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.

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.

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.

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.

Haggis, neeps and tatties

We see here the ingredients (well, the non-alcoholic ones at any rate) for Burns Supper here at Chateau Lunchista. The more eagle-eyed will have spotted the "V" mark on our haggis, it's a vegetarian piece made out of nuts, pulses and veggie oils. Very savoury, very healthy and (I'm reliably informed) goes well with the old Water-of-Life. It's one of the easiest meals there is to get ready, too: the haggis goes in that steamer (yes the one I bought for 20p at the car-booty, plus the lid I found in a leftover box at The Waste street-market in Dalston) for an hour or so, the spuds are boiled and mashed, as are the neeps. Simple.

Which is just as well because out of the blue there came a TV programme I really wanted to watch: mad* Geography professor Nick Middleton is investigating why we're having such a cold winter, and how to survive it. In the process he travels to Scotland and lets himself get exposed to hypothermia, and buried in the snow. It is of course against such eventualities that the original haggis was designed to protect the intrepid drover, crofter or infrastructure maintenance engineer.

It happens that Lunchista's first ever taste of Burns' Night took place in an unknown pub somewhere in a deeply-wooded area of the Home Counties, twenty years ago today. I was on a train coming back from a meeting in London to my cheap-and-cheerful flat on the coast, when our journey came to a complete halt. A tree had been blown down across our route by what turned out to be the UK's worst storm of the 20th century. The train then trundled backwards to a station we had just left, and the lights went out: they must have had to cut the power to the third rail for the sake of any maintenance crew. Our guard stepped off to make a call down the line. He then came along through each darkened carriage and explained that, given that the nearest suitable heavy-lifting gear was in Cardiff, this was going to be a long wait. Cue surreal twist:

"...but I'm told there's a pub a hundred yards down that road who are offering free tasters of Haggis and Whisky because it's Burns' Night. You won't miss the train, because when the engineers arrive I'll come along too". Beat that for service! He was as good as his word, and two hours later made sure we all found our way back to the train. Suitably warmed and fed, we proceeded on our way.

And what was this meeting that had caused Lunchista's part in all the drama? A meeting for Meteorologists, of course!


*editor's note: "mad", uttered by Lunchista, is a term of respect.

Worst of days, best of days

For the last couple of years at work, I remember reading that the Monday of the third week of January is, officially, the day of the year when most people feel at their worst (kudos to Bryony, who had to resign from the Sustainability Committee last month in order to start her new job today!). It's a combo of dark mornings, paying for Christmas, cold weather, failing at (or having to put up with) new-year resolutions...and that's probably what lies behind all those holiday adverts you get on tv this time of year. Why content yourself with bills in just January when you can book 2 weeks in the sun and have bills til October?

But Lunchista has, as ever, stumbled upon a cheap and cheerful alternative: today is also International Optimism day. Apparently it is celebrated, not by buying, or even making, presents but by doing stuff. Their first four suggestions are:

-Write a list of simple things that make you happy, and share it
-Write down 3 things you're grateful for
-Call someone you haven't spoken to for ages
-Say hello to someone you see everyday, but never speak to

Well most of the things I write about in The Year-Long Lunch Break make me happy. And I'm grateful I didn't have to get up before dawn this morning...and finally, I don't think there's anyone I see every day (including during my commuting days) that I don't say hello to.

Winter Warmer: the veggie challenge

In Lunchista's early days of attempted vegetarian cookery, the same problem used to present itself over and over again: I just couldn't find a vegetarian dish that filled me with quite as much warmth, sleet-proof-ness and sheer alcohol tolerance as was offered by meat dishes. Given that wine appeared more often in my life than central heating (or indeed heating of any sort), this was a serious issue.

Now you know those old eejits who talk about "Things they wish they'd known at eighteen"? Well, here's mine. It is the recipe for the warmest veggie dish I know that doesn't actually involve weapons-grade curry powder. The only drawback is, it needs a bit of forward planning (unless you cheat), but it serves 4 hungry students, or one lazy student all week, even if they're vegan.

Soak 200 grammes of chick-peas overnight, then boil them for an hour (perhaps while you're reading some classic literature or tidying up after the last party). Alternatively cheat, and get 1 lb of already-cooked chick-peas.

Peel and slice into chunks 2 spuds, 3 carrots and 3 parsnips, cut up a celery or a fennel. Dice 2 red onions, a clove of garlic, a lump of ginger and some mint leaves. Make up 300g of veggie stock and drop in some threads of saffron. Grab a tin of the ever-useful Italian tomatoes and a large frying pan (or that wok, including a lid). Find 1/2 a teaspoon crushed chillies, or mild chilli powder.

Heat up a little vegetable oil in the wok, and cook all the vegetables slowly until they are soft, then lift them out of the oil and put them aside. Fry the garlic and ginger, then add the onions, mint and chillies/powder. When the onions are soft, tip the tomatoes in, simmer for a few minutes then add the chick-peas and some of the juice in which they've been cooked. Add the stock and the cooked vegetables, then simmer the lot for 25 minutes, and serve.

If there's any left over it will keep for days and days, because there is no meat and hardly any fat. This would have been extremely useful for the young Lunchista, who often came home from parties hungry. It's far cheaper and healthier than burgers or kebabs, and at 1 a.m. can of course be eaten in the relative safety and comfort of your own kitchen.