Arancini, Cherry Tomato Jam and Green Beans

Better photography this time :)

This was enjoyed by all present, including special guests from across the pond: Jamie Sloan, Beth Chism and Chris Shott in the kitchen at The Delicious Dish :D

Arancini in oatmeal

Half of the arancini rolled in rice flour, beaten egg and finally coarse oatmeal.....

..... all ready for the oven :), also the fantastic oatmeal and the Cherry Tomato Jam pan......... I'm getting hungry now!

Baked Arancini with Cherry Tomato Jam

From the ashes of last nights meal, tonight's arises like a phoenix..... well more like little orange balls but hey :)

Arancini are traditionally deep fried but I rarely deep fry if there is an alternative that seems suitable. I have kept the aracini simple and not given them a filling; they are balls of risotto chilled then rolled in rice flour, then egg and finally oatmeal. If you eat gluten then using flour and bread crumbs would be more 'normal'.

One of the reasons for not stuffing them with mozzarella or other filling is that the accompanying Cherry Tomato Jam is moreishly intense so I wanted to pair it with a less complex flavour. The other reason is that these are my first arancini and I'm keeping things simple!

We will have these with green beans cooked so they still have a bit of crunch - I hate overcooked vegetables  but am sometimes guilty as life rudely intrudes on cooking at times!

At present the arancini are at the chilling stage and the Cherry Tomato Jam (below) is finished and just needs reheating.

Sweet Corn Risotto :)

Well the risotto was a success, gorgeously creamy and gently piquant with the chorizo. The photography, however, left a lot to be desired. I forgot and then grabbed my iphone and snapped a very poor out of focus shot. Will have to keep the trusty olympus handy if I'm going to manage decent foodie pictures!

Sweet Corn Risotto - with Pork Spare Ribs

Just a Taste » Pepperoni Pizza Pull-Apart Bread

Just a Taste » Pepperoni Pizza Pull-Apart Bread



Been wandering around some of the foodie blogs I have bookmarked and came across this - looks yummy. However, what I particularly love is her suggestion at the end for a "bread rising cupboard". Previously known as your tumble dryer! Love it :)

Life changes.... it would be boring if it didn't...?

This post isn't actually about the changes but is more a result of them! (more of changes later!)

This is about food - well tonight’s dinner to be precise. Inspiration was needed. I had promised risotto last night with an added extra treat, for the kinder, of spare ribs (waiting in fridge to be roasted off) but that damn life stuff intruded. So back to the risotto idea, a day late.

Great, we're having risotto...... well that's a very broad statement, in this household at least. Hmmm (she ponders), looks in vegetable boxes, onions, hmmmm, thought intrudes (they do this randomly all the time) what am I going to do with those long-life corn on the cob (yes a very odd purchase - seemed like a good idea at the time). A marriage comes to mind: risotto and chowder....

So we will: sauté onions, add garlic, add chorizo, add white wine, add mild stock (chorizo and parmesan if I add later will add enough saltiness) a ladle-full at a time............ add corn kernels, a little more wine possibly..... Herbs? hmmm .... Please at this point note (and remember for future reference) that by this time the addition of wine includes adding it to the cook :)... oh yes where were we....ok I admit I'm actually at the ladling point (brb), this also means the first glass of wine has been added to the cook. I think I will ladle in the stock (could have used the corn husks, milk, water and possibly a little vecon to boil up into stock - but I thought of this after I threw the corn husks away) until 2/3 done then add the sweet corn.

So that (plus the barbecue spare ribs - mustn't forget the spare ribs) is going to be dinner. I might manage pictures! And I will manage a review and write up the final recipe if it's a success.

Simple, seldom and sad

Simple, seldom and sad

We are;

Alone on the Halibut Hills

Afar,

With sweet mad Expressions

Of old

Strangely beautiful

So we're told

By the Creatures that Move

In the sky

And Die

On the night when the Dead Trees

Prance and Cry.

Sensitive, seldom and sad -

Sensitive, seldom and sad -

Simple, seldom and sad

Are we

When we take our path

To the purple sea -

With mad, sweet Expressions

Of Yore,

Strangely beautiful,

Yea, and More

On the Night of all Nights

When the sky

Streams by

In rags, while the Dead Trees

Prance and Cry,

sensitive, seldom and sad -

sensitive, seldom and sad.

Mervyn Peake

My career.......?

I have done something for the last 30 years, wow 30 years! I feel rather successful at it; it includes teaching, caring, learning, managing, finance, logistics, counselling, tears, laughter, illness, alcohol, cakes, toys, failures, successes, food, buying, selling, parties, loneliness, creativity, warmth, snowballs, gardening, anger, sadness, joy, calm, patience, lots of patience, smiles, hugs, kisses and lots and lots and lots of love (and nearly as many nappies but those are back in the mists of time.)

Yes, I have been a mother for nearly 30 years, I don't think of it as a career, I'm very much my own person and not defined by my children, partner or anything external. I am just ME and my children are utterly themselves and they are pretty damn wonderful at it! Thank you Shelly, Tim, Rob, Oli - I love you x x x

Possible return of Elite!!!!

Ooooh I might just have to play:

Article on Elite: Dangerous in the Guardian

 

Walter son of Herman - sourdough cake (potential!)

Walter (son of Herman) arrived 12 days ago - you are meant to look after and feed him for 10 days then split him into three; one to give away, one to continue feeding and one to add ingredients to and bake (slightly cannibalistic but...)

Well we don't find rules easy to stick to.... so.....

We took 12 days instead of 10 and didn't follow the recipe we were meant to (all fruity and healthy) and made 2 chocolate cakes with chocolate chips in! Very good :)

We have a new sourdough fermenting away which we will name Albert and one to give to a new home, Alice, or place in suspended animation (freeze).

The next one will be fruity - getting tempted to sacrifice Albert or Alice straight away......
...... and inspired to make my own starter from scratch but gluten free.

Apologies for the poor picture forgot to take one yesterday when there was still two cakes; had to hurriedly grab this photo while there was something more than crumbs left!

Pumpktris!! Wow!

Whedon On Romney

You MUST watch this video!

Re-post from my step-daughter's blog

The Beauty and Truth of Life:
These are the pictures from the first hike of the...: These are the pictures from the first hike of the CAS, the weather was hot, the people were tired and the mountain was..... well a MOUNTA...

What a fortnight....

Well not the best start to year two of nursing. Need to take a month off, which will probably turn into a year :(
CFS strikes down Oli again (not that it gave up) and my health isn't it's best with return of the anaemia.

So what happens now....?

Helping Oli get to school on a regular but limited basis is one aim, supporting him at home in the time that he isn't able to go to school, possibly looking at doing some student support work, helping the Steiner School with their computer systems, hopefully continued involvement in a uni maths project. So plenty to be going on with.

Oddly having done well in the first year of my nursing makes it easier to take a break (last exam mark was 92%, last essay was 87% and my placement went really well). I think if it had been more of a fight it would feel like giving up - it doesn't feel like that at all. It is a positive and necessary choice for me and I can feel confident about returning later.

You're in safe hands.....

Oh dear, give me a few days of lectures and I utterly fail to post...

We have been practicing CPR, choking procedure and inserting nasogastric tubes into little babies! No babies were harmed in the practicing of these procedures. Here is one of our patients:

I can't find a picture of Tommy the child mannequin but he is positively scary with gaping mouth and wide-eyes with rubber eyelashes though you can move the pupils to a wonderful cross-eyed stare!

Pe33les! The new YouTube sensation!

(OK I'm biased but it's true anyway)

Unhappy bunny. . .

So, generally run down, anaemia has had a huge set back and now an incredibly sore throat and cough. . .

If I take my iron tablets my joints flare up, I get digestive problems and feel crap; if I don't take my iron tablets I feel erm crap too. . .

Coil was an utter, utter (and ongoing) failure - seems my body wasn't too keen on that intrusion. So roll on more anaemia.

And, to top it all, Oli's CFS has flared again so he's on the third day in a row off school and really upset as well as unwell.

What's bloggable and what's not?

I'm training to be a nurse so it's possible I might write something the squeamish might not like. So if I get tempted (!) I'll try and warn people at the top of a post! This is not one of those occasions it could have been but somethings maybe don't belong on this blog so the audience (if there is one) is safe this time!

Check out the Guardian review of Galtres Festival

"… it is an end result which is achieved by a collective vision, detailed planning and organisation and nigh on perfect execution... " The Guardian

Home thoughts from ... well home actually!

Finished a 12 week nursing practice placement - so sad to finish, I have loved it. Now I am worried (a little) about having chosen child nursing. This last placement was on an elderly orthopedic ward - hip fractures. I LOVE working with the elderly - I have found I have endless patience for their care. I think I feel the same about caring for children (well I know I do for my own) but have yet to put this into practice. Child practice starts mid October...... watch this space.

On an different subject, entirely, my 16 year old daughter went to London with a friend today: afternoon in London and then train to friends house north of London. They went to Hyde Park to attempt to see Tobuscus - a YouTube 'celebrity'. 'YouTube celebrity' is an idea that is rather new to me and I thought I was fairly 'with it'. Anyway, a little scary checking out twitter feeds about a near riot at this 'meet-up', demanded immediate reassuring txt message from daughter and luckily got one!

I have met, in person, quite a few people that I originally got to know on the internet and find that to be quite a normal process, so it is maybe odd that I haven't really taken in the whole media revolution - probably why it has taken me 25 years of internet usage to get round to writing a blog!

From the Guardian: the myth of self-created millionaires

Mitt Romney and the myth of self-created millionaires

The parasitical ultra-rich often deny the role of others in the acquisition of their wealth – and even seek to punish them for it

by George Monbiot

We could call it Romnesia: the ability of the very rich to forget the context in which they made their money. To forget their education, inheritance, family networks, contacts and introductions. To forget the workers whose labour enriched them. To forget the infrastructure and security, the educated workforce, the contracts, subsidies and bailouts the government provided.
Every political system requires a justifying myth. The Soviet Union had Alexey Stakhanov, the miner reputed to have extracted 100 tonnes of coal in six hours. The US had Richard Hunter, the hero of Horatio Alger's rags-to-riches tales.
Both stories contained a germ of truth. Stakhanov worked hard for a cause in which he believed, but his remarkable output was probably faked. When Alger wrote his novels, some poor people had become very rich in the US. But the further from its ideals (productivity in the Soviet Union's case, opportunity in the US) a system strays, the more fervently its justifying myths are propounded.
As the developed nations succumb to extreme inequality and social immobility, the myth of the self-made man becomes ever more potent. It is used to justify its polar opposite: an unassailable rent-seeking class, deploying its inherited money to finance the seizure of other people's wealth.
The crudest exponent of Romnesia is the Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart. "There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire," she insists. "If you're jealous of those with more money, don't just sit there and complain; do something to make more money yourselves – spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising and more time working … Remember our roots, and create your own success."
Remembering her roots is what Rinehart fails to do. She forgot to add that if you want to become a millionaire – in her case a billionaire – it helps to inherit an iron ore mine and a fortune from your father and to ride a spectacular commodities boom. Had she spent her life lying in bed and throwing darts at the wall, she would still be stupendously rich.
Rich lists are stuffed with people who either inherited their money or who made it through rent-seeking activities: by means other than innovation and productive effort. They're a catalogue of speculators, property barons, dukes, IT monopolists, loan sharks, bank chiefs, oil sheikhs, mining magnates, oligarchs and chief executives paid out of all proportion to any value they generate. Looters, in short. The richest mining barons are those to whom governments sold natural resources for a song. Russian, Mexican and British oligarchs acquired underpriced public assets through privatisation, and now run a toll-booth economy. Bankers use incomprehensible instruments to fleece their clients and the taxpayer. But as rentiers capture the economy, the opposite story must be told.
Scarcely a Republican speech fails to reprise the Richard Hunter narrative, and almost all these rags-to-riches tales turn out to be bunkum. "Everything that Ann and I have," Mitt Romney claims, "we earned the old-fashioned way". Old fashioned like Blackbeard, perhaps. Two searing exposures in Rolling Stone magazine document the leveraged buyouts which destroyed viable companies, value and jobs, and the costly federal bailout which saved Romney's political skin.
Romney personifies economic parasitism. The financial sector has become a job-destroying, home-breaking, life-crushing machine, which impoverishes others to enrich itself. The tighter its grip on politics, the more its representatives must tell the opposite story: of life-affirming enterprise, innovation and investment, of brave entrepreneurs making their fortunes out of nothing but grit and wit.
There is an obvious flip side to this story. "Anyone can make it – I did without help", translates as "I refuse to pay taxes to help other people, as they can help themselves": whether or not they inherited an iron ore mine from daddy. In the article in which she urged the poor to emulate her, Rinehart also proposed that the minimum wage should be reduced. Who needs fair pay if anyone can become a millionaire?
In 2010, the richest 1% in the US captured an astonishing 93% of that year's gain in incomes. In the same year, corporate chief executives made, on average, 243 times as much as the median worker (in 1965 the ratio was 10 times lower). Between 1970 and 2010, the Gini coefficient, which measures inequality, rose in the US from 0.35 to 0.44: an astounding leap.
As for social mobility, of the rich countries listed by the OECD, the three in which men's earnings are most likely to resemble their father's are, in this order, the UK, Italy and the US. If you are born poor or born rich in these nations, you are likely to stay that way. It is no coincidence that these three countries all promote themselves as lands of unparalleled opportunity.
Equal opportunity, self-creation, heroic individualism: these are the myths that predatory capitalism requires for its political survival. Romnesia permits the ultra-rich both to deny the role of other people in the creation of their own wealth and to deny help to those less fortunate than themselves. A century ago, entrepreneurs sought to pass themselves off as parasites: they adopted the style and manner of the titled, rentier class. Today the parasites claim to be entrepreneurs.
Twitter: @GeorgeMonbiot
A fully referenced version of this article can be found at www.monbiot.com

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/24/mitt-romney-self-creation-myth

 

Tonights Dinner: Tomato and Anchovy Sauce with pasta

Serves 6
Adjust anything to taste and always, always taste as you are cooking (including the wine!)

Olive oil & butter
3 Medium Onions
1 small bulb of garlic
1 red chilli de-seeded
Herbs - I used basil and a Herbs de Provence mix today
Red wine
10 anchovies in oil (drained)
2 x 200g tins of Italian tomatoes I used organic tomatoes from Suma (bought on Amazom!)

Fresh basil leaves to serve - though I have a thing for rosemary atm and might add some whilst cooking tonight and a sprig on serving :)

Use a nice wide, thick based, shallow pan with neatly fitting lid if possible. I use a risotto pan for most pasta sauces.

• Melt 1oz of butter in pan with large slug of olive oil
• Fry roughly chopped onions till starting to brown (add more oil/butter if needed)
• Reduce heat and add roughly chopped garlic
• Add finely diced chilli (Tip: if it's a hot chilli try adding half then taste after tomatoes have been in for 15mins before adding rest. You can always add more, you can't take it out!)
• Add about a table spoon of your chosen herbs
• Continue cooking for a few more minutes.
• Add about a glass (old style not new style... Ok! About 125ml) of red wine followed by the anchovies.
• (Look in pan and think 'that could do with more wine and add a slug for good luck - well that's what I always do anyway)
• Turn up heat and cook for 3 minutes, stirring all the time, allowing anchovies to breakdown into the sauce.
• Add the tomatoes, bring to a simmer and put neatly fitting lid on pan.
• Simmer for up to an hour

Cook pasta of choice 'al dente'

The drugs don't work

It's hard to comment on this apart from to say: READ IT! NOW!

The drugs don't work: a modern medical scandal

The doctors prescribing the drugs don't know they don't do what they're meant to. Nor do their patients. The manufacturers know full well, but they're not telling.

by Ben Goldacre

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/sep/21/drugs-industry-scandal-ben-goldacre?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038

Carrots

Dreamt of having a phone where the messages were stored on carrot sticks. Unfortunately the carrot sticks in question were really yummy and I ate them all rather than reading my messages. Al was very cross. . . .

(edit)

This happened in the most fantastic steam-punk railway station a cross between Hugo and Steamboy only problem is now every-time I think of the dream I can still taste the carrots and they tasted better than any real carrot ever will....
    

Roller-blading!

No not me, Rob and Oli - at least there's a decent wifi connection :) Easy to spot the York roller derby girls - they are wearing the coolest clothing :) and look relaxed and not perpetually, petrified of falling! When I see them all relaxed and cool I briefly think 'I could do that' then sanity reasserts itself and I stick to my computer!

Wow! I have adverts!

Quite worrying that that makes me excited! I don't like adverts, they are intrusive, materialistic, mind-numbing, etc, etc. But in this case it means my blog has been approved! Yay!

I won't be asking you to click on them (I'm not allowed to) - if there is a 'you' reading this rather than just a me writing this and I'm not allowed to click on them even if I, the writer, am the only reader. Becomes a bit of an existential conundrum, what is the point of their existence? Well today they made me smile.

Tomorrow I might hate them!

Life on the ocean wave river. Our old home :(

Dutch Barge - Elbrich
A wonderful life but not always as convenient as needed and very small when filled with a mixture of adults and teenagers!

In winter we were warm and cosy and it was often beautiful - even when the river didn't freeze like this but the field we had to walk across was very, very muddy - think festival mud then times by 3!



And here's a few more pictures  of Elbrich

Maths....

One of those maths questions doing the rounds on facebook:

of the over 170,000 responses it looks like over 70% of them are wrong (no I didn't check!) While many people are likely to forget school maths lessons I find the number of incorrect answers quite worrying.

Hat trick of a day

Today really should have been cancelled.


(substance abuse workshop was the high point, compared to the rest it was a veritable Everest)

Today's essential reading

Spoon theory by Christine Miserandino

http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/

No improvement so far

Poor Oli not up to school. Hate CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome).

Monday morning...

Surely the week can only get better.......

Monday morning...

There are no words to think of, no words to say

for how do I know if you'll 'take' them 'my' way

all words have two meanings or three, four, five...more

I can't numerate each and decide for sure

So I'll stay quiet and think and ponder too much

Thinking this way or this, maybe this and such

and so the time for talking passes by all unsaid

with everything bottled inside my head.

The fault in our stars

So on the advice of Pe33les I read a book this weekend, made me cry lots, well written, insightful, made me think about how I'm going to cope as a children's nurse......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fault_in_Our_Stars

well worth the tears :) thank you John Green!

So.....

poetry the odd picture.... the odd link

Well we're not really going that well yet but exams, essays and festivals have interrupted:

:-(
:-/ and :-D

Talking of festivals new(ish) post by Pe33les:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL036B7AF691780036

(I being the briefly mentioned beer serving 'rent)

Deviant Spirit

Deviant Spirit

Deviant, not fitting in,
walks the edges, smiles on a whim.
You give me a label, a badge, a name;
it doesn’t matter I stay just the same.

I never needed your rules, your code;
never heeded the looks you showed.
And yes how it rankles to see me so free
and all you can say is you wouldn’t be me!

It’s you who miss out it’s you who is sad
with your prim ways that label me bad!
Where does it get you, this convention of yours,
that treats me like a rag to wipe floors?

A threat to your peace, to your safety too,
is how you view me and all that I do.
And you think I care when you express your disgust
of the things that I care for, of those that I trust.

And never by look or by deed have you shown
that I also have rights, that I also own,
a right to be happy, a right to have fun
and to pass on these joys to my daughter, my son.

You want for them what you wanted for me,
to be blinkered, be blind to what they can see.
But no, I won’t do it, I will not fit in
to make you feel comfortable within your skin.

So "Fuck you world, I’ll go it alone."
I don’t care at all for the things you have shown
to me as reasons to behave, to conform,
I really don’t want to fit to your 'norm'.

So let me be me and you be you
and lets get on with the things that we do.
And if I pity you each day that goes by,
at least you'll never understand why!

Youtube to watch!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMgmxwlApk8&list=PL6D7FADBEABF49DDE&index=1&feature=plpp_video Oh! And it helps if you're a little bit mad......

River! :)

Well to be more precise the River Ouse above York from my little boat.

Website of the day!

Favourite websites of the day:

http://www.ayme.org.uk/

The Association of Young People with ME is a UK charity that provides support for children and young people up to 26 who have ME/CFS.

Unfortunately this is going to get a lot of visits from this house......

Intro

Well this is just a start of the wonderful new exciting student nurse blog spot!

Will try to update regularly, might even do pictures but they will be more of the real life (not nursing!) variety.....

this week having been a sort of 'customer' of the NHS I will try to give a two sided viewpoint... watch this space.

We all have to start somewhere....and why not with a subject that is just sooooooo much longer than the post!

Hello world!