Our food programme

Fun while mixing fruit

I have just been listening to the Food Programme on BBC Radio 4, it was all about soup. It appears that soup has become trendy and the electric soup-maker is the new object to have standing on the kitchen worktop.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0520t3d

As far as I am concerned soup never went out of fashion. In my childhood scotch-broth, thick vegetable and minestrone were my soups of choice for grammar-school-days’ lunches, while my sister invariable took tomato. Mondays, after a Sunday chicken-dinner, were also soup days – Chicken soup with suet dumplings or Norfolk Swimmers, dumplings without suet.

As a vegetarian making veggie-soup became an art in itself especially when I was a art student in a house full of vegetarians. We would see who could make the biggest and tastiest pot-full that lasted the whole week! It was cheap. We always made homemade bread to go with it.

My Dad and I make soups too and using leeks from the garden with a potato to thicken it is the most popular one. My sister has one of the new soup-makers mentioned on Radio 4 so Dad and I can have a go with that when I am next home.

Conductive soups and milk-shakes

A few months ago we received a present of a soup-maker for use mainly in the Conductive Education afternoon group. Knowing that Évi and I do lots of cooking with the afternoon group (it was alphabet pancakes today) our Boss sent us a soup-maker that can also be used for milk-shakes!

The machine gets used for both soup and shakes, but the milk-shakes are the most popular. We receive a donation of fruit and veggies every Monday morning from a local supermarket and the children make a beeline for the fridge as soon as they arrive each lunch time to see what is available. They make their choice of the day, grab the machine and get working on their milk-shake dessert.

Chilli and chocolate preparations

There is often something to go with the milk-shake and this time it was blue waffles!

We have decided to make a cookery book as there have been so many weird and wonderful creations – my favourite being the carrot and banana, and the chilli-chocolate.

'Let me show you how to do it!'

 

This time it was fruit pizzas with paprika,carrot and banana shake!

It was a delight to watch as one child, who did not know how to use the machine, was taught by a child who has made a new flavour milk-shake every week for months, a child who has athetoid cerebral palsy and has very severe difficulties with her speech. It was amazing how they managed, but they did and without any help from me. Just my smiles of praise and approval!

What I find amazing and love to be a part of is when we place ingredients on the table that we know sort of go together and then let the children take their pick and concoct a soup.

Each creation will taste great but will all be very different.

The ingredients that go in to each soup can often depend on the nationality of the cook or sometime  just on what they are used to eating at home – paprika goes in the Hungarian girl’s soup and celery root and parsley in the German’s.

Tasting each other’s soup and giving advice on what to add is an important part of the cooking process, then all the soups get eaten with great relish and they nearly always taste delicious.

Our group of cooks has decided that homemade food, especially their very own homemade food, tastes best because it is full of tender loving care and only contains those ingredients that they like to eat.

Of course we are teaching our teenagers how to fend for themselves in the future but as far as they are concerned they are just having lots of fun and drinking lots of weird and wonderful milk shakes!

Fruit Pizza with paprika/carrot or strawberry/choco milk-shake

PS

The cookery book should be out for Christmas 2015! These are the authors at work -

 

 

Fal-da-ree, fal-da-raa, my knapsack on my back

  Just a few of the ninety photographs that I took today! 

October 9th, 2011

An autumnal air in the Frankische Schweiz

I like to go a-wandering among the leaves so green, although the leaves are not so green, it is autumn! 

Today the colours were gorgeous. There was the fluttering carpet of orange, red and yellow below the still-green canopy above. Beside us were the bright-green stones with their thick, luxuriant wrapping of moss that were once the inside of underground waterways.

My knapsack was already heavy when I left home this morning for the annual family and friends’ Wandertag. I had filled it with a change of clothes, a brolly, a flask of water, some grapes, rescue remedy drops, a camera, a sketchpad and a book by Oliver Sacks! On the way home it was even heavier, despite my having dispensed with the water and grapes, because I had bought a two-pound loaf of dark, German bread, fresh out of the wood-fired oven that we discovered on our way!

Family gathering

Each year, on the second weekend in October, my German family and their friends go wandering together. Nowadays there are no children walking with us, they are all away at university or busy somewhere else with their own lives, but we still do the yearly up-hill and down-dale trip, with a stop at a very Bavarian restaurant for lunch and at another one for coffee and cakes, as a reward for our sporting efforts, at the end.

We all had knapsacks, we all had walking boots, some had walking sticks, one even had a traditional wander-jacket and shirt on, but no one had plus-fours or a hunting hat on. I of course had a cap on, I nearly always have some kind of covering on my head.

A dilute Indian summer-sun returned

We have had heavy rain in the area for the past few days and there was talk of cancelling our annual get-together, but today the sun shone again for us. Despite the early temperature of only four degrees Celsius, and midday temperatures barely reaching more than eight, we were dry and also, most of the time, because of the quite difficult terrain, as warm as toast.

I must admit that I prefer cycling to wandering and I knew before I set off that I would have aching thighs before the day was out. I was right but a nice warm bath will cure that. It was nevertheless a lovely day, with lots of chatting and laughing, some lovely karst-scenery to admire, some nice coffee and cake and yes, of course, lots of photographs taken.

Although I was quite capable of striking out in front with the fittest I took a back seat. I really enjoyed bringing up the rear with some of the slower movers in the group. I kept them company, enjoyed the scenery, learnt about the history of the area from my wander-companions and the signposts at regular intervals, and at the same time I managed to take some arty shots with my camera.

It makes a change to be tired out from the fresh air and rocky paths

I got home just before dusk, cut myself two slices of the still warm bread from my rucksack, smeared them with the fresh elderberry jelly that I also bought on route today, and with aching legs I collapsed in a chair. As I write my rosy cheeks are burning, just like they would after a walk on a blustery day, on an east-of-England beach.

If it had been just a few degrees warmer today I would certainly have made use of the Kniepp foot and arm baths to sooth my aching limbs. There is always a next time.

Notes

Happy wanderer-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfJltFV_ZfY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9Ec8UX1Vzs&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTWpbSHwVjw&feature=related

Little Switzerland -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Switzerland_%28landscape%29
 

Frankische schweiz -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franconian_Switzerland

Kneipp –

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

Autumn strawberries, a second harvest

Indian summer strawberries, October 6th, 2011

A mid-summer, birthday treat

When I was little we always had our first strawberries of the year on mid-summer day, it was a special birthday treat for my Mum, my sister and me. It was not until a few weeks later ,when the local fruit came into the shops, that the prices dropped and strawberries became cheap enough for us to have more regularly though out the season.

Cheeky monkey

Early this year I had a blackbird visit me on my balcony. He turned up about the time that the frozen soil in the window-boxes thawed out and he began pecking around looking for grubs. He pecked away with such enthusiasm that he threw all the leaf mould out on to the terrace below that belongs to my neighbours.

So as not to cause a disagreement between the neighbours and my blackbird, I thought that I should fill the window boxes with plants to reduce access to the soil. I had a few trips planned for the next few months, going away for work and to visit my Dad, so I did not want to spend a lot of money on plants that would perish if not watered. It was also early in the year with the risk of frosts still in the air.

Picking up a bargain

While still undecided as how to solve the enthusiastic-blackbird-problem I noticed in the local supermarket a packet of six strawberry plants for ninety-nine cents. Now what was that if not a bargain? If I planted them I thought, at that price I would not have to worry too much if the plants did not survive my long absences or get caught in a late frost.

With six plants planted and a blackbird with his bill put out of joint, the neighbours and I were happy.

Strawberry picking

I returned in mid-June from one of my trips to England to find a handful of strawberries ready to be consumed on mid-summer day.

I did not get many more than that handful because the leaves on the tree that give me the much-enjoyed shade on my balcony prevented much growing during the summer months.

I spent another four weeks in England in September and returned to find that my strawberry plants had decided to offer me another handful of strawberries.

I discovered there to be flowers and small strawberries on several of the plants, those that had received the most twinklings of sunshine through the leaves of the purple leaf prunus tree, Prunus Cerasifera Nigra.

This second harvest has so far given me a strawberry a day for the past week! It is nice to get up, take my usual breath of fresh air on the balcony and pick one fruit to eat with my muesli or slice onto my toast!

Indian summer fruits

It is October the seventh and there are still enough strawberries for another week, as long as the sun comes back.

I cycled home last week at seven or eight in the evening with the temperature still over twenty degrees Celcius. Except that is for yesterday, when it had suddenly dropped after an early morning shower to eight degrees! I have brought the miniature rose indoors and a few pine nut trees that have grown up from seeds from a discarded pine cone, there is a feeling of frost in the air. 

I do hope that those remaining strawberries make it until they get a blush of colour on them and that I get to eat them before that blackbird catches on and returns for a cheeky breakfast.

Shrove Tuesday

" Shrove Tuesday"

Yes, of course, what did you think?

Today we made pancakes!

We counted eight spoonfuls of flour into a bowl, then someone cracked in the egg, another poured in the milk, and another held the mixer and mixed until the batter was smooth and arms ached.

We put cups full of batter into a sizzling pan and enjoyed the gorgeous individual patterns that appeared.

The pancakes were turned, not tossed!

We mixed icing sugar with cocoa powder, that in turn was spread on the hot pancakes.

Finally we ate them.

Still remaining traditionally very British, I ate mine just with lemon.

The Germans eat doughnuts on Shrove Tuesday, and on just about every other day in the month before, but in my evening Workers Group there is a slight English influence and we usually make and eat pancakes.

PS

The cleaner followed her nose and came in to join us.

Custard brings a chain of memories

The custard-baking, banister-riding Grandma and co. circa 1960

Sometimes I hear from home that afters are about to be served, with custard, and my mouth immediately starts to water. I love custard of all kinds, although I recently discovered that in England there is now some instant stuff for which no milk is needed. For me that no longer deserved the name ”custard” and I will avoid it on future visits.

The latest mention of custard sparked off a chain of memories

When I lived in Birmingham in the eighties I used to eat custard by the bowl-full. Just custard, nothing underneath it. No teacle tart, no bread-and-butter pudding. No spotted dick, steamed sponge-pudding or suet-pudding with gooseberries either. Just custard.

When I was an art student, and really organic and earthy, I used to make real custard, not with “Birds” but with eggs. But the very best was Grandma’s baked custard, with nutmeg on top. I have never had one like that, other than Grandma’s. She baked them in a tray of water, I think. Yummy.

We had them on race days when she and Grandad and the Maclarens from Newmarket went off in his flashy car, a big Rover I think it was, to the horse races.

Round the pub

We got to keep house at the pub on these days, something that my Mum and Dad did not really enjoy but I loved.

It meant hay-lofts with kittens, straw bales and horses, chickens to feed and mushrooms to pick from the manure heap. It meant space to learn to ride a two-wheeler, and swallows in the coal- house, with babies peering over the nest like choir boys.

It meant the black bric-paved back-yard smelling wonderful from beerbottles stacked in lovely wooden crates, the Guiness ones smelling best of all.

On rainy days there were the highly polished floors upstairs with small mats outside each of the eight guest rooms, that we played boats on, parking up in the doorways and getting on to another one. The mats were brown, hairy things and we each had our favourite. Some went faster than others on the ancient, slippery lino flooring.

If the rooms were empty and the doors ajar we crept in. Two of the rooms had four-poster beds in them that made wonderful trampolines or secret houses. In one of these rooms, very high on the top of a wardrobe, was a row of hat boxes. With the help of a chair I could just reach them and, if Sis stayed around to be my partner-in-crime, we could get them down and try on the usually pink hats belonging to my Grandmother.

The highlight for me (Sis didn't dare) was the highly forbidden ride down the banisters when we were called for tea. There were always beer crates stacked up in the hall below, which would have been, if not actually fatal if I had fallen on to them, then near enough. This was the reason that the ride was not allowed in the first place. It was irresistable and I did it anyway, as it was just like out of a story book. The bump on the bum at the end from the big knob told me that I had arrived.

I later heard that my mum had done it as a child and that my Grandma had even tried it once too, which is probably why I never got “caught”.

All that, just from a mention of custard for afters!

Thanks for the memories...

Rediscovering Britain

"No fusion here"

Gellert Hotel, Budapest 2006

Each time I visit the UK I learn something new about the place, about the economy, about new customs, about the changing fashion, and often about the language.

On my last flying visit I was shocked by the effects of the credit crunch, by the rise in prices and the closure of many large and even more smaller shops.

I was thrilled by the clothes, especially the wonderful shoes on sale. They come in the most amazing shapes and colours and with ever more amazing heels. What I found even more fascinating was actually to see young woman wearing their five-inch stilettos on a Saturday night in town!

New food, new language

When my niece and nephew were younger, I would always learn new “cool” words from them. Now they are older they use a similar language to mine!

This last visit I discovered that yet again there was a new language to learn, that has come about through the appearance of numerous new and interesting fast-food stores and restaurants in every high street.

This new food is called “fusion food”, that is combinations of foods with different countries of origin, and is now to be found on every high street, bringing many new dishes that I had not come across before.

Ÿ Thai green curry pie, peas and mash,
Ÿ Masala chicken tikka pizza
Ÿ Indian tapas

all alongside good “old-fashioned” curry and chips!

I had never heard of “fusion food” before but when I googled it there are pages and pages of suggestions. There were also fusion restaurants, fusion recipes, fusion catering services, fusion lifestyle, fusion clothing, even something headed fusion descriptions, whatever that maybe! So it is not that new at all. Just new to me.

Fusion

I suppose the nearest thing that I had previously heard about before, resembling fusion food, was the chips with curry sauce served at a chippie in West Bromwich long before I even went off to Budapest in 1989. It was however not at that time available in Norwich!

Was this then a combination of the best of British and Indian?

I think that these days “fusion food” means something a bit more sophisticated.

I spotted a few different trends. There was the use of a traditional dish adding new ingredients like a pizza with Mexican toppings, there were noodle or rice dishes from different countries being combined, while “wraps” contain just about anything theses days from chicken curry to mozarella.

There are restaurants selling entirely new dishes created from ingredients from different cultures, and there are restaurants selling dishes from various different Asian countries all under one roof, and Italian too.

Fusion food, that was my new expression when I was in UK in March. I look forward with interest to my next language lesson this summer!

Notes

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

http://www.waitrose.com/food/celebritiesandarticles/foodissues/9805130.aspx


PS

Below are few of the pizzas available on a flyer advertising a new pizza delivery service. Apart from the usual Italian ones that are still available you can also purchase the following –

Hawaian - sweet Caribbean chicken, sweet corn and pineapple
Mexican special- onions, spicy mince. Jalapenos (peppers) and crushed chilli
Meat Mayhem - pepperoni, meat tikka, spicy beef and green peppers
Classic- onions chiken-tikka, pineapple, green chilli, green peppers.
New Oriental Express – onions, pepperoni, sausage and mushrooms

Extra toppings - tikka, spicy mince, tandori etc, etc

By the time I got to the end of this list I had actually forgotten that I was reading about pizzas!