Firstly… I hardly ever get ill

Secondly… I have very little sympathy with other people who are ill

Thirdly… I am the world’s worst person to be around whenever I do get ill

Fourthly… I do, of course, expect huge amounts of sympathy when I’m ill

For the past two weeks our household has been fending off all sorts of bugs & germs, that our lovely little Sawyer has been bringing home from nursery (Becky be warned!!!). It was mainly just a dose of the sniffles, which I can usually cope with without too many tears. But last week it took a rather strange and far from pleasant twist… Last Tuesday, with my head full to bursting with mucus I took my pathetic self to bed and whether it was due to the way I slept I’ll never know, but when I woke (at about 4 in the morning!!!) the snotty contents of my head had condensed itself entirely into my left ear… Which was stunningly painful Thinking it would clear its’ self up pretty quickly, I spent the next day mainly chewing, blowing my nose, yawning and generally pulling ridiculous faces in an attempt to get my blocked ear to pop!!! It did, briefly, but soon filled up again, which as you can imagine thrilled me no end…

Now due to many childhood problems and a few far from pleasant airplane landings I do know a wee bit about ears. And my problem, which I still annoyingly have almost a week later, lies in the Eustachian tubes…

And thanks to the joys of the internet, I’ve now found out that this annoying and fairly common problem could take weeks to clear I’ve gone seven days so far and I’m seriously peed off with it, so God only knows how pleasant I’ll be in a few weeks time!!! Needless to say, my novel writing has ground to a halt

Please attach your sympathy below

There are few things in life that get me really riled, as I’m usually calmness personified; although it is alarmingly less so as I get older People who queue jump, people who spit, people who drop littler, people who don’t put the ‘next customer’ bar onto the supermarket checkout belt , people who park in ‘parent & child’ spaces without any kids, people who get their tiny babies’ ears pierced and dress them as if they’re teenagers and people who shout while using a mobile-phone (usually in a bank or shop)… All of those things will probably get my rile juices flowing. God only knows what would happen if I encountered them all on the same day It would probably result in this…

There is also another small annoyance I have; maybe less so than those above, but an annoyance all the same. And it’s with people who can’t be arsed to cook. People who live off ‘ready meals’ and take-aways, who buy bags of pre-grated cheese and pre-cooked jacket potatoes and who believe opening a packet of powdered mashed potato is in fact cooking!!! It’s not. It largely tastes like shite and is just lazy.

‘Oh but I simply haven’t the time to cook…’ will often be the excuse given and yes I have ordered take-aways when I wanted a break from cooking, but not every day. I also believe the ‘fast food’ is time saving belief to be a bit of an urban myth. For starters your average take-away would take a good 20 to 30  minutes to arrive, while the plastic & Styrofoam wrapped ‘ready meals’ take about 10 mins to nuke in the microwave and then leave to stand. Pasta, onion, pepper, garlic, tomatoes, herbs and grated cheese, would take a few minutes to chop and less than 10 minutes to cook, not to mention be a damn sight better for you.

So in light of Jamie Oliver’s (love him or hate him) recent Ministry of Food, ‘Pass it On’ experiment, where he’s desperately trying to get a nation of ‘ready meal’ & take-away junkies to start cooking… Here’s a recipe to get you started. It tastes amazing and is a piece of piss to make

Thai Green Curry (serves about 3)

Ingredients

Curry paste

Spring Onions (6 – chopped)
Ginger (Large thumb sized piece chopped)
Garlic (2 cloves – chopped)
Lemon grass (1 – chopped)
Lime (1 – zest & juice)
Chilli (2 medium – chopped)
Coriander (1 bunch, but mainly the stalks – chopped)
Basil (Half a handful – chopped)
Olive Oil (3 big glugs to get the paste nice and runny)
Salt & pepper (Just chuck a bit of both in)

Mix all of those fresh zingy ingredients together in a pestle & mortar or a food processor.

Curry

Green Pepper (1 – cut into chunks)
Carrot (1 – cut into thin slices)
Prawns (1 pack) or Chicken (2 breasts – chopped into chunks)
Coconut Cream (About a quarter of a block)
Water (400ml ‘ish… just don’t make it too runny)
Rice (About 60g per person)
Coriander leaves (A handful – chopped)
Lime (1 – cut into wedges)

Fry the chicken (if you’re using the chicken), peppers & carrot in a little oil in a deep frying pan for about 5 – 10 minutes. Add the curry paste, give it a good stir around and then add the water. Chuck in the coconut cream and leave to simmer for about 10 minutes, until the coconut has melted. Throw the prawns in (if you’re using them) and cook for 3 – 4 minutes, until the prawns are cooked.

Cook your rice in a pan of boiling water for 8 – 10 minutes, then drain and wash with boiling water.

Serve curry and rice. Garnish with the coriander leaves & lime wedges… And a nice bottle of cold beer

And this will all take about 10 minutes to prepare and about 25 minutes to actually cook… If you like it, pass it on.

In spite of this weekend’s world ending events in Geneva, I’ve decided to stubbornly continue to blog… And it may seem a little odd or pointless, in light of the impending armagedon, to ramble on about recycling and saving the planet, but a few things have been bugging me for ages now…

1. Why can leftover food be wrapped in newspaper and placed in our brown bin, whereas just newspaper cannot?

2. Why can paper by put into our blue bag, whereas shredded paper cannot and has to go in our brown bin?

3. Why can you get compostable plastic bags to put your household compost into, yet supermarket plastic bags are not?

4. And why are Sainsbury’s willing to give me one whole nectar point for every bag I reuse, yet are not willing to let me use 100 old bags for my weeks’ big shop

I don’t know, you try and do your bit and look what happens!!!

Before I leap headlong into this post, I must point out for those that don’t know, I am a vegetarian and a huge animal lover. I felt the need to say this because there have been a few posts recently (frogs…, pidgeon…, ) that may give people completely the wrong idea… And if they don’t, then this post certainly will I’m even having doubts about my love of all things furry myself at the moment.

Over the past few years I’ve dabbled with growing a bit of fruit & veg in our garden and I do mean dabbled. Despite throwing all sorts of things into our soil & into an assortment of pots we’ve managed about 6 tomatoes & 3 chillies over the past 2 years   Which as you can imagine, is a tad disappointing. In fact the only thing we’ve been able to successfully grow is the blackberries that were in our garden when we bought the house and I’m convinced would continue to grow after the apocalypse!!!

Undeterred, I decided that this year would be the year; I even read a book to get some tips for heaven’s sake Since Easter our garden & kitchen windowsill have been awash with tiny little seeds and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by their rapid progress… Determined to avoid a repeat of previous attempts to grow our veg, I discarded my animal loving instincts and invested in some organic slug killer, which has been a revelation. Unfortunately though there was something far more lethal lurking about in our garden and something that is right at the top of my most hated list…

I HATE him and he needs shooting and if anyone is going ‘Arrrr how cute’ I’ll probably shoot them as well… So far this year we have managed to grow, in our humble little garden, 6 strawberries (squirrel has eaten 5!!!) & 3 courgettes (squirrel has eaten 3!!!) and when he’s not gorging himself on our veg, he’s ripping the heads off all our sunflowers. If he knew how to use a spade, and I wouldn’t put it past the little shit, he’d probably be having a go at all the stuff we’ve got below the ground as well… HE’S A PISS TAKING MENANCE & HE’S GOING TO DIE

My 25 years of being vegetarian may soon come under serious threat as I would gladly barbeque this little menace on a spit and wash him down with a nice chianti…

It’s a simple enough request and the slimy loose limbed beasts would enjoy themselves a whole lot more slapping about in the neighbor’s pond. But no, they continue to hide out in my garden and scare the living shit out of me when I least expect it… And in case you haven’t already guessed, I have a very irrational fear of frogs

I don’t know exactly what it is about them I don’t like, or indeed when I decided I didn’t like them, but try as I might (and I have kinda tried!!!) I simply can’t abide the bug-eyed things… So imagine my horror/terror/sheer bottom shaking shock when this week I lifted up some knackered decking in our garden, only to discover a whole army of the slimy things underneath. My instant state of paralysis only intensified (if that is indeed possible?) when the dog also discovered the frogs and started to excitedly chase them around the garden To see a frog is bad enough; to also hear it’s blood curdling squeak is quite another level of horror for me… It’s been a few days now since I unearthed their lair and I’m still finding them!!!

And this all leads me to a story I’ve told hundred’s of times before (in fact I was convinced I’d blogged it before, but I haven’t) and nobody, I’m guessing, actually believes it to be true…

A few years ago our over-excited dog had broken the door off the catflap; he used to be able to fit through the thing and it took him years to finally accept that he couldn’t!!! I’d decided to replace the tiny door at the weekend and as the weather was good we’d live with the ‘draft’. One evening while reaching for the catfood, a strange site caught the corner of my eye. I could see our 3 cats all leaping up & down at the far end of the kitchen… And then I spotted why A frog had leapt into our house through the open catflap and was now leaping about madly to avoid the sharp claws that were desperately flaying around. It was my worse nightmare, so I made a quick escape and went for help.

When Tracy got to the kitchen she found the frog had scuttled behind one of our kitchen cupboards, clearly terrified (that made 2 of us!!!).

Tracy: It’ll be impossible to get it out from there. We’d be better just going to bed and it’ll find it’s own way out in the night.

Me: Or it’ll roam all over the house when we’re asleep and I’ll have absolutely no idea where the hell it is in the morning!!!

Tracy: Don’t be bloody stupid… It’s a frog; they don’t live in houses!!!

Me: It could go anywhere…

Tracy: Stop it.

So we went to bed… Tracy slept soundly, while I lay there frettfully imagining that damn frog marauding around the house. I fell asleep eventually, but even then my dreams were entirely filled with that bloody frog; in my nightmare the frog had actually started to scale our stairs!!! I could hear it’s little squeak as it flapped from step to step… It was coming to get me I woke with a start and it clearly woke Tracy as well…

Tracy: What’s up?

Me: THE FROG’S COMING UP THE STAIRS!!!

Tracy: Don’t be daft.

Me: I COULD HEAR IT… IT’S COMING UP THE STAIRS!!!

Tracy: Why the hell would a frog climb our stairs? Go back to sleep.

Apart from ‘IT’S COMING TO GET ME!!!’ I had no real answer, so did eventually get back to sleep… In the morning all thoughts of our uninvited slimy guest had been completely forgotten about. I leapt out of bed and headed straight for the bathroom for my morning pee… As I stood releaving myself I glanced across at the bathroom sink and our eyes met; his were a little bug-eyed and mine were completely frozen!!! My pee dried up in an instant and I backed out of the bathroom without taking my eyes off the slimy frog that was wallowing in our bathroom sink…

And much to my annoyance, people never believe that story!!! Well it did happen damn you and it has probably scared me for life

One of my unwelcome guests has decided he’s a little bored of our recently converted loft and has buggered off (hooray!!! ). His partner in crime however was not so lucky… I found him as dead as a Norwegian Blue on our loft floor this morning

Pigeon Pie (courtesy of Keith Floyd)

Preparation time 30 mins to 1 hour

Cooking time 1 to 2 hours

Ingredients
4-5 pigeons, drawn (I only have one, so I’ll obviously be looking at a smaller pie )
salt and pepper
250g/8oz stewing beef
250g/8oz shortcrust pastry
beaten egg to glaze
2 tsp cornflour
300ml/10fl oz stock

Method
1. preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
2. Joint the birds into two breast joints and two leg joints each and stew the rest of the carcass in a little water to make stock for the gravy.
3. Cut the beef into small pieces and line a deep 20cm/8in pie dish with these.
4. Lay the pigeon joints on top, cover with water, add salt and pepper, then cover the pie dish with greased paper or aluminium foil. Place in the oven and simmer for 1½ hours.
5. Remove from the oven and raise oven temperature to 200C/400F/Gas 6.
6. Cover the pie with the shortcrust pastry, brush the top with beaten egg, put back into the oven and bake until the pastry is golden brown.
7. Make a gravy by mixing 10g/2tsp cornflour with a little cold water and add to 300ml/10fl oz of the warmed stock. Allow to thicken while stirring, season and serve with the pie.

Waste not want not and all that… Just a shame I’m vegetarian