a museum, so perhaps ….??