Category: Uncategorized

radish top soup

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large shallot, finely chopped
2 cups radish greens, roughly chopped, packed
2 cups vegetable stock
1 tablespoon fresh mint, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fresh parsley, finely chopped
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
fresh chives for serving

In a large saucepan, heat oil over medium heat; add finely diced shallots. Sauté, stirring often, until shallots are soft and translucent.

Add the radish greens and wilt, then add the stock. Bring to boil; reduce heat and simmer for about 10 minutes.

Add the chopped parsley and mint. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

Remove from heat; purée with an immersion blender or in blender, in batches. Top with with freshly chopped chives just prior to serving.

Makes 4 servings.

decluttering

We got through a fair bit at the weekend. A car load to the charity shop, including clothes, bric a brac, books and some of perlmonger‘s father’s vinyl collection, a large part of which encompasses Czech composers. Still a lot of those to go, but at least they’re sorted and stacked now. Then we took a load to the tip – dozens and dozens of VHS tapes and some other bits and bobs.

I also emptied the hanging baskets, and made a start on the outdoor pots.

We ran out of steam part way through Saturday afternoon, and slumped in front of mindless TV.

We were up and going relatively early on Sunday, and made a start on the study. There are shelves and rails behind sliding doors in there, and all manner of stuff lurks within. We were fairly ruthless, and perlmonger managed to part with some things; he finds it very difficult to do this. Off to the tip went an old computer, various hard drives, loads of cables and wires. We found a Logitech trackball and fell upon it with cries of Ebayish glee, but it doesn’t work, sadly. Pete dismantled the rickety cat tree, and then we discovered that if we took the middle section out it made a less rickety, albeit rather less tall, cat tree. The cats are hating this process, of course 🙁

Also discovered that you can’t sell a Leatherman on eBay. Bah. I have stacks of stuff that needs photographing and listing, so must get on and do that.

In between all this we had to do seven rounds of questions with Pat’n’Dave for the pub quiz, which we managed with the aid of a shared Google doc and a lot of Google searching. I shouldn’t have had the third glass of wine in the Legion last night, though – feel quite groo this morning.

I feel as though we’ve made a good start though – next big thing to do is the loft [shudder].

Summer Camp 2009

even the teddies get pissed at Team Waste Summer Camp

Even the teddies get pissed ..

We soldier on, us stalwarts, now 12 years before the mast at Summer Camp. It’s a miracle we survive, really. There was a poignancy to it this year, as two couples in our gang of such great friends are moving to New Zealand, and we will all miss them so much …

This year’s involved, amongst other things

  • Budley and his little purple ukulele (no, not a euphimism). This encouraged several of the iPhone users amongst the attendees to download the ukulele app from the iPhone store, and attempt to emulate UOGB. Not that successfuly, sadly
  • a trip to the cash and carry on Friday, involving Geoff, Budley, Stick, Charlton and self. The trolley was piled high with all manner of things, all of them extremely unhealthy, save for a small pack of sweetcorns, to ensure we had a balanced diet
  • Lots of camp (not that sort) cooking in my Huge Wok, which I shall write up later on my food blog
  • Rain. And thunder, lightening, fog, wind, and other seasonal August Bank Holiday weather. Thankfully and mysteriously, Saturday stayed dry and the sun even shone for a bit, which was nice. As for the rest – moist.
  • Dark ‘n’ Stormies; dark rum poured over fiery ginger beer. We got through three bottles of rum, and some of us were very merry indeed. I blame the dark ‘n’ stormies for …
  • Dancing. Oh yes. This is a new departure for TWSC and at least one of our number was Very Grumpy Indeed about the choice of music. But we wanted to dance, and so we did. There was a lot of Abba, I recall. And “It’s Raining Men”, and a great many other cheesy but great party tracks. We must thank Leslie for this – a TWSC virgin, as it were, he took his iPhone into the music man’s van and took over, and I’m very glad he did. A fab time was had by all. Most of us were really quite pissed, of course, but never mind. There are photos, and even video (ohmigod) but I’m not telling you where. Obviously. The sight of a bunch of rufty tufty bikers doing Agadoo will haunt me for years.

And that was it. Another wonderful weekend, despite the weather ghod’s little jokes. And I was reminded, yet again, how lucky perlmonger and I are with our friends who, discovering that we are going through a difficult time (more to follow), rallied round in a way that left me tearful.

As always, my favourite weekend of the year – thanks, guys.

madness

I’m not sleeping at all well at the moment, for various reasons, and I’ve learned to just get up and do something else rather than lie in bed.

But it does seem a particular kind of madness to suddenly decide that I needed to find all the cats’ microchip details at 4:45 in the morning. And I can’t find them anyway, or not all of them.

[later] Yay – found the Identichip certificates for the two oldest cats. Just EnRon’s to locate now, and I think I know where they are.

[later still] – No, Iggy’s still missing. That’s an arse.