My Mother's Cooking Interlude

 This afternoon I have stewed some plums, my mother would be pleased.  She would stew fruit throughout the summer,  apple, plum and pear seasons and these would be stored in kilner jars for use in the winter.   Everything was seasonal in terms of food eaten and preparation and preserves for out of season.  

There would be pickles, clear brine pickles and I still do these myself.  Also pickled cucumber.  

I prepare pickled red cabbage all through the year, not just at Christmas as some do.  It needs to be pickled and eaten fresh within a couple of weeks or it loses its crispness.   So my habit is to buy a red cabbage once per month and pickle it. 

I eat meat and often roast a joint of beef, ham or pork which lasts me for many meals and with the cold meat I eat my homemade pickles.  In the clear brine I like to do mixed vegetable pickle of whatever is to hand, cauliflower, green beans, shallots, peas. 

I also regularly pickle beetroot to eat with salads.  This is slow process and needs an alarm set to remember that the beetroot are boiling. I have more than once forgotten they are on and the saucepan boil dry.  

My mother mostly used ordinary malt vinegar and black peppercorns for her pickles and a simple dry brine method of salting overnight and then bottling the vegetables 24 hours later.  You can also gently boil the vegetables for a few minutes if you want to soften but I use them raw as my mother did and the simple brine method. The vinegar is boiled and steeped with spices which mum simply used peppercorns, some sugar, a little salt and allspice if she had any in the cupboard.  (The vinegar is allowed to cool before use for these pickles described).  

I prefer to do my cucumber as grated cucumber, peeled, grated coursely and placed in a bowl with salt, pepper and 1 tablespoon of vinegar and a little sugar, cooled and placed in the fridge topped with sour cream or Greek yoghurt. 

My mother would also make Russian salad which I think we all miss from Heinz when we could buy it beautifully ready made., tinned. We always had several small tins in the cupboard.   Quite why Heinz decided to discontinue it I will never understand.   I thought it was popular.   To make your own Russian salad is a bit of a variation of the clear pickles described above but with the cauliflower, beans, carrots, and anything around, peas, turnips, etc. potatoes, all boiled to soften.  Once cold the ingredients are arranged in layers, seasoned with salt and pepper  and covered with mayonnaise.  The best mayonnaise for this is your own homemade rather than a Hellmans.   I don't bother to make Russian salad now because it is too much for me to do for myself. It is sometimes possible to buy it in the Polish section of supermarkets or Polish grocery shops but it never tastes the same as Heinz. 

Mayonnaise recipe mum used was 2 yolks of eggs, 1 teaspoon of French mustard, a little salt, pepper and tarragon vinegar, or star anise infused, and 1 pint of salad oil and 1 tablespoon of cream.  I found this written down but I don't remember seeing her buy oil because she cooked with lard.  She presumably would buy a very small quantity of olive oil.  The yolks and everything else are mixed with a wooden spoon and the oil is then added "drop by drop" then the vinegar and keep stirring all the time.  The cream is added at the end and sometimes can have a little cold water at the end, she has added, if it is too thick.  This should all be made in cold conditions and if it is hot use a basin of cold water to stand the bowl in whilst beating. 

 My mother was a good cook and over the years I have noticed that a lot of her food preparation and ingredients were very similar to the food I have eaten whilst travellilng in Eastern Europe.  Whilst simple, straightfoward food is still eaten in Russia and countries across Europe it is less so in Britain.   I still cook the way my mother did and I am sure I am not alone in this but many generations after me I think have all but abandoned this type of food described here.

My mother also made jam throughout the summer but I don't do this myself mainly for the simple reason that I do not eat enough jam to justify it.  I wait until the church fete and buy the odd jar.  I always have honey in the cupboard which I purchase from a honey stall on the side of the road near here. 

Azerbaijan had many many pickles and honeys and I was in paradise.  The meat was well cooked and the salads and pickles spilled over into bottled fruit and herb drinks that we don't even think about to accompany the food. 

Midsummer Day

 On this day, Midsummer Day, 1942,  my parents got married.  It was also a Wednesday I believe.  24/6/42 reads the same backwards and forwards.  It was a wedding in wartime. 10 months later my brother R arrived and he is off to the Royal Norfolk Show today.  He spoke to me yesterday as he wouldn't be able to ring me today.  He said heat panic wouldn't stop him going.  He is going with his wife of course and they have already been to the pre-Show cocktail party. 

Yesterday I went to the cinema for the first time since my holiday.  I was able to face the walk from the station.  I am progressing.  I went to see Virginia Woolf 's Night and Day, starring Tim Spall, Lily Allen, Haley Bennett, Jennifer Saunders and more and directed by an Iranian not-locked-up film director Tina Gharavi.  Needless to say it is based on a Virginia Woolf novel.  Loosely based on the novel as Gharavi has altered it a bit in the name of movie drama.  It is a strange kind of movie and filming in your face and as I always sit at the front it was very in my face close-ups for character effect but I survived it.  It is set in the time of the suffragette movement in London and young Katharine Hilbery (Haley Bennett)  is a budding astronomer  who wants to go to Cambridge and at that time girls were not even given an interview for physics courses let alone a place.  And what she didn't want was romance or marriage like her father (Tim Spall) wanted for her.  It is a kind of dark comedic story with Tim Spall doing a great job in keeping it all going aided and abetted by Jennifer Saunders.  The film has a glow to it that keeps your attention and it is just the right length, not too long, and not too heavy.  A pleasant return to the cinema for me even though the train was almost an hour late - track problems at Shelford  - and I had to have my coffee after rather than before.

On Monday I met two of my poet friends for an exchange of work and ideas and general feelings about our lives as poets, where we are at with submissions and general mutual hugging.  Graduation is in two weeks but I have opted out of graduation ceremony because from past experience I see it as a family day and standing alone in cap and gown without guests is a very lonely affair.  They are both attending for a quick burst of applause on stage for 10 seconds and no photos booked leaving it to their respective spouses to do the honours.  We will meet up again soon for them to fill me in on any gory details. Last year my head-of-course professor supervising my dissertation at the time took herself away for a week to miss all graduations.  My second marker attended but said he felt like a spare part also when the attendees disappeared to the refreshment tent laid on for family and guests.  It hardly seems believable that 12 months ago I was writing my dissertation, seeing the younger man and up to my eyes in poetry and no blog.  

Messages to the left and right

 Get real. Face facts. Stop blaming the Daily Mail when you hear things about your beloved Labour Party that you don't want to hear.  

Andy Burnham is far left. Fact

John McDonnell, far left, weeps with joy as Burnham elected. 

Ed Miliband is a madman destroying Britain's energy sources. A madman giving us the most expensive utilities in the world. Self reliance on our own resources would make it better than always being at the mercy of others.  (And yes I know it does not automatically make anything cheaper but keep British Petroleum here on side.  Keep business leaders on our side).  Keep the oil industry here and listen to the people of Aberdeen.   A nut case who next stops your heated towel rail and your underfloor heating will be no more.  

Rachel Reeves is a liar who should have been sacked.  (And what on earth was she wearing at the Burnham signing in?)

Angela Rayner is a liar who pleaded ignorance of her own country's laws of tax to which the rest of us all adhere.

Starmer is a liar and he and the Labour Party have ruined this country once again as Labour always do.  And will continue to do under Burnham.

The people of Britain don't matter under this obscene, ignorant Labour Party who are in control. 

Never, ever vote again to punish. 

Never vote for a bunch of communist liars who have no idea about investment, pride, hard work, graft, and who do not care for their own people. 

Never vote for a party who lock up their own citizens who dare to speak, to protest, use freedom of speech or show a flag of their country.

Never vote for a Party who harbour criminals and who let them stay because their feelings might be hurt and their civil rights violated if they had to leave their cat, chicken McNuggets, machete, social worker, and nhs, and benefits behind.

Never vote for a party intent only on revenge, hate and jealousy of those who work hard, play hard and do well.  For every successful entrepreneur many many thousands benefit.

What has Labour given you?  Blair's Britain.  (Blair's Britain became so entrenched that many things remained and were  picked up and run with by the Conservative coalition and the Conservative governments.  New Labour and Blair changed Britain.  You can think what you like but some leaders significantly change a country and become entrenched.  Thatcher was one and Blair was another. 

No designated personal GP since 2004

University tuition fees. 

The way to privatisation of health care and break up of NHS paved by Blair speech 2006.

No mortgages for the young since Darling took his eye off the ball and let the building societies go further and further down the road of junk bonds and lending and then collapse.

A country under the grip of civil rights legislation so crippling that every murderer, insane, liar can get into the country and remain here. 

A country tied to a European civil rights court even though we got out of the EU.

High taxes, business rates, NI to cripple business, large and small.  Petty rules and regulations to stifle and kill expansion, entrepreneurship, investment, and the will to carry on.   Foreign investors who go elsewhere. 

Who sent young British soldiers to war in Afghanistan to come back dead, maimed and ruined?   To fight an enemy that no army has ever defeated.  

Which party later prosecutes young soldiers for doing the job to which they were sent and trained for and then prosecutes them,  holds the threat above them like the sword of Damocles with which they live to this day?  Who made the British Army a place to be avoided?  Why join up if this is going to happen to you 10, 20, 30  years down the line?  Who would?  No, you wouldn't.

Insurance and Scams and Dishonesty

 What lengths will people go to to get money through false insurance claims?  I have been thinking about this over the weekend.  I don't know why, maybe light sleeping in the heat, a dream of a past boyfriend maybe. 

Many years ago I went out with a boy who thought nothing of making false insurance claims.  His most common fraud was to claim he had had his camera stolen on holiday, or his luggage.  I was horrified at this. I remember him saying to me he thought everybody did it.   He would fabricate long explanations of what happened.   I didn't stay with him for very long.  

I have put a stop to my annual travel insurance and it will not automatically renew this time.  I will shop around for my next time if I have another holiday. 

I know that this type of insurance fraud still goes on and people will go to great lengths to build a story and even waste police time in the process. 

We pay a lot for other people's frauds.   

Theft and dishonesty is despicable. 

Challenge, question, sleuth.  

Longest Day and a Variety

 On the election result at Makerfield the country remains divided of course. 

The pound fell and the bond market fell meaning borrowing becomes more expensive as the markets see Britian as more of a risk if Burnham takes the helm. 

If I see one more time what a good man to Manchester he was I will scream.  I wonder how Sir Richard Leese feels at rarely, if ever,  getting a mention for putting Manchester back together again with Burnham forever taking all the credit.  

Manchester remains heavily in debt to billions and has given Burnham a false sense of security with money as local authority money is totally different to central government borrowing.  The bond market should have told him that on Friday if he took a moment to look which I expect he didn't.

Turning to the Dr Louise Newson book I mentioned yesterday it arrived at 4pm and I started reading a little in the evening.  It is a medical book and not an easy read for the layman like me.  I am having to look up words and the Chambers dictionary is not quite enough so some I have to put through Google.  

The message I have seen early on is the importance of cholesterol to the production of hormones.  I have long been against statins and I feel more sure than ever that my decision is the right one.  Although Dr Newson does not mention statins in the book because it is, as I said, more of a medical students or GPs text book than a book of criticism, she tells me that the cholesterol is made in the liver and is vital for all production of oestrogen, progresterone and testosterone and all are made from cholesterol; they enter the bloodstream and they have an effect on every cell in the body.  They improve thousands of cellular actions.   Cholesterol is not so evil as people are led to believe assuming you have a reasonably healthy diet and addressing diet is the important factor.  (I put that in because that is what I try to do).

As I sit here, not on any medication, I feel ok about the statin decisions I have made over the years - I was first told I would take them by a doctor in about 2008 who didn't look me in the eye, just looked down as his prescription pad at the time and said he was giving me the prescription and I said no thank you.  I am still here in 2026 as I write.  That would have been 18 years of putting a pills in my mouth to stop one enzyme in my liver.  Is my body meant for that?  Did my mother's body and grandparents miss out by not having statins?  They all lived into their 80s.   

I was next left a prescription for statins four years ago  in a doctors reception when,  not even seen by a doctor, I had given a high blood pressure reading in a nurses room one afternoon.   I left the prescription refusing to pick it up until I was plagued by phone calls that I needed to pick it up which I eventually did to keep them off my back. I threw the pills in my garage.   I am still here.

(On the subject of Dr Newson and the BBC which I mentioned yesterday.  I see from the blurb on the book that her clinic which was featured on Panorama is a private clinic, not NHS.  I wonder if this is why the BBC of the left portrayed her as a charlatan and were so intent upon closing her down.)  

So that is it for the boring part this morning.  I will continue with the book and Andy Burnham observations. 

I watched the Netherlands beat Sweden last night, a good match and then went to bed at 8pm.  (All the goals in the 5-1 scoreline coming from players who play in the English Premier league). The recipe for a good life is to go to bed when your body is ready.  I listened to one half of the Germany v Ivory Coast on the radio because I like the Radio 5 Live banter.   The only tv commentator who has pleasant banter is Lee Dixon, but Lee cannot do all the games.  All the rest I mute the sound.  They sound like old records playing over and over again.   I can always listen to 5 Live commentators with the tv on. 

It is dull here this morning.   The cats are happy I am up at last.  Today is the longest day.  

I met my friend for Waitrose coffee yesterday;  That was nice and she treated me because I am not well and she understands the life of the elderly woman without children, at home alone with illness because she is one herself. Widowed three months ago and picking up the pieces she is a good person, funny, likes a good Tory as she is one herself, grew up in Dagenham with her father,  a Smithfield butcher.  She is a tonic to know and to not be on the side of the left ruining this country.  I met her on a course during Covid and we became close friends in July 2024 when I stood in Waitrose having bumped into her in the vegetable aisle and I said out loud that Britain had gone down the drain because of the Labour victory. (At the time I had no idea of her political leanings).   She hugged me that day and said she didn't know anybody who would dare to say it out loud.  (She then told me she goes to a book club where she has to keep quiet because they are all lefties.)  We have been close friends ever since.  Her husband was alive at the time and he read my political poems and was a fan. I never met him but at my friend's request I would send him poems via Whats App because she said he would appreciate them whilst in the nursing home and later the hospice.  He did. 

Right, I promise to stop now. 

Round Up of The Week

 Although I am still not well I have been able to achieve some important in the house jobs so maybe not rushing about here and there has its upside.   I am still not well enough to go out to the cinema, catch trains, walk far, go for massage, or  guarantee that I can get from A to B when I arrive anywhere due to fatigue.   The only thing that helps is ibuprofen which takes away the fevers when they come. 

What have I done this week?  I went to Hannah for a hair cut, the first time I have seen her since my holiday so we had plenty to catch up on.  I park outside.  Her news and my news.  Football and holidays - she goes this weekend to Kos.  She loves Greece so has good taste. Kos is new to her though.  Football, we discussed many teams not least England of course.  Tuchel does such good things with the England team that Southgate didn't.  I was very hot while I was there and the fever came.  I remembered an old conversation with Hannah three years ago when she said I appear to have the menopause.  Of course I laughed and said this was many years ago but it set me thinking then. 

I ordered Dr Louise Newson's book on the Power of Hormones on the strength of remembering the conversation with Hannah and being told by my doctor when I asked for a hormone test that they don't do hormone tests on the over 70s.  The book should come today.    The doctor would not budge on hormone treatment or tests though.  I went on my way and bought Yam cream at the time.    

**  Dr Newson is a GP and her husband is a consultant urologist.  The book has now arrived and I am looking at it and will report later when I have read more, if anybody is interested**. 

Medical text books are based on treatment for men, not women.  Dr Newson has been ridiculed for her stance on hormones and cancer links and was subject of a BBC Panorama programme which said she was a charlatan.   She has since been proven correct in her studies but still awaits an apology from the BBC. 

Next, and importantly, I prepared my paperwork for my tax return.  I could do this mostly sitting in a chair.  A little later than most years when I aim to do it in May but then I have an excuse, I had my holiday then.   The papers were all sent off to my accountant and the tax return has now been submitted. All complete and I have the accountants bill to pay.  I then have the July tax to pay.   Everytime I think I might save some money I can't.  

I paid my house insurance.  I have a listed building house so I pay over the top for insurance.  I asked for it to be reduced.  They said I had already stripped out all ways of reducing it and there was nothing left.  I paid it.  I looked back in my cash book and found it has been going up since 2023 by £100 per year.  I pleaded with the girl that I live alone, I live in a safe area from crime, safe from flooding,  surely I am as low a risk as I could be.   She said all this had already been taken into account. 

I paid my electricity, the lowest month this summer so far.   That's something to be pleased about. 

My oil tank needs filling.

My firewood needs some summer-rate logs to be delivered. 

I had a holiday, yes, so I am not destitute.  But I never buy clothes.  Perhaps I will buy myself a summer jacket with the euros I had left over from my holiday. My summer jacket has holes in the elbows which I have patched and mended.   Summer jackets cost well over £100.  Perhaps I should make one on the sewing machine.  

No round up of my week would be complete without a mention of the Makerfield by-election result.  Andrew Lawrence does a good summary, much better than I can say it.   It only takes 2.37 minutes to listen to him.    Read the comments on YouTube, they say it well too. 

Debit Card On Phone - edited

 Whilst I was on holiday in Azerbaijan I received an email from my bank telling me that they had loaded my new debit card on to my phone.  This was news to me as I have never used a debit card on my phone being somewhat old fashioned and slow to catch on and still using the plastic card held against the payment machine.  The whole thing was puzzling as to how they did it, how did they get to my phone etc. etc.  However, as I was in a particularly  foreign land I decided I wouldn't go trying it out until I got home although I had used a debit card for a small supermarket transaction only the night before.  Anyway, I looked at my phone in my hotel room and lo and behold the debit card was there in my phone "wallet".

When I got home I tried it out when I went to the dental hygienist.  A friendly dental receptionist who I know quite well and if it didn't go well I knew it would only be her and me and not too many blushes on my part if I botched it up.   However, no need to have worried, I pointed my phone at her payment machine and lo and behold the payment went through.  I have entered another part of the 21st century.  I don't need to do anything other than wake my phone up and then point and pay, I don't need to find the "wallet".    I have used it a few times since and find it quicker than having to get a physical card out. 

Having found the instructions for loading a second card I went a stage further  yesterday and loaded another card into the "wallet".  I now know how to swipe and use the card I want and how to nominate one card as the default. I am feeling very modern.    

Coincidentally I read the other day that plastic cards are to become a thing of the past and all cards will eventually be phone stored.

I can see a lot of people not liking this and I for one know of several who will not be able to comply or move onwards with this.  One of my brother's does not have a smart phone, he has a phone only for texts and calls.  His wife does not have anything to do with phone banking and does not trust computers with banking.  She still drives miles to go to a bank for all help and even when she gets there it is not a real bank merely a "hub" without money.   My ex partner does not have a phone at all.  

It feels like it is a horrible situation of transition come too quickly for many who won't be ready for it and as if I am living within the pages of a dystopian novel and dehumanisation.   Worrying about paying with cash and the possible disappearance of cash almost pales into insignificance. 

Edit

I re-read the email after Librarian's comment and see that it tells me that Google did the move to the wallet after I had made a debit card payment via Google Shop.    The bank were checking with me that I was happy to authorise it.