Wednesday 24 February 2010

Vikings!

Every year at about this time our city gets invaded by Vikings. Some of them are local, others come all the way from Norway, Denmark and suchlike places to join in the fun. They race their long-boats down the river, hoist huge sail-like banners painted with sagas in the square and set up stalls demonstrating bits of Viking workaday life in the shopping centre.

It can get quite surreal in the streets: like anybody else, seasonal Vikings need a break from life's stage from time to time, so you also see them, still in their huge woollen robes with metal helmets, leather wrist-straps and sacking gaiters, talking on mobile phones or getting cash out from a hole-in-the-wall.

It's noticeable how well-adapted the simplest of things can be: the Vikings looked much warmer in their woollen and fur kit than the shoppers in their skimpy little nylon coats. We sampled Viking bread (heavy and tasty), cheese (a bit like a solid version of condensed milk), and soup (savoury and filling). You could also have a go at grinding flour: the result, still with its full quota of protein and vitamins, obviously made for better bread than its modern equivalent. Lunchista fille was asked if she could make good cheese: apparently this was a crucial life skill for any Viking lass on the pull.

There was a slave auction in the guildhall. The Viking legal system (yes there was one!) recognised two types of slaves: captured slaves and debt slaves. Vikings facing the dark-age equivalent of not being able to use the hole-in-the-wall could work for their creditors for a set time or, if there was no work needing doing, they could be sold off to pay off the debt and go and work their time for someone else. A debt slave had various rights, including the right to finish their time unharmed and not pregnant (pregnancy by your boss counted as a type of harm).

This gave them more rights than many of their decendents until about, ooh, the 1920s.

Thursday 18 February 2010

Last blast of winter

Imagine for a moment that Lunchista had the patience to record the temperature in various places within a big triangle over most of central England, every day since about 1659. Luckily, since delegating is almost as difficult as time travel, I don't have to pull off such a feat, because it has already been done. The Central England Temperature Series is the longest-running set of weather data in the world. Here, courtesy of the Met Office, is a graph of the results, averaged for every day of the year.

Notice anything odd about next week? Such as, it has the lowest average temperatures of the whole year?

I'll get my coat.

Tuesday 16 February 2010

Flippin' pancakes!



Incredibly there exists such a word as "Eatertainment". It was coined by the Advertising community to express the idea that in order to get "today's high-maintenance kids" to eat their food, there needed to be some entertainment value in it for them. Given the kind of guff that's been advertised as "food" for children over the years, Lunchista can only assume that "eatertainment" is necessary to distract children from the feeling in their guts that what it being proffered isn't, strictly speaking, food in the original and genuine sense of the word.

In 1930s America, in the depths of the last depression, some of the first and most interesting Nutrition findings were made. One series of experiments, for example, verified that a slimming diet in an otherwise healthy and sane person would inevitably lead to a slower metabolism and an unbeatable obsession with food. In a different set of experiments, toddlers in an orphanage were given exactly what they wanted to eat. An array of different foods, ranging from the sweet through the savoury all the way to quite strong stuff like cod-liver oil, was put before each child, and they were given any help they needed to eat whatever pleased them. Some of the rickety children chose the cod-liver oil, over and over again, until they recovered. Everybody's health improved over the course of the experiment. There were at the time no adverts in orphanages, and affordable television hadn't been invented yet.

But there is a time for Eatertainment: that time is Pancake Day!

Melt an ounce of butter slowly, and stir in 4 ounces of flour to make a smooth paste. Then, bit by bit, stir in two whisked eggs, followed by 10 ounces of milk. It should end up as a smooth liquid that will coat the back of a spoon. Now the fun starts...

Melt enough butter to just cover the bottom of a frying pan, then pour in enough of the batter mixture to just cover that, swirling it around until it covers the full circle. After a minute or so on the heat, it should start to peel away from the sides. A little later and you can test to see if it's free from the pan: if not, slide a spatula underneath to free it. Then, well, have a look at the footage at the top of this post (or its mirror-image if you are right-handed). Fry for another couple of minutes on the other side, and serve it to the first person who's got to the table!

There is a Russian proverb, "The first pancake never works out". So even if it doesn't look that promising, have another go: things can only get better! The mixture described here will do between 6 and 8 pancakes.

Wednesday 3 February 2010

Army Catering

In reviving any neglected Orchard, there comes a time when you have to admit that some of the trees are leaning over, falling over, dead in parts or simply overshadowing themselves. For most fruit-trees (but not plums or almonds) that time is now, when they are fast asleep and no sap would get lost. So we had to take the bull by the horns (or at least the saw by the handle) and make a start on pruning the poor trees into shape. Our chief Orchardista had decided to make a day of it by inviting the local fruit-tree expert to give us an illustrated pep-talk in the morning (in the delightful and newly-redecorated Social Hall), after which we could all have a spot of lunch and then head out with our "implements of Destruction" and do our worst.

On finding out that the Social Hall kitchen would be at our disposal, Lunchista offered to make soup. Then it transpired that 30 people had expressed interest in coming along. Which meant Army Catering: my favourite kind! Especially when there's any kind of project in the offing as well.

At the back of the largest cupboard in Chateau Lunchista's kitchen there lurks a giant stainless-steel saucepan: I think it holds 10 litres but I've never bothered to measure it, because the inside kind of expands into the fourth dimension, and whatever gets made in it there always seems to be plenty to go round. It was originally bought for making Elderberry Syrup, but it has also been used for making puree and preserve with previous fruit from the Orchard.

Out it came. Into it went a scaled-up version of the following (adapted from the Cranks' Recipe Book):

A spud, an onion, a carrot, a cooking apple, 2 cloves of garlic, all diced as in the picture, then gently fried until the onion is transparent. A large spoon of curry powder, 2 pints of veggie stock (Vecon is good) and a tin of the ever-useful Italian tomatoes then go in on top. Then bring it all to the boil while stirring, turn it down and let it simmer for half an hour. I did all this (ably assisted by Lunchista fille) the previous day and left it overnight. In the morning I got out one of those hand-held blenders and whizzed it smooth.

Why Mulligatawny? The rationale was fairly straightforward: if it's vegetarian then anybody can drink it, and if it packs a bit of heat then each mugful will warm us up more. It also turned out, by a happy coincidence, to be our chief Orchardista's favourite soup.