(Not the) Cookery Calendar Challenge: June

I'm (sort of) joining with Penny at The Homemade Heart who invites fellow bloggers to choose one cookery book each month, select and cook two dishes from it and post their thoughts at the beginning of the following month.

Finish Potato Salad

In June I should have been cooking from Sabrina Ghayour's Persiana but, in honour of the EU Referendum (to which I fervently hoped the answer would be 'Remain'!) I decided, over the course of the week leading up to the vote, to prepare and eat one dish (or drink one wine/beer) from each of the 28 nations of the union.

Balbuljata
Maltese Scrambled Eggs

Danish Bubble

I kicked off with Irish soda bread and rounded it off with a Hungarian goulash.  In between we were treated to a cheese pie from Sweden, a Danish bubble and squeak, a fiery pepper sauce from Coatia to go with Bosnian burgers, an almond cake from Spain and a Finish potato salad.

Tarator
Bulgarian Yoghurt & Cucumber Soup

I tried two cold soups, the first a refreshing yoghurt and cucumber one, spiked with garlic, from Bulgaria, and the second a dayglo pink beetroot one from Lithuania.  The recipes ranged in effort required from the lightly pickled Latvian cucumbers to the tricky cheese noodles from Austria.  I included a few indulgences including a Dutch apple tart and some Slovenian apple doughnuts.

Lithuanian Beetroot Soup

There were a few dishes that did not particularly inspire, which may have had more to do with the lack of authentic ingredients or my inexperience in cooking them, but there were many more that I would happily try again.  These included a simple yet tasty mushroom and potato gratin from Estonia, a delicious Greek take on ratatouille, a delightful honey and lemon flavoured haloumi dish from Cyprus and a rich and creamy Portuguese custard tart.

Portuguese Custard Tarts

Dutch Apple Tart

Tackling three or four new recipes a day proved to be more of a challenge than I anticipated but I can honestly say I enjoyed the experience.  It's just a pity that what started out as a celebration of our union ended as homage to its demise.  The Italian prosecco bought to cheer our victory ended up drowning our sorrows.

Halloumi with Honey & Thyme

Persiana has not been forgotten and will be my cookery book for July.

Summer 2014: My To Do List

In my experience, the longer the holiday stretches, the easier it is to fritter it away.  So, when faced with 5 1/2 weeks this summer, I thought I'd best draw up a list of things I would like to have achieved by the end of them.  Maybe I should have added 'publish list on blog' as it's taken me over a week to do so.  But here it is:

(NB  Having decided that I was going to devote the first few days to recovering from the end of term, I based my list on 5 weeks - 7x5=35)

1. Cycle to Bath along the railway path
2. Hold 5 dinner parties (ie have 5 friends/sets of friends round for a meal!)
3. Day trip to Oxford
4. Bake 5 pies from my new Pieminister Pie book
5. Visit Tyntesfield
6. Make tomato ketchup
7. Visit the M Shed
8. Go to Bristol Balloon Fiesta Night Glow
9. Make falafels
10. Walk: Snuff Mills
11. Read 5 books
12. Create a sourdough starter
13. Get up early to watch Bristol Balloon Fiesta Dawn Ascent
14. Shop for clothes for work
15. Bake 5 new breads
16. Swim in Street outdoor pool
17. Make icecream
18. Picnic at Bristol Zoo
19. Visit the Jeremy Deller exhibition
20. Walk: Blaise Castle
21. Crack Prashad's dhokla recipe
22. Visit St Werburgh's City Farm, eat meatballs @ Ikea and shop at Bristol Sweet Mart
23. Make rhubarb & ginger jam
24. Take advantage of podiatrist appointment to window shop in Cotham/Clifton
25. Preserve lemons
26. Swim and lunch at th Lido
27. Make a start on a recipe folder
28. Make pizza
29. Walk: Leigh Woods
30. Make lemonade
31. Picnic on Brandon Hill
32. Have a BBQ
33. Finish crocheting my daughter's quilt
34. Walk: Bristol Old City
35. Bristol Packet ferry boat trip to Beese's Tea Gardens

It's an eclectic mix of cooking, eating, walking, culture and fun.

I'm under no illusion that I'll get through it all and am therefore not going to beat myself up over it if I don't, but it should stop me waking up in the morning wondering what to do with the day!    

Up the Feeder

A fortnight ago I decided it was about time we discovered more about the in which city we live (ie Bristol).  We moved here over 20 years ago (23 years and 3 months to be precise!) and although we are reasonably familiar with large areas of it, I am sure there are details that have escaped us, and pockets of it that we have never set foot in.

Our first sortie introduced us to the sculptures in and around the centre, which I will leave for another post.

This afternoon we decided to focus on the Feeder Canal, a waterway built between 1804 and 1809, by a workforce of over a thousand English and Irish labourers, to divert water from the tidal river Avon into the Floating Harbour and maintain its level.

No expedition should ever be undertaken on an empty stomach, so our first stop was Hart's Bakery, tucked away in one of the arches beneath Brunel's magnificent station at Temple Meads.  Fortified by mouthwateringly flaky lamb, pea and mint pasties, and two sublime slices of cake (orange and almond polenta and banana and toffee - half each!) washed down with a mug of latte, we boldly set off where we had never been before.

Here are some of the things we saw:

And here are some of the things we learned:

• Bristol was once home to the biggest galvanising works in the world, owned by John Lysaght whose Victorian Gothic fantasy office building still stands on the site.
• Netham Recretation /ground, known locally as The Brillos, got its nickname from 'barilla' a Spanish plant burned to extract sodium carbonate in the old Netham Chemical Works.
• The area between the New Cut and the Feeder Canal, known as The Marsh, was infested by rats, giving employment to local rat catchers.  Albert 'Hopper' Chinnick, the most notorious of them, allegedly bit off their heads as his party trick down the pub.  And for a 'tanner' he's said to have done the same with puppy dogs' tails!
• The rose bushes in Sparke Evans Park produced magnificent flowers on account of the high levels of soot from local industry and railways.

Where will our next excursion take us?

Weekly Bread: 3/52

I'm hoping Banana Bread counts, even though it's more of a cake.  My favourite recipe from John Barrowman (Captain Jack to Dr Who fans) and can be found here.

It's the perfect way to deal with a fruit bowlful of over ripe bananas (unless you have a husband who will only eat bananas when they turn black - in which case you'll have to fight him for them!)

Out with the Old. In with the New.

Time for the annual roundup of the year's highlights.

Top of the list has to be our summer holiday in the Inner Hebrides, when we finally introduced our Iona to her island namesake.  I've been meaning to blog about it ever since we returned but have never got round to it.  But I'm determined to do so, so until then all I'll say is that the photograph is of the view from the living room of our lodge on Colonsay where I spent many happy hours reading and knitting (that's when I wasn't spending many equally happy hours exploring the island by bike).

On 6 January I attended my first Quaker meeting and have been going ever since.  After years of searching for somewhere I can continue my spiritual journey I believe I may have found it with the Friends.

My younger daughter was offered the university place of her dreams, at Falmouth, to study illustration.  After a year of travelling up and down the country attending open days and returning for interviews, this came as a great relief to all of us, although I did enjoy the opportunity to visit/reacquaint myself with several lovely cities.

In May I accepted the challenge to live on £1 per day for 5 days.  I am grateful for the generosity of the friends who sponsored me and the opportunity to raise the profile of extreme poverty in Bristol via two interviews on BBC local radio.

I continue to volunteer for the Bristol Pound and in the autumn was elected to the Board of Directors to represent the individual account holders.  The local currency is over a year old now and I'm really looking forward to playing my part in its continuing success.

Now that the girls have both left home I've been doing more singing.  In the summer I took part in the biennial Sing for Water on Bristol's harbourside and then I finally plucked up the courage to join the Gasworks Singers.  This is an offshoot of the Gasworks choir (of which I've been a member for many years) and is a much smaller group who sing more often at festivals and charitable events.  There was a fairly long list of songs to master before our first gig at the North Bristol Arts Trail but I managed and can now relax and enjoy the music, the friendship and the spectacular shared lunches.

There have, of course, been occasions on which to try and set the world right.  In April I paid my first visit to Aldermaston to protest against the obscenity of nuclear weapons.  In June I was in London to highlight world hunger, a week after I helped feed 5,000 people with food that might otherwise have been send to a landfill site.  It does sometimes feel as if we're bashing our heads against a brick wall but if that's what it takes to create a better world for everyone then I for one am prepared to carry on.

Fortunately there are plenty of reasons to be cheerful and that's what I plan to concentrate on in 2014.

I'm looking forward to:

• taking my elder daughter on a European city break (Prague?) after she sits her final degree exam and then to attending her graduation ceremony in the summer
• campaigning for the Green Party in this year's local and European elections and persuading people to consider the environmental impact of their vote
• getting my head around Quaker faith and practice and perhaps attending the Yearly Meeting Gathering in Bath (even if it's only for a day or so)
• helping to convince more individuals and businesses of the merits of the Bristol Pound
• listening to the debate on Scottish independence and (hopefully?) witnessing the birth of an independent Scotland in September
• carrying on baking, campaigning, composting, crocheting, gardening, knitting, protesting, reading, recycling, singing, walking,  ...

Happy New Year to all of you!

Treats

I don't really do Hallowe'en but I like to have something to offer to any children who knock on my front door.  So I spent this afternoon baking and icing and now have a plateful of these to hand out.

I heard on Radio 4 this morning that the average UK family spends £65 on Hallowe'en (whatever do they buy for that sum?) but I am pleased to report that these ghoulish biscuits only set me back a couple of quid.