SMILE FIRST THING IN THE MORNING. GET IT OVER WITH.
W.C. Fields
Sometimes I can empathise with that quote.



READING:

When I was out in South Africa last month at least six different people asked me if I’d read
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and when I said no I hadn’t, the usual response was something like “well you MUST, you really must read it.” They had all loved the book.

Being an obedient sort I have now done so.

Elizabeth Gilbert is a successful New York writer and journalist, who (aged 34) goes through a painful, soul destroying divorce, followed by an intense rebound romance which ends badly. Feeling emotionally battered she decides to take a year off and go travelling to find balance in her life. Eat Pray Love is a memoir of that year of travel.

Gibert starts her year of travel in Italy, Rome to be precise, where she learns to speak Italian and eats, eats everything and anything, from risotto ai fungi and Tiamisu to newborn lamb’s intestines.

After several months in Italy she moves on - to India. There she intends to spend six weeks at the Ashram of “her” guru, a famous Indian woman to whose teachings she had been introduced back in New York some months before; she hopes to find spiritual solace whilst meditating at the Ashram. It turns out that six weeks of trying to meditate is not enough for her, and she ends up staying at the Ashram for all the time she is in India.

Eventually it is time to move on again, and she sets off for the exotic island of Bali to try and locate an elderly Balinese medicine man she had met four years previously. Whilst in Bali she makes friends, observes Balinese life, and falls in love with a Brazilian man some years her senior and her own life takes a whole new turn.

Elizabeth Gilbert has a frank, informal writing style - almost chatty ; she is self deprecating and often very funny indeed. I particularly enjoyed the first part of the book when she is in Italy, but the middle section where she is in the Ashram dragged on and on, and I began to find her emotionally adolescent and self absorbed. To be honest, the whole Ashram thing annoyed me, as I saw it as being run as a commercial business for like-minded nu-age westerners who perceived the east as being the only place to find spiritual truths, and yet Gibert didn’t seem to see that at all.

The time she spent in Bali was fascinating about Balinese life, but again I found myself becoming impatient as she seemed incredibly naïve – when suffering from as serious urinary tract infection one of her local friends, a woman who runs a health restaurant, gives her a vile concoction to drink and hey presto, she is completely cured within two hours – oh yeah? If that were really possible, every mega pharmaceutical company would be beating a path to Bali to register and market the potion.

After finishing it I did wonder whether this was a very carefully calculated account of a year which was always intended to be the basis of a commercially successful book, rather than a true spiritual and emotional journey.

Having said all that,I did find it an entertaining read - it was not slushy at all, which is what I’d expected when I picked it up, and very different from my usual reading material. Which can only be a good thing!

Rated: 3.5*

RANTING:

Last night I had to take my DH to the A&E department of our local hospital - he had managed to slice his right ear in half (don't ask). Anyway, being Easter Sunday at 11pm the place was moderately busy as you would expect.

DH was seen very quickly, the injury was worse than

either of us had realised, and after being cleaned etc, we were shown to a cubicle to await the surgical registrar. We had taken work/books to read, and the time went by. People came and went in the adjoining cubicle.

At one in the morning a very articulate 11 year old and his dad were there. Being a child, he had jumped right up the queue (and thats fine with me), a doctor arrived to see him almost

immediately. As all were speaking very loudly I couldn't help overhearing everything.
The boy was suffering from Ringworm, which he said he had had for some two months. He had been taken to his GP who had prescribed various anti-fungal creams and tablets; these

had not had much success so he had seen the GP again who had changed the medication - some three weeks prior. He listed all the medications he had been given, some of which he was still using.

The A&E doctor asked why they were there in the early hours - and the father said that the boy was going abroad on Tuesday for a week's holiday and they wanted the ringworm to be sorted out there and then! This father was an articulate middle class man who proceeded to throw a wobbly when it was very politely pointed out to him that ringworm was neither an Accident nor an Emergency and that he should take his son back to the GP and get an appointment with a consultant Dermatologist.

They stormed out, the father raging about the inequities of the NHS and how it was failing them. But the reality was that they were abusing the system. Hospital A&E departments are not for general ailments, they should not be used as an open-all-hours doctors surgery. The whole episode took 20-30 minutes of a busy doctor's time, time that could have been spent on others who needed her care there and then (and I do not include my DH among them - he was seen and sutured by a terrific registrar, who hailed from Ghana, about an hour later).

Imagine the scene I overheard being repeated once or twice a night at every A&E department up and down the land, and then you realise why the waiting times in casualty departments are often very long.

RECIPE:

My DD and I have sometimes grabbed a quick lunch at Ottolenghi, the chic eatery where rich and fashionable Notting Hillbillies get their organic rocket salad and other delicious things. Some weeks ago I was idly surfing through the on-line UK newspapers and discovered in The Guardian that Yotam Ottolenghi (who is chef/patron of the aforementioned establishment) writes a recipe column for them. This was the recipe that caught my eye. I made it, and all I can say is that the man is a culinary genius - it is super-special, double-dipped divine. When you read the recipe it sounds quite fiddly, but is actually not difficult and the result is worth it. My guests were knocked out by it...be warned, if you come to dinner here anytime in the next few months this is what you will be getting as a starter!

OTTOLENGHI'S CARAMELISED GARLIC TART

Serves 4-6

30g unsalted butter, melted
375g puff pastry
½ butternut squash (250g), peeled, seeded and cut into 2cm wedges
3 tbsp olive oil
Salt and black pepper
2 heads garlic, cloves peeled (this is a lot of garlic but trust me on this, it is not an over garlicky tasting dish)
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1½ tbsp caster sugar
1 tsp chopped rosemary
1 tsp chopped thyme, plus a few whole sprigs to finish
130g rich, creamy goats' cheese, rind removed
2 eggs
100ml double cream
100ml crème fraîche

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Brush a 22cm round cake tin with melted butter. Roll out the pastry to a square 3-4mm thick, then cut out a circle to cover the base of the tin and come about 3cm up its sides. Brush with more butter, line with greaseproof paper and fill with baking beans. Put into the fridge for 20 minutes, bake for 20 minutes, remove the beans and bake for 15 minutes more, or until the pastry is golden. Remove and set aside.

Spread the squash over an oven tray, sprinkle with a tablespoon of oil and a pinch of salt, and roast for 30 minutes, until cooked through. Meanwhile, put the garlic in a small pan and cover with water. Bring to a simmer, blanch for three minutes and drain. Return cloves to the dry pan and add two tablespoons of oil. Fry for two minutes, add the vinegar and 180ml water, simmer for 10 minutes, add the sugar, chopped herbs and half a teaspoon of salt, and simmer for another 10 minutes, until most of the liquid has evaporated and the cloves are coated in dark, caramelly syrup.

Arrange the squash in the tart case, dot with pieces of goats' cheese and scatter the garlic and its syrup all over. Whisk eggs, creams, half a teaspoon of salt and some black pepper, and pour over the tart, plugging the gaps but letting the filling peek over the surface. Lay a few thyme sprigs on top.

Reduce the oven to 170C/325F/ gas mark 3 and bake the tart for 35-45 minutes, until it sets and the top goes golden-brown.

Eat warm or at room temperature with a crisp salad - sit back and wait for the compliments!

A DOOR IS WHAT A DOG IS PERPETUALLY ON THE WRONG SIDE OF.
Ogden Nash

READING:

Robert Harris’s last two books have been set in Ancient Rome but his latest work The Ghost is set very much in the here and now, and mainly located in Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Cape Cod on the US eastern seaboard.

This book is a very slick political thriller, and a gripping read. The story is of a professional ghost-writer who is hired by a big publishing house to take on the memoirs of a British Prime Minister who has recently left office having become unstuck as a result of his policies in the Middle East. These have embroiled Britain – together with the USA - in a War on Terror, not to mention a real conflict in Iraq. Now, does that remind you of anyone in particular?

The ghost writer is flown out to Martha’s Vineyard where Adam Lang, the ex-PM, and his entourage are holed up on the isolated estate owned by the chairman of the publishing firm who have paid a £10 million advance for the memoirs. He takes over the rough manuscript of the memoirs produced by a former aide of the PM who has died recently, and tries to get to grips with the character and thinking of Lang, but as he says “I realised I had a fundamental problem with our former prime minister. He was not a psychologically credible character. In the flesh, playing the part of a statesman, he seemed to have a strong personality. But somehow, when one sat down to think about him, he vanished.”...hmmm, that strikes a chord doesn't it?

Lang’s wife, Ruth, is a strong character, “everyone had said she was smarter than her husband, and that she’d loved their life at the top even more than he had. If there was an official visit to some foreign country, she usually went with him: she refused to be left at home. You only had to watch them on TV together to see how she bathed in his success.”

A set of events ensues which makes The Ghost realise he is swimming in deeper, murkier waters than he had anticipated, and after many clever twists the book ends with a stunning revelation. It would be rotten of me to reveal anything more of the plot, but suffice to say, anyone who is even slightly interested in British politics over the past ten years will find this a delicious, malicious tale, and a real page-turner. It has best-seller written all over it, and no doubt a film or TV version will follow ere long.

Rated 4.5*

RANTING:

The point of an inquest is to determine how an individual died, but in the case of the late Princess Diana we know how she died, in a car crash in Paris when the vehicle she was travelling in was going too fast, she was not wearing a seat belt, and the driver was –according to the French Police who conducted an inquiry – well over the legal drink-drive limit.

So what is this inquest, 10 years after her death, for? It seems to be to squash, once and for all, the claim that she was murdered as Mohammed Al Fayed, father of her lover Dodi Fayed who also died in the crash, has stated to anyone and everyone who will listen - particularly if they have a TV camera with them.

The whole thing strikes me as a completely unnecessary charade, and a charade that is costing us taxpayers a hell of a lot of money (estimates run from £10 million upwards). I, and probably thousands of others, am utterly fed up with the whole business, and god knows what Diana's sons must think about it.

It seems grubby and prurient for people to be poking through aspects of her life that should be private – every tabloid announcing that she was on the pill and therefore couldn’t be pregnant; jurors, lawyers and court officials being shown paparazzi photos taken of her when she lay dying; speculation that a ring ordered by Dodi meant she was engaged to be married to him (even if she was, it seems bloody far fetched to decide to kill both of them).

There has already been an independent UK inquiry held by Lord Stevens, which took 3 years to complete and cost the taxpayers £3.69 million, but Mohammed Al Fayed wasn’t happy with the conclusion which said that there was no conspiracy and it was just a ghastly accident.

Unless the coroner Lord Justice Scott Baker announces at the end of the inquest that the Royal Family are personally responsible, and the police rush to arrest the Duke of Edinburgh, Al Fayed still won’t be happy. He is an angry and embittered man whose ambitious plans for his much loved son ended when the couple were killed, and he has spent a fortune trying to convince everyone who will listen of his paranoid theories.

As with Kennedy’s assassination, there will always be people who have far fetched views that she was eliminated. Let them have them. The poor woman is dead and buried. Can we please move on. I can't stand the thought that tomorrow morning this whole ghastly business will be all over the media again, and again, and again , until next weekend; and its estimated that the inquest will continue for six months. Aaagh!

RECIPE:

The other evening I had two extra for supper rather unexpectedly, and though it was easy enough to stretch the pasta which the DH and I were going to have, the meal seemed a little insubstantial. In such situations what I try to do is rustle up a starter course (not something I would normally bother with for just the two of us). This Tuscan recipe is one of my favourite standby starters, as I nearly always have the ingredients to hand in the kitchen store cupboard. It goes down equally well in winter or summer, and is super simple.

TONNO E FAGIOLI (Tuna and bean salad)

Serves 4

2x 400g tins Borlotti beans
1 tin good quality tuna in olive oil,
1 medium red onion
Juice of half a lemon
Olive oil,
Salt and pepper
3 tablespoons freshly chopped parsley

Drain the tins of beans, tip them into a sieve and rinse briefly under cold water, shake off excess water and allow to drip dry.

Open and drain the tin of tuna, and flake the tuna into a bowl.

Peel the red onion and cut it in half lengthwise. Finely slice each half, and separate the rings.

Tip the beans into a bowl, season with salt and pepper and the lemon juice and a good glug of olive oil to dress the beans. Mix gently.

Divide the beans between four serving plates and then divide the tuna flakes and onion between the plates, spooning them carefully over the beans, garnish with the chopped parsley.

Serve with crusty warm Ciabatta bread.

HOW COME THERE ARE ONLY 24 HOURS in a day, right at the moment I could use an extra 5 or 6. At least we should have the option, don't you think?


READING:

The Mitford Girls by Mary S. Lovell

The six Mitford sisters were born into an aristocratic English family between 1904 and 1920. They had an unconventional, some might say eccentric, childhood and adolescence with no formal education of any kind but all grew up to be well known as individuals. Nancy, the eldest, was a highly regarded biographer of Madame de Pompadour and Louis IVX, who spent the later half of her life living in Paris; she also wrote wonderfully sharp and witty novels and articles on English manners and mores, and coined the phrase "U and Non-U".

Pamela the most domesticated of them all, was the sister with whom John Betjeman fell in love. Diana was the elegant beauty, who first married a member of the Guiness family, and then fell in love with and married Sir Oswald Mosley M.P., leader of the British Union of Fascists, she became a figure of hate, imprisoned during WWII for supporting the BUF. The middle daughter, Unity, an unstable young woman who went to Germany in the 1930s, was in love with Hitler and totally obsessed with Nazism. When war was declared she shot herself in the head and survived handicapped for several years. Next in line was Jessica - always known as Decca - who eloped at 19 and went off to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil War where her husband was killed. She then married an American,

became a member of the Communist Party and was active in the Civil Rights movement in the USA; she too, like her sister Nancy, became a writer of some reknown. Finally there was the beautiful Deborah who married the Duke of Devonshire and became chatelaine of Chatsworth, one of the greatest houses in England.

Now widowed, she lives in an old Rectory and is famous for keeping hens amongst other things.

Their lives have been covered partially and individually several times by other writers, but Mary Lovell has managed to write about them in the context of their sisterhood, yet gives a clear picture of each of these rather extraordinary women. An absolutely fascinating read about a fascinating family of women.


RANTING:

What is the problem with the British Transport Police? they seem to have had collective common-sense failure, or maybe they are just being badly trained. Of course it could be that some members of BTP are right little dictators and love the power rush they get from officiously hassling people.
A few weeks ago the Director of the Institute of Engineers,Tom Foulkes -a former Brigadier who used to work at the Ministry of Defence, was arrested when bording Eurostar en route to a business meeting in Paris. His crime? at the bottom of his briefcase was a Swiss Army Card*.

He was charged with carrying an offensive weapon.

Today, a lawyer who plays cricket as a hobby, was stopped at Belsize Park tube station by a member of the BTP. His crime, carrying an offensive weapon. What offensive weapon was that? a cricket ball. A CRICKET BALL - for crying in a bucket. Apparently a spokesman for British Transport Police said: "What if the ball was dropped and hit an old lady further down the escalator? “We would advise passengers to be careful, both for themselves and other people at this busy time."

Now I carry a lot of heavy stuff. My handbag, which seems to contain everything bar the kitchen sink, is a prime example. What if I dropped it on the escalator and hit an old lady,

or, scary thought, what if I took leave of my senses and used it as a cosh and smashed some cretin of a BTP officer over the head? My handbag obviously falls within their definition of an offensive weapon - I await my arrest.

* Just in case Santa is reading this blog rant, here's a wee hint - I wouldn't mind one of these in my stocking this year, it would be so useful and I believe it is available in a variety of fashionable colours.

RECIPE:

Friends coming for supper tomorrow evening and I have a busy day, so I'm making the starter tonight; as I know them quite well I know they will all eat mushrooms, this is not a recipe to make for non-fungi eaters! When my darling daughter was little she wouldn't touch them, I think the texture put her off; now she has become a real foodie and eats absolutely everything. This is a dish I love, in fact, left to my own devices I could scoff the whole lot! The recipe comes from a famous Jewish cookery writer, the late Evelyn Rose, via her eldest son with whom my DH and I shared a house many years ago.

MUSHROOMS A LA GRECQUE

Serves 6-8

750g mushrooms – choose medium/small closed-cap
3 Tablespoons olive oil
3 Tablespoons sunflower oil
6 Tablespoons water
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
2 Tablespoons wine vinegar, white or red
2 teaspoons tomato purée
2 large cloves garlic, crushed
1 large Bay leaf
15-20 coriander seeds, roughly crushed
12-15 peppercorns, roughly crushed
10 grinds of black pepper
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon fresh thyme leaves or a large pinch of dried thyme

Wipe the mushrooms clean, if very small leave them whole, cut in half if medium sized, and quarter if bigger.

Put all other ingredients into a saucepan, bring to the boil, cover and simmer for 5 minutes. Uncover, put all the mushrooms into the pan and spoon the liquid over them, cover and simmer for 8-10 minutes. The mushrooms will shrink in size and produce a lot of liquid.

Using a slotted spoon, remove the mushrooms from the sauce and place in a serving dish.

Bring the liquid up to the boil over a high heat and cook until it is reduced by ¾ and has become quite thick and syrupy. Pour over the mushrooms and leave overnight to marinate.

Serve as a starter with warm Pitta bread, or as part of a salad buffet.

NUGGET OF USELESS INFORMATION 1: Barbie's middle name is Millicent. In fact her full name is Barbie Millicent Roberts - I bet you never knew that!

On a completely different note, I would like to register my disquiet that a blogger I read regularly may be dooced. Inspector Gadget is a police inspector in England. He has been writing a most infomative blog for some time. I have huge admiration for our police force, and as a magistrate have had certain contacts with them over the years, I have never found anything in any of his blogs which would have either identified cases or individuals dealt with by his force; nor have I read anything written by him which brings the force into disrepute. On the contrary, as a result of reading his blog I am now much more aware of some of the problems and constraints that our police have to contend with when doing their duties. As a British citizen, I feel he has every right to express himself and I believe it would be a very retrograde step if his superiors over-reacted to his blog and treated the act of blogging as a disciplinary matter.

READING:
Because of the business we have, my DH and I read anything and everything about China that we can lay our hands on. His knowledge of Chinese history is much greater than mine, but I am trying to fill the gaps, this book was given to me by someone who knew of our interest.

The Last Empress: The She-dragon of China by K. Laidler The last Imperial dynasty to rule over China was the Manchu, and the last Empress was Yehenara (Yehonala) who is better known as Cixi (T'zu Hsi) and after her death she was officially referred to as Empress Xiaoqin Xian.
From an obscure provincial Manchu family she became 3rd-grade Concubine of the young Emperor Xianfeng (Hsien Feng) and after giving birth to a son she was elevated to 1st-grade concubine. When the Emperor died in 1861 aged 30, Cixi's five year old son became Emperor and she became Empress/Regent so her rule of dictatorial power began. She was absolutely ruthless, disposing of rivals by having them bumped off, and members of her own family were not spared. She reigned for 50 years, out-living successive Emperors, and dealing with major crises such as the Tai Ping Rebellion and the Boxer Rebellion. She was known as the "She-Dragon of China" and within three years of her death in 1909 the Manchu Dynasty collapsed and China entered a period of chaos.
A frightening despot, her life is absolutely fascinating but I found this book difficult to read. My first quibble is that the author has used the now defunct Wade-Giles system of Romanisation of the Mandarin language rather than using Pinyin, this makes it hard to remember the names and their pronunciation. This means that the reader is continually having to stop and check who it is that the author is talking about and what their relationship is to others. I thought it could have been better edited. Whilst this book is factually very authorative, there are other books which give a better understanding of the personality and power of this dominating woman.

RANTING:
Here's a little something I came across a couple of days ago, at first I just thought it was funny - and of course in one way it is - but then this morning, listening to the self-congratulatory guff coming out of the Labour Party Conference I started thinking about the enormous increases in spending on the NHS since Labour has been in power (We're spending £94bn on the health service this year, compared with £52bn six years ago)... so why are wards shut down, operations cancelled and trusts in turmoil?

Probably because some of it is going on stuff like this, a prime example of the Nanny State gone mad. Does New Labour really think that the NHS should be wasting money producing leaflets and posters to tell the citizens how to have a poo? Have you been waiting years - since you stopped using nappies- to be told how to empty your bowels?
No, I didn't think so, and neither have I.
Next they'll be telling us how to have a pee - and I'm not taking the piss.



RECIPE:
Chicken livers are so cheap, and this recipe is so easy and quick that it has become a great standby in my repertoire.

CHICKEN LIVER PATÉ

450g chicken livers, rinsed and trimmed (2 x 225g tubs of frozen livers)

225g butter

1 onion, finely chopped

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

4 tablespoons brandy

1 heaped teaspoon mustard powder

Salt and Pepper

60g butter, bay leaves or sprigs of thyme to seal and garnish the paté.

~~~~~~~~~~

First melt the extra 60g of butter in a small bowl in the microwave until it is completely liquid.

Put the melted butter in the fridge to firm while you make the paté.

Using just under half of the 225g butter, sauté the chicken livers in a large heavy frying pan; keep stirring them round so they cook evenly until they are browning, but still pink in the middle. Tip them into a food processor. Use a knob of butter in the same pan to soften the finely chopped onion, and when translucent add the chopped garlic and continue to cook for a few minutes – do not let the garlic brown. Tip the onions and garlic into the food processor. Deglaze the frying pan with the brandy, and then tip that into the processor together with any remaining butter. Add the mustard powder and season well then whiz all the ingredients together until very smooth and creamy.

Spoon the paté into ramekins or other smallish dish and smooth the surface level.

Take the melted butter out of the fridge. It should have separated into a layer of clarified butter above a white, salty liquid. Carefully remove the clarified butter to another bowl and discard the liquid. Re-melt the clarified butter and spoon it evenly over the surface of the paté. Press a bay leaf and a few peppercorns or a sprig of thyme into the surface, cover with Clingfilm and leave to set overnight in the fridge.

This is great with crackers and a glass of wine; or as a starter, served with warm brown toast and cornichions. You can also have it with crusty bread, salad and soup for a complete meal.

MY CANDLE BURNS at both ends; It will not last the night; But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends - it gives a lovely light.


Edna Saint Vincent Millay

READING:

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem is a surreal detective story set, you guessed it, in Brooklyn New York. Lionel Essrog is one of four adolescent orphans from St Vincent’s Home for Boys who are taken on by a local fixer/tough called Frank Minna who intends the lads to become “Minna Men”, his sidekicks in the fly-by-night detective-agency-cum-limosine-service he has started. Lionel is known as the Human Freakshow as he suffers from Tourette's Syndrome
and is continually shouting out nonsense and swearwords, compulsively counting things, touching things and twitching or “ticcing” as it is properly called. Because of his condition Lionel’s innate intelligence is discounted by everyone, until one terrible day when Frank Minna is murdered and Lionel is compelled to really become a detective, and to try to find his way through shady undergrowth of Brooklyn’s gangster land and the web of threats and favours that surrounded Minna.

Jonathan Lethem had written Sci- Fi before he wrote this novel, and has obviously been influenced by Philip K. Dick’s writing. What gives the book its USP is the character of Lionel and his daily, even hourly, battle with the behaviours caused by his condition. He is isolated from forming any real relationships by his Tourette’s Syndrome, which is brilliantly described and which I found incredibly moving. I wasn’t sure quite what the author wanted this book to be. As a detective story it is satisfactory but fairly mundane, so was Lethem primarily trying to write a book about someone with Tourette’s?

Tourette’s is a condition which is life-long and there is virtually no treatment for it. People who suffer from it are often shunned in society. I well remember my very first day as a magistrate, 20 years ago. I had to sit in court at Horseferry Road in London. One of the very largest and busiest magistrate’s courts in England. As you might imagine I was nervous, and slightly stunned by the sheer volume of clients who passed before the bench. A case of criminal damage was called on, and into the dock came a man of about 30, f-ing and blinding and throwing his arms around, he paid little attention to the chairman of the bench telling him to be quiet. The chairman was an elderly chap in his late sixties, and he became very red in the face as the man kept shouting “fuckfuckfuckfuckcuntfuck” etc, and he threatened to have the man sent down for contempt of court. I suddenly realized that the man had Tourette’s (although back then I knew it as Gilles de la Tourette’s Syndrome) so I gathered my courage and managed to whisper to the chairman that I would like us to retire. When we did, I explained what I knew of the syndrome – which was not that much – but persuaded my fellows that the Probation service should be asked to get the man an appointment with a neurologist at Guy's hospital, and find him a place in a hostel (he was living on the streets) and that that would be a far more positive outcome than just locking him up. Sadly, I expect he appeared in other courts at other times poor chap, but at least on that one occasion I felt I had achieved something worthwhile, not a feeling I have had very often in my little corner of our creaky justice system.

RANTING:
Are we going nuts as a society? Maybe it’s just me going nuts, but I am getting really irritated with the ridiculous warning labels on packets of food or household goods, I think it is creeping into this country following the US model. Check out this website about idiotic warning signs in the USA

Today I was making my usual weekly dash round Waitrose when I came across the most blatant example of an illogical, crazy warning I have seen .

A promotion was going on in the fruit & veg section. A Waitrose employee was standing at a little table offering customers free samples of a line of produce – you know the kind of thing, a whole lot of little plastic dishes with a tiny taster in each, and a waste bin beside the table for the used dishes. There was an artistically arranged pile of packets of the goods for customers to purchase once they had been seduced by the tasting. Prominently displayed on the table was a large laminated sign reading ‘May Contain Traces of Nuts’ – and what you may ask, was the product being promoted? Why it was Nuts, packets of Waitrose’s own label nuts. Cashews, almonds, brazils, macadamias, pistachios, and some packets of mixed nuts. There was nothing else in the packets, just nuts.

‘May Contain Traces of Nuts’ – I should bloody well hope they did – they WERE nuts and I went nuts. I rushed up to the employee and asked them (very politely) why they had that stupid warning sign up and I was told ‘we have to have it by law* in case someone who is allergic to nuts eats something without realizing it has nuts in it.’ - ‘but’ I said, ‘these ARE packets of nuts, the samples you are handing out are nuts, why would anyone with a nut allergy even consider taking a sample? You don’t need this warning label’ Anyway, there was no point discussing it with her, she was merely following company policy.

I drove home thinking about how stupid our society is becoming – having to be warned about the obvious all the time, why are we letting this happen? Where will it all end?

* It is not true that you have to label for inadvertent traces of nuts, I have just looked up the UK’s food labeling regulations to be sure. Having said that, I can see that it might be sensible to put such a label on a packet of food containing a mixture of ingredients where there is a chance of the food having some nutty component. I just think companies are taking it to excess without looking at logic because they are scared witless of being sued.

RECIPE:

After that nutty rant, I thought I would include a recipe that definitely contains nuts. This is a cauliflower salad - well I call it a salad - that has variations across Spain and Italy. I like this Italian version, and presume it came from the town of Rimini. You can make it all year round as it is just as good in winter as in summer. The other good thing about it is that you can prep everything several hours ahead, and just assemble it at the last minute, so it is really good as a starter when you have guests.

CAVALFIORI A RIMINATI

Serves 4 as a starter, or 2 as a main course.

1 medium cauliflower, leaves discarded, broken into small florets.

Generous pinch of saffron

75ml olive oil

1 large red onion, thinly sliced

50g pine nuts

50g raisins

Extra-virgin olive oil to dress

Small handful chopped fresh mint

Small handful chopped flat leaf parsley

Heat a saucepan filled with a generous amount of salted water, add the saffron and when it comes to the boil, pop in the cauliflower.

Cook for just 2-3 minutes, so that the cauliflower picks up a little colour from the saffron but stays very much al dente.

Drain well, and spread on a tray to cool quickly.

Meanwhile, put the oil in a frying pan over a high heat. When it is just starting to show wisps of smoke, add the onion. Fry briskly for 5-6 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the slices start to look crispy and caramelised. Add the pine nuts and raisins. Stir and cook for a couple of minutes (the raisins will swell and the pine nuts should colour a little). Tip into a sieve and drain off the excess oil, then transfer into a large bowl.

To serve, toss the cauliflower with the onions, raisins and pine nuts and season to taste. Drizzle generously with the extra-virgin olive oil and scatter with the chopped herbs.

The salad is also good when topped with shavings of a salty sheep milk cheese such as Pecorino.

Better late than never.....arghhh, its been days since my last blog, dear reader please forgive me. It has been worrying me that there don't seem to be enough hours in the day to fit everything in, never mind writing a blog. I am going to have to set myself some kind of timetable and NO Gin & Tonic will be allowed if I don't stick to it. Something else will have to give - cleaning the downstairs loo for example!

READING:
Just like my blogging, reading has been relegated to the sidelines by the number of visitors, the number of court sittings, the bathroom renovation etc etc. Having said that, I have enjoyed "Freakonomics" by Steven D. Leavitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Easy reading, it presented fascinating ideas , statistics and a sideways look at how the world works from a maverick economist at Harvard - ably assisted by a top-rate writer. You might not agree with all the ideas that are presented in the book, but you will certainly have lots to think and talk about. It is a very different perspective on things that is presented in this book. For me the most fascinating section was the one on the primary reason for the rapid decrease in crime in New York...if you thought that that was a result of Mayor Guliani and his zero tolerance policies, think again. Well worth reading.

RANT:
Here in England the outcome of a court case in which a drug dealer was charged with a double murder has been receiving a good deal of press coverage. Three years ago Bertram Byfield, a Jamaican drug dealer living in London, and seven year old Toni-Ann, the little girl he considered his daughter, were shot dead by another violent drug dealer, Joel Smith. The child was shot in the back by Smith, presumably to prevent her being a witness to his having killed her father. A truly henious crime, to shoot a child in cold blood. Smith has been tried and found guilty and will serve a life sentence.
It transpires that Toni-Ann was in the care of Birmingham Social Services at the time of her death, and they have been getting a lot of criticism/blame for what happened to her. What none of the media have really addressed is WHY was this little girl in the care of a local authority in a country far from her mother and other close family? Her mother, who lives in Jamaica had sent her - as a four year old - to the UK on a 'holiday' . Having had a 10 year relationship with Bertram Byfield (who was serving a prison sentence himself when Toni-Ann arrived here) the mother must surely have had some inkling of his involvement with the criminal drug culture. Neither Bertram Byfield nor Toni-Ann were British citizens, and correctly speaking neither of them should have been here at all. Toni-Ann was passed from one set of people to another in Birmingham until she ended up being taken into Care. Byfield then started to make applications to have her with him. Birmingham Social Services were lied to by him, and by his ex-girlfriend who claimed to be Toni-Ann's aunt, and so they permitted the child to move to live with the so-called aunt in London, who immediately passed her over to live with Byfield himself.
Nobody has questioned all the adults - particularly her mother - who used and abused the benefits and advantages of British residence, as to why THEY should not be held to account for what happened to Toni-Ann; why they allowed a man most of them must have known was a violent drug dealer with a criminal record to have her with him. For the press to focus on an overworked social services department is not helpful, they should cut to the root of the problem and condemn the whole Jamaican drug culture which is so damaging our inner cities, THAT is what killed Toni-Ann.



RECIPE:

Cumin is possibly my favourite spice, it is used so widely in cooking, from India through the Middle East to North Africa, and I can't get enough of the taste.
I also love meals which consist of lots of small dishes. 'Meat and two veg' is all very well from time to time, but I prefer tapas, meze, dim sum. Tonight we are having just such a meal and one of the dishes I've made is:

CHICK-PEA, CHILLI & CORIANDER FELAFEL

2 425g cans chick-peas, drained
2 fat cloves garlic, crushed
1 bunch spring onions – white parts only, finely chopped
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 large fresh green chilli, seeded and finely chopped
2 tablespoons fresh coriander, finely chopped
1 egg, beaten
2 tablespoons plain flour
Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Seasoned flour for shaping
Vegetable oil (NOT olive) for shallow frying

Lemon wedges and fresh coriander for garnishing

Tip the drained chick-peas into a food processor or blender, and process until smooth. Add the cumin and ground coriander, garlic and spring onion whites and process again until well mixed.

Turn the mixture into a bowl and stir in the chopped chilli, fresh coriander, beaten egg and flour, mix together well. Season. Mixture should be fairly stiff, if it is too soft add some extra flour and mix again. Cover the bowl and put in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to firm up.

Using floured hands, shape the mixture into small balls the size of a squash ball, roll each one in the seasoned flour and flatten slightly to make into a patty.
Heat the oil in a frying pan and shallow fry the patties in batches for about one minute each side until they are crisp and golden. Drain on crumpled kitchen paper.

These are delicious served with a tzatziki style dip made from yoghurt, garlic, mint and grated cucumber.

Pride comes before a fall. I shouldn't have been quite so chippy about tag clouds and html linking the other day, as I have just wasted aeons of time trying - and completely failing- to get any of the links I wanted onto the blog. It is a mystery to me. What am I doing wrong? A prissy, schoolmarmy sign keeps popping up saying "your html code is wrong, there is no closing code to match your opening code" - is she speaking ancient Aramaic? I have a horrible memory of the feeling I used to get at school a zillion years ago when I couldn't figure out what was going on in calculus and all explanations sounded like double dutch. However with age has come bloody mindedness, so I am determined that I will not be beaten.


READING: At the moment I seem to spend much of my time reading brochures for swanky shower units, sophisticated wash-hand basins, high-tech bathroom flooring and ceramic tiles. You guessed it, we are re-vamping our bathroom. Long overdue. So its lusting over bathroom porn for me right now. I must admit, I have been taken aback by some of the amazing systems that are available. Shower units which contain seating, massage bars, sound systems, flashy lighting, and even telephone connections (who would I ring when I was in the shower anyway?). Its another world.


RANT:
The heat goes on, dear reader, and despite the weathermen continually predicting massive thunderstorms, localised flooding, hail stones like pigeons eggs and so forth, not a drop of rain has come our way - and we have this bloody hosepipe ban.

You can:
Wash your car at a car wash
Fill a swimming pool, hot tub or pond
Hose down the cat or dog
Water a vegetable allotment with a hose
Hose down a caravan, trailer, motorcycle*
Clean the patio with a pressure washer or hose
Re-use wash water, ie from bath or washing machine
Fill all the watering cans you ever want to irrigate your lawn
Spray water into a concrete mixer

You can't:
Water private gardens with a sprinkler or hose
Wash a private car with a hosepipe at home
Leave a porous hose running under your hedge
Connect up drippers to water your patio plants
Water the vegetables in a household garden
Use a hose to water planted containers anywhere in the garden
Spray water into a planting hole with a hose

I am among the millions who are really p**sed off with Thames Water, huge profits, high charges, leaks everywhere and my garden is suffering.
There has been a leak in a street near ours for ten days or more, zillions of litres of water are trickling away, and has anyone come to fix it -despite me and umpteen other people having reported it - no they have not. Its NOT fair.


RECIPE: Another good recipe for when it's too hot to go near a stove, and you want a starter you can prep in advance. Everybody seems to love this and I have given the recipe to so many of my kid's friends - I think young people like it because it is "snacking" food which you can eat when sitting around doing nothing with a beer in one hand!

SMOKED MACKEREL PÂTÉ

Serves 6

4 smoked mackerel fillets
225g (8oz) cream cheese (eg Philadelphia)
4 Tablespoons lemon juice
Black pepper – freshly ground (don't add this if you have bought peppered mackerel fillets)
1 Tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce
1 clove garlic, skinned and finely chopped
1 Tablespoon finely chopped parsley

Remove the skin from the mackerel fillets, and any bones you can find, put into a food processor or blender, together with the cream cheese, lemon juice, plenty of black pepper, the Worcestershire Sauce, garlic and parsley (the parsley needs to be chopped first, otherwise it tends to remain in little clusters rather than get broken down finely).
If you don’t have a food processor or blender use a pestle and mortar.
Whiz or pound until you have a smooth mixture, then scoop the pâté into a serving dish and keep, covered in the fridge until required.
Serve with warm brown toast.
Freezes well.

I think I'm beginning to get the hang of blogging. There has been so much to learn and still so much I don't know. So far this week I have learnt how to put a picture into my blog, and how to insert a hyper link (click on 'Lime trees' in my rant to see what that means). I still don't know how to insert a list of links to blogs I like, how to get a 'hit' button - or any other kind of button for that matter, but hells bells, Rome wasn't built in a day! I'll get there in the end.

READING:
I've just finished reading "Home Ground" a novel by Lynn Freed. this was given to me by a cousin from Australia, who, like myself is an ex-South African. I try to read everything I can find which has been written by South African novelists post WW2. How Lynn Freed escaped my radar I don't know, but I am so grateful to Marion for giving me this book. It was chosen by The New York Times Book Review as one of it's notable books of the year for 1986.
It is a novel of family life in Durban during the 1950s-60s as seen through the eyes of the youngest of three daughters of a bohemian Jewish family. The story takes the reader through ten years in the life of the family, with all the attendant tensions and anxieties of adolescence. The greater dramas of the political situation in South Africa at that time - Sharpville, the POQO threat etc - are reduced to mere background murmurs. I suspect that it is a very autobiographical novel. I enjoyed it as a novel of adolescence, but never related to it as I did to Barbara Trapido's wonderful book "Frankie & Stankie" which is set in the same place at the same time. None-the-less it is a great addition to my collection .


RANT:

Every summer I get really fed up with the aphids. Of course I'd rather not have them on my garden plants, but it is the ones on the Lime trees which line our street that really get me wound up. The aphids produce vast quantities of a sugary liquid waste called Honeydew which drops onto everything beneath the trees including all the cars . Dust then sticks to this and the cars become filthy, it is impossible to see clearly through the windscreen but using the normal windscreen wash and wipers won't remove it. If that were not bad enough, this sticky waste attracts ants which feed off it, and also a fungus called Sooty Mould. I have been told that when the long-term parking lot at Gatwick Airport was being planned and built, some bright spark thought that planting trees would provide shade and make the place look better - so they planted Lime Trees, dozens of them. So now people jet off on two weeks summer hols and come back to find their cars a dusty sticky mess of Honeydew. Duh!

Unfortunately there are too many Lime trees in our street, and they are too big for me to do anything about this whole messy, sticky irritating situation - otherwise I would be running a massive KILL THE APHIDS campaign. God I hate the pesky critters - Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!

RECIPE:
Last night I had dinner at a local restaurant with a dear friend from Capetown and her daughter plus a motley crew of other young South Africans. We had such a good time, sitting out on a terrace by the street, drinking cold Pinot Grigio, eating Tapas, and talking nineteen to the dozen. I thought I should post one of my favourite Tapas recipes, one that is easy to make at home and is simply delish.

CHORIZO IN RED WINE

450g good Chorizo, sliced into 1cm thick slices
60 ml red wine2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon chopped fresh herbs - parsley, thyme, oregano

Pre-heat the oven to 180°-200°C
Put the chorizo slices in a small, shallow, oven-proof dish (you probably know the little round brown earthenware dishes the Spanish use - choose something similar as this is an oven to table situation) . Pour the wine, garlic and herbs over the slices and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes. Serve with chunks of crusty bread to mop up the juices. Great as an appetizer with drinks or as part of a group of Tapas-type dishes as a meal.

By the way, it is still hot as hell. I think my brain may be melting so you must excuse all typos, spelling errors, grammatical absurdities and bad language. Toodle pip!