Tag: weekend

weekend addendum

Forgot to mention that we also siphoned perlmonger‘s red wine into a clean demijohn – what fun *that* was … And did the last bit to my white wine, so I should be able to bottle it later this week. The apple wine is still glooping gently, so it can stay as it is for now.

And talking of bottles, we’ve been saving our wine bottles for ages – P sorted me out a half dozen clear/green and I set about cleaning them out and getting the labels off. LABELS – good grief … what do they stick them on with? I left the bottles to soak for ages, but still a couple of them required a knife to scrape off the paper, then wire wool to scrub off the adhesive.

weekend 20/21 sept 08


harris hawk in flight
Originally uploaded by ramtops

On Sunday, we went Out! to Puxton Park, a fairly new family park that has some falconry displays, which is why we went. Birds of prey are very difficult to photoraph in flight, as you may tell from the Flickr set.

Puxton is really nice – only four quid to get in, and an assortment of animals to see, a good restaurant (what looked like an excellent Sunday dinner for £5.95), a wonderful farm shop where they do their own butchery, and the meat is completely traceable. We bought a duck, and some interesting teas. Umm – roast duck for supper tonight.

Saturday we did a round trip to the tip at Backwell with the plastic bottles and electrical gubbins that needed disposal, to Nailsea for a plastic box for storing rice (they didn’t have the right size) and a peer at the farmers’ market, and then to Portishead to inspect the organic veg shop that runs a box scheme. It passed, so we shall sign up with Vegbox2U, even if they do have a very silly name. We came back via Sheepdrove to look at the farm butcher there, who also passed with flying colours, so when we have reduced the mound of dead animal in the outside freezer, we have found a couple of good local suppliers.

Other than that, there was fish and chips on Saturday night, thai veg curry last night, and lots more Babylon 5.

A nice weekend.

weekend 12/13 september 08

There was a trip to Costco.

There was – hurrah – the putting to bed of the draft Long Ashton Parish Plan which, somehow, I got conned in to chairing and producing.

There was a really quite spectacular vegetable tagine.

There was an audit of the inside freezer – outside one will follow next week.

There was pork with rhubarb for Sunday lunch (disgorged from the freezer), and perlmonger‘s home made bread with cheese for supper, and choc chip buns.

P managed to mow the grass, thus evicting the small tribe of pygmies who had taken up residence down by the water butt. We got *all the laundry* washed and dried outside.

And we finished S3 of Babylon 5, and had to watch the first 2 episodes of S4 because I couldn’t bear to go to bed without knowing what happened.

And now it’s Monday *again* – how does that happen every week?

weekend 5/6/7 sept 08


lots on the go
Originally uploaded by ramtops

Friday night there was Phil Beer and Reg Meuross at Nailsea Folk Club. We attend the club sporadically; I knocked out a quick site for them as a favour a couple of weeks ago, and now we have free tickets whenever we want. Which is nice.

Later Friday night, and also Saturday night, there was a WASP (link is to perlmonger‘s entry. Huge, it was. And determined. I killed it with flea spray in the end.

Saturday involved lunch at our favourite cafe, bit of local shopping, a sleep in the afternoon, and perlmonger‘s first attempt at drop scones, which worked better than mine do, so he can do them in future.

Sunday was cooking – see photo, and indeed my post at Reactive Cooking, where I keep most of my food related stuff. P continued War on Fleas, so now the house has all been Dysoned and sprayed. We shall Frontline the Tribe *again* today, and hope that sorts it.

Also, Season II of Babylon 5 finished. What a fine, fine televisual feast this is – it seemed to ramp up several notches during the last episodesof this series, and it was very hard not to start Series III *at once*. And we’re out tonight – a no doubt thrilling meeting of the Long Ashton Transition Group.

weekend 30-31 aug 08

Mostly werk for me – I think I have, hopefully, finally, got to the end of the Video Project from Hell, which has involved about four weeks more work than anticipated or budgeted for, and taken two full weekends as well. Just going to do a finally final test this morning, then package up the drive and send it off.

perlmonger sallied forth on his trusty bicycule on Saturday to do the nicer food shopping, and I dealt with the (wo)man from Sainsburys when she arrived.

We were very lazy on Sunday when work was finished, and lounged about watching 5 episodes of B5 – I’m enjoying this, which I didn’t think I would. We had drop scones for tea, then tested a combination of whiskey and salted almonds (separately, not together) – it works very well.

weekend 3-5 may 08


he wuz robbed
Originally uploaded by ramtops

We got the Wii on Friday night. And then on Saturday we got another controller, and a charging station, and Winter Sports 2008. We played with it quite a lot, so on Sunday we went out and got another Nunchuck so we could do split screen slaloming.

My word, but perlmonger and I are crap at it! But we shall persevere. We did this all yesterday afternoon, and then went out to the pub quiz, which we didn’t win. No change there.

My shoulders ached this morning, as did my legs a little bit. But still, we sallied forth to the North Somerset Show – walked there and back, a round trip of about 5 miles, and then 3 hours or so around the show. Quite enjoyable, but the weather was horridly humid. I bought a hemp hat for six quid, and perlmonger purchased another wooden spoon, for verily 10 cannot be enough for any household.

Cooking was non-existent, mostly – we’ve been eating out of the freezer to make some room. Sossidges Saturday, and a rather splendid upside down pear pudding, Sunday night was home made kofta meatballs, and chick peas with spinach, and tonight is chicken and chorizo with chickpeas, and couscous. Nice having home made convenience food 🙂

Hope you all had a good one.

weekend 19/20 april 08

Never set foot out of the house. Made a batch of bananananana muffins on Friday night, and then we ate far too many of them, and both had a nasty sugar hit overnight. Serves us right.

Saturday, made soda bread for lunch, which we had with the previously mentioned chickie! soup. Supper was pork and pineapple – I went into autopilot while I was making it, and did a load of ginger, which isn’t actually in the recipe. Was still delicious.

Sunday was toasted soda bread for breakfast, and a moussaka for supper, followed – foolishly – by a plum crumble with ice cream. Belch.

The rest of the weekend involved doing all the little changes on the map site, doing the front office and some (but not all) back office changes on a journo site, doing the start of the support structure on the Huge Intranet Project, and various other work bits and pieces. Things are manic right now.

And more West Wing – we’re about half way through series 3 now.

weekend 12/mar 08

Lazy, by and large. We found a tub of goose in the back of the freezer that we didn’t know we had (more on that project later), so half of it was stir fried on Thursday, and most the rest was shredded, and turned into a goose and leek rissotto. The balance went in the soup pot.

The car has been playing up – we don’t use it enough, and the battery tends to run down. So on Saturday morning, perlmonger went out with his trusty jump starter, planning for us to go to Sainsburys, so I could do some shopping, and he could sit in the car with the engine running. I spotted a flaw in this plan, but went along with it. Of course, the bloody car started quite happily, so we both got to go round the stupormarket – how I hate them. Came back via the farm shop, bought chicken and cheese and stuff. Back in the car – nothing. Zilch. Engine wouldn’t even turn.

Considered contents of boot. Considered bright sunlight. Removed ice cream, chicken, milk, cold meat, etc, distributed it round bags, and walked the mile or so home, leaving the rest in the car. Then phoned the AA, who gave us an ETA of 60-70 minutes. Pete trudged manfully back to the car, while I did some work, and the AA turned up on time, and said the battery was shagged, and not taking a charge. Arse – new battery today then.

Having picked upI made the dough for hungarian fennel bread on Saturday night, then got up at ridiculous o’clock on Sunday to knock it back. It was worth it – gorgeous. perlmonger went out on his velocipede yesterday afternoon, and I made a carrot cake. Supper was roast chickie! with roast spuds, and courgette and kale stir fried with some tamari, and the carrot cake with a rather splendid blood orange compote, and vanilla ice cream.

Six (I think) episodes of West Wing consumed too.

And now it’s Monday again.

weekend 29/30 mar 08


pastas, pulses and pickles
Originally uploaded by ramtops

On Saturday, I set to with a will, and the determination to complete Project Kitchen. And I won!

  • All pulses and similar enjarred (apart from some odd pastas, where I simply ran out of jars).

  • The the shelves above the cooker – everything taken off, the shelves cleaned with bicarb, then steam cleaned, then new and different and more appropriate Stuff put on them. This was horrible, and involved me standing on a stool, which surprised perlmonger somewhat, as i get verdigris if I’m anything more than 12″ above the ground

  • the crockery cupboards were reorganised – all the bowls and jugs were sorted, and moved to a different cupboard, while the everyday plates were shifted to a cupboard of their own, where they should hopefully be more accessible

  • the shelves by the kitchen door were completely sorted, and now hold only “spare” stuff – all current foods are now properly organised into appropriate cupboards. I also found room on there for the bits of the Kitchenaid food mixer that I rarely use

  • moved said Kitchenaid to the other side of the kitchen – meaning that the Magimix is far more accessible, and the mixer is more usable

This – I think – concludes the kitchen reorganisation, and took me most of the day.

Supper was sausages, with red cabbage and roast potatoes.

Today perlmonger took himself off to the Bristol Cycle Path protest celebration, so I had the place to myself – lovely 🙂 Went to the farm shop for Bits, did the washing, emptied the dishwasher, hoovered (well, yes – the Roomba did it for me), made a silverside potroast for dinner, and watched lots of Jericho – not quite sure whether I like it or not. It’s rather Lost-ish, but intriguing enough to keep watching.

And now to bed – I ache all over in a rather alarming pre-fluey sort of way, soI’m going to take a couple of pills and crash.

balance of Easter weekend

We didn’t do much Sunday – ate a humungous fry up for brunch (lamb and rosemary sossidge, apple-smoked bacon, egg, black pudding, beans, sourdough toast), and then some nice fresh home made scones for supper. And slumped.

Monday I decided to go to Ikeal. Astonishingly, perlmonger elected to accompany me. The roads through Bristol were very quiet; this was because everybody in the area was already *at* Ikeal, and it was *packed*. Still, we trundled round, buying 2 wicker hampers to tidy up Under The Stairs, a plastic mat with fish on for the cats’ food bowls, a new step stool, two mats for by the patio doors, and some tealights.

Came home and cooked dinner. We bought half a salt marsh lamb last year, and so we decided to cook the leg (why did we only have one leg, when it was half a lamb? Was it deficient in the leg department?). This leg of lamb was *huge*. And utterly gorgeous. Studded it with garlic and rosemary, and bunged it in the oven with a good sloosh of red wine. Had it with green beans and garlic in tomatoes, and roasted spuds.

While it was in the oven, we did indeed clear out the horror under the stairs, and put down the new door mats. So Project House is continuing well.

Last night, perlmonger chopped the rest of the meat off the bone, and we minced up most of it. We cooked some into Madhur’s Ground Meat with Peas, which unaccountably I have not put online yet. There are two more tubs of mince in the freezer, and some sliced lamb in the fridge, so thats [counts] five exceedingly generous meals from that joint.