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I arrived back in the UK on the 6th of September, very jet-lagged, and then promptly fell ill. Apologies for the big delay in updating my blog, but then most of my activity, as I have mentioned before, is documented on Facebook. But the archive-index is a lot better here.
I was not successful in finding a job in the Twin Cities, but then that would have been almost miraculous, so I wasn't really expecting to. I was not as successful as I would have liked in laying the groundwork for finding a job, which was disappointing, but largely due to two facts - 1) I did open a credit union account and (I think) buy a condo, but it took a lot more time and energy than I was expecting, and 2) the social scene also took up more time than I was planning for. One of the big surprises of the trip was that my old comrades in the DSA and some new friends who have joined while I was away were so incredibly welcoming and positive about my imminent return to their company. KB, now holding my old post of "only permanent female member" became an instant friend and we discovered loads of common interests, and the old stalwarts really touched me with their insistence that they had missed me terribly and were thrilled to have me back. Other social events included meeting up with old friends Janet and her daughter Michael, and seeing Michael's three children who I had known only as online photos, seeing Krista and Ben's "new" baby Oskar, along with of course Krista and Ben, and coffee with Loren, with catching up and a little discussion about my possible career choices. I found to my sorrow and distress that Marie, whom I love very much, is suffering a very severe form of cancer, and was able to spend a few hours with her, and also with her son Doug, an ex-bf now married with adult son. My dear friend Lou, whose world is a chaotic whirl completely outwith her control, nevertheless ferried me around, introduced me to Savers, accompanied Dianne and me on a few condo visits and lent me a smartphone for the duration, all of which made my trip a lot easier. I visited Walker Church and caught up with friends too numerous to mention. And finally I must give thanks and more thanks to both Steve S. and KC B., who picked me up and dropped me off respectively at the airport and housed me in their homes for eight and seven days respectively.
This is definitely the longest I have gone without blogging. Also the longest I have gone without a holiday. The last time I was abroad was Thanksgiving 2007. The only trip I took in all of 2008 was a one-day trip to Portmeiron, not even staying overnight. I am determined not to let 2009 go by the same way. I just got back Friday evening from a six-day trip to "the North" (where we do what we want!) I have reviewed and journalled the trip in more detail at Deborama's Kitchen, so check it out there.
Part of the reason I didn't travel is that last year everyone in my far-flung family was in a state of flux. My older younger sister and her husband, one at a time, have temporarily abandoned the family homestead in Gulfport and set up house in Kansas. This has left my aged Ps behind in a little duplex bungalow they built mainly for them. So now my younger younger sister, an academic in Hattiesburg and her husband, a realtor, are buying a second home in Hattiesburg and moving the aged Ps there. My daughter has split with her ex-partner, father of grand-daughter Savannah. My son is still with his partner, who graduated last year from her PG Architecture course and got a job in her field - just as the property market crashed. My son's company was sold and he was offered a less attractive job than he had, but of course he's going to take it for the stability. But no benefits, no holiday, and the stability is not real stability, as nothing is these days. Both my kids have two extra sidelines for income: Aimee is a web designer for her main job, and also teaches web design and is a photographer. Carey works for an online game company, and does painting and web design free-lancing. I am so proud that I raised two smart, hard-working, creative and above all resilient kids. And like all parents and grand-parents, I pray things don't get too much worse before they get better.
I have been meaning to do a blog on here called "The Fifteen Year Depression of 2008 - 2023." I would say keep an eye out for it, but it may not happen. (The blog that is; I am pretty sure about the depression.)
I am in Atlanta for the start of my fortnight-with-the-family. I have just met Carey's girlfriend Ashley. She is amazingly cute, smart and a great match for him in the personality arena, or so it seems to me. They hug all the time and semi-fondly bicker like an old married couple. She drives a Toyota Camry with a stick shift and she drives like my old high-school buddy and partner-in-anti-social-behaviour Margaret (or Maggie, as I began calling her, and I think it stuck.) I describe the driving style as "like a maniac with a guardian angel", that is, fast, confident and leaves the passengers more breathless and speechless than shaking and scared, as less protected maniacs do. It was actually kind of exciting.
I saw their loft apartment at the Mattress Factory. Nice.
We ate at R. Thomas, which I just cannot recommend enough.
I am now blogging from the Atlanta Public Library, which I also recommend; they're such nice people in Atlanta. I had sort of forgotten over the years.
I just discovered I can't capture a picture to illustrate this post. Oh, well, sorry. You'll have to find your own pictures.
It seems about 90% of my readership in the past few hours has been people searching for Great British Menu results, which were just broadcast tonight. (DH look away if you haven't watched it yet.) Folks were getting a hit on my blog as number 3 (of many) even though the post was for last year. So I thought I would be kind and post this year's results, which are not available yet on the BBC Food website (although they may be by morning.)
The starter : Sat Bains' Slow-cooked Egg, Air-dried Ham and Pea Puree
The fish : Richard Corrigan's Poached Salmon and Wheaten Bread
The main : Mark Hix's Rabbit and Crayfish Stargazy Pie
The dessert : Mark Hix's Perry Jelly with Summer Fruits, Ice Cream and Elderflower Fritter
Recipes available.
Cross-posted at Deborama's Kitchen.
You may have read about it; now see it for yourself - cheddarvision.tv is a webcam focused on a grand cheddar cheese in a darkened cave just getting older. It's far more pure an experience than watching paint dry - for one thing, it's slower. There is also a myspace page for it, if you prefer. No, it's not that exciting either.
Since I posted Deborama's WWW Number 14 - Radio Wrap-up, NPR vs. BBC I have had a bit of e-mail correspondence with a representative of the BBC, Nick Reynolds, who left a few comments on the post. In one of these comments, he alerted me to the fact that the BBC Radio homepage portal had been greatly re-designed. I am sure it's just a coincidence that it was due for a new release just after I posted that link to the old one, but I have had a look and it is greatly improved, in my opinion. For one thing, it is far less busy and "promotional" in its appearance, and more service-oriented, so if you happen to want to find something and the BBC radio site is your logical starting point, you now have a good chance of finding it, if it's there. So full marks to the BBC web design team for getting it right.
I also want to highlight a web page of the BBC's that I use a lot, which is the food page. I have a couple of issues with this page, even though I want to state at the outset that it is a great page and a valuable resource to me overall. The first issue I have is consistency. I have been a fan of British food/cookery programming since before I emigrated here, and I have used this website for years. Every so often, it gets a redesign. It has a feature, common to many food websites, called the Binder, where you can store your favourite recipes for quick reference. But when they redesign the website, you lose your binder and have to start again. Also, they don't archive all the old recipes consistently so sometimes if you save a link (to get around the disappearing binder problem), the link also may disappear. And another issue is that it is not very consistent about the availability online of a given recipe you have seen on a show, or even if a current link to a currently running show will be available or not. And my final issue is (and this is probably not the BBC's fault at all and beyond their control) that there are two other websites easily confused with this one - the BBC Good Food magazine site and the UK TV Food website. They are all quite good, all have recipe binders and all look alarmingly similar. So of course I now have to search the binders of all three, and then search the recipe databases of all three, to find a particular recipe that I know exists but can't quite remember where I saw it. Modern life is so complicated, eh? I used to only need to remember which cookbook I saw it in, and 99% of the time it was Joy of Cooking .
DH and I have been watching Great British Menu on the BBC for its long, long 8-week stretch. Although we didn't "vote" on the menu, we were quite interested in the results, which are, if you're interested: Starter Smoked salmon with blinis, woodland sorrel and wild cress: Richard Corrigan (Northern Ireland)
Fish course Pan-fried turbot with cockles and oxtail: Bryn Williams (Wales)
Main course Loin of roe venison with potato cake, roast roots, creamed cabbage and game gravy: Nick Nairn (Scotland)
Dessert Custard tart with nutmeg: Marcus Wareing (north of England) I was also interested to find out. via online discussion groups here and here, that the GBP (great British public) tended to agree with our criticisms of the show, most of which apply to all of the reality programming on TV, even the supposedly high-brow stuff on the BBC - it is insulting in its gimmicky, short-attention-span repetitive nature.
I really like that she does stuff like this. I would be very disappointed to find out that it was the brain child of some civil servant/courtier. It doesn't sound like that sort of thing, but like something she would just think would be "fun". Like, hey, I'm the Queen, I have been very very good for years, I am 80 years old soon, why not? And then we are watching - yawn - yet another "reality show" "competition", this one to see which famous celebri-chef will cook a grand birthday feast in June for HM and a few hundred guests. But get this, she doesn't choose the menu, the British public chooses it. These are the same people who vote which D-list celebs have to eat slugs in Australia, so I think it is mighty brave of her to agree to this. She is a game old bird, in a lot of ways. And you gotta respect that. I still don't want to swear allegiance to her, though.
This is something I keep up with, in a lax and desultory fashion. I don't know why. I no longer live in Minneapolis and I probably never will again, but in some part of my heart, I can never leave. And then they don't really have a restaurant "scene" around these parts, do they? They just barely have restaurants at all, what I would call restaurants, anyway. So Minneapolis now has two kosher restaurants, even though only an estimated 2% of the Jewish population there keep kosher. (And the Jewish population isn't that large, either. NYC it ain't for all its aspirations.) But of course, in the Twin Cities, only a small minority of their clientele are even going to be Jewish.
I miss eating out.
(Cross-posted at Deborama's Kitchen.)
Or not, as the case may be. I have been very remiss, I know. I have just come through a re-organisation of the division of the company I work for. I have "come through" in the sense that I have kept my job, by basically re-applying for it. A number of us were forced to go through a selection process involving tests and interviews. I think about 2/3 of the project team I am on did not make it, which does not bode well for the stress-free completion of the project. This reorganisation was forced upon us by economic necessity, and the management layer was hit at least as hard as the lower tiers, so there is not much point in moaning about it. Still, British people do like a good moan, and redundancies are never painless, so the stress levels have been high and are not going to go down very soon.
We recently took a little day trip to Ludlow, a place I have wanted to visit for a while, because of its foodie reputation. It was nice. We bought some foods. We had company in the house yesterday and overnight. DH made a smashing cassoulet with venison (from Ludlow) and chorizo (from the local supermarket) and flageolet beans and fresh tomatoes. My buffalo wings, made with free-range chicken from Ludlow, got lots of compliments, but were very easy to make. You can read more about Ludlow and our recent food and drink explorations on Deborama's Kitchen.
What with all this going on, I have also had to miss out on a bit of book-crossing activity. The Unconvention in Birmingham is just now drawing to a close, but I missed all of it, as well as the mini-meetup in Beeston two weeks ago. I was sorry to miss both of these events, just as I was getting into the BC spirit. I did manage my first release, a controlled-release to two non-BC friends from the train, of a really wonderful book that DH and I both liked a lot: The Last Family in England. Look for a review at Deborama's Book Reviews soon.
Deborama's Kitchen has a post about the arrival of Bisquick in the local hypermarket. The Book Review blog has a post about the BBC production of Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters (highly recommended).
Julia Child, another major life influence for me, has died at the age of 91. I think she is more responsible than almost any one person for my very early interest in fine cooking and the world of multicultural food. I have not travelled nearly as much and as widely as I have wanted to, but my taste buds have travelled the most. From the age of 12, I sampled the cuisines of the world, starting with the Empress and Queen of cooking, France, because of Child, and Japan, because of my father. (No, he's not Japanese, he was just very taken with their culture when he was in the Air Force there in the late 1940s, and it rubbed off a bit.) Today the airwaves are awash with "celebrity chefs" but they just don't make them like Julia anymore.
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That's my boy sitting there with all that meat.
