GREATLY HONOURED. GREATLY LOVED. GREATLY TIRED ... Greatly semi-inspired ...
Ruth has nominated me for a Thinking Blogger Award!
I can't display my medal yet because I've yet to find the html for that ...
But it's a kind of tag, and I'm to pass it on to another five so my list is coming up tomorrow.
It's another stew day. Lamb stew today! My sacreligious margarine dumplings are hubbling as I speak. (Sacreligious because if you're any kind of dumpling afficionado you will know that, to purists, beef suet is the only way to go for dumplings.) Mine, however, come out like extra-special stew bread. Remarkably soft, kind of dry in the middle (but not floury) and ... well ... like ... well, bread.
My new stew is very light on potatoes and they're quail-eggs size baby potatoes, unpeeled but sliced. They hold their shape beautifully throughout the two-to-three hour cooking process. Okra (better known to some as gumbo) I add loads of. Topped and tailed and sliced. One onion this time instead of two. One courgette. Celery salt (approx one teaspoon) in place of ordinary salt. Loads of paprike (about two teaspoons). No added chili: Jamaican curry powder instead (about one teaspoon). I add the spices to the oil that I use to brown the lamb this time, along with a little sliced garlic (no need to crush, especially if you're stewing). A can of chopped tomatoes always forms the stew base. Onto this I throw a good heaped teaspoon full of herbes de provence. Forgot Maggi liquid seasoning this time (I'm so OCD-ish about my cooking. Everything has to be a precise repeat performance of last time unless I specially break free. Then I feel so funky and groovy and liberated like I cannot explain. (That, my friends, is the sadness of OCD ...) My extra-fluffy dumplings basically form the carbs section in place of vast numbers of potatoes. I lurrve my dumplings. They go like bread and absorb all surplus water without the need to cook with the lid off on an already broiling day ...
OK: I feel an unclosed bracket - but what would be new ..?
Tomorrow I've an evil drugs management appointment where I will be grilled. Last time the doctor got all clever and probing I snapped at him "well I haven't committed suicide, have I!?" and the atmosphere of the session plunged from there from sparring into deadly serious. It annoys me that for over a year I felt that way and yet because I simply avoided saying anything it was assumed that I - a picture at the time of the walking dead - must somehow have been okay. What planet do some of these people live on? I demand to know.
Well we'll never find that one out ...
The air is greying into light blue. That coasting into late evening colour. The other day I awoke to experience intense grey rubbing against my window. Fog! I thought. No. It was merely clouds. I'd slept positioned elsewhere to my mind-map's impression of where I was, what I could see. So I was assuming I was facing the houses opposite. Actually I was looking up at a mizzling London sky. We don't get pea-souper fogs like they used to in the 1950s, when they used to burn real house coal. The smoke from this, combined with London's natural damp and fogginess produced a megatastic smog so intense on some days that the blind had to lead the sighted from tube stations across roads to the trolley-bus stands ... those were the days ...!
On that rambling note I shall have to go. Take care everyone! See yous all tomorrow ...
>pop!<
(gone)
***
Tonight's blog recommendation: The Animal Advocate - doggie diaries, puppy tales ...
2 hours ago
20 comments:
haha mine is OBVIOUSLY a thinking blog! not.
my blog represents my brain's ramblings, screams, and farts. though all of them are somewhat filtered. that's why i love your blog dood... it's real, raw, and unrehearsed.
Hi Gleds; you can right click on my award and save it to get the logo. Ive sent the code from my photobucket site by email but not sure how it will travel; Blogger won't accept the code in a comment box.
Rx
Hope your appointment tomorrow goes better than you anticipated!
Ok, now I am drooling and staaarrving! I want to come over for dumplings, and I can almost smell them :O) I hope your appointment goes well. Take care X
I love your writing style! So casual yet so frank and interesting!
I understand about the shrinks. They can be so dense and tubular all at the same time. Grrrrrrrrr.
I told my insurance co NOT to send me to a certain doc because he refused to shake my hand! I think it had to do with his ethnicity and my being female...possibly "unclean," you know??? It took a battle royal, but I persisted! How can you be expected to chat up someone with that attitude!
~~~You've been tagged for a meme - no pressure, really - please visit me for instructions. Thanks...
~~~Blessings~~~
Can I add greatly thought provoking too..:) Well deserved nomination Gledwood.
Im salivating at the mouth here, no its not rabid madness,well not yet anyways!! The way you describe those dumplings..they sound divine, Ive tried the suet way but they always fail to rise and end up like heavy thick balls of claggy dough, not found time to try your recipe yet, but do intend to..
I can fully relate to what you write about your experience with the doctor, recently I attended an assist course, suicide intervention. It was a steep learning curve over two days, something thats most of us find too difficult to speak about..I ramble but good luck with your appointment.
Your London fog sounds as if it compares to the Scottish 'HAR' we experience in this part of the country, it is like hitting a dense wall, travelling through to be met by brilliant sunshine on the other side, it can feel so claustrophobic...now to work...
Have a good day
Talking of awards, if you haven't voted yet in the Blogpower Awards, vote for UK News and Politics. My site tells you why.
Your cookery sounds like music in my ears, Gled. I'm impressed :-)
Good luck with the appointment mate.
Congratulations on the Award, looking forward to looking at your nominees. :)
Your writing fascinates me, Gledwood, it's so honest, dark and raw. Have you thought of submitting articles, writing a short story, etc?
Something to mull over, anyway.
Your dumpling stew sounds delicious and I don't even like lamb!
Catch up with you later.
Puss in Boots: I have considered writing all sorts. And have written. It's just tydying up pages and pages later that gets to me ...
Akelamalu: I'm nominating this evening so not long to wait!
Vinz: lotta people say that they've not tasted it though!! haha!!
Sockpuppet: I will go and look at that
Audrey: actually there's an "SOS suice prevention blog" listed in my links under drugs stuff
Gracie: I know. People from minorities are allowed to be racist, sexist, whatever because it's an intrinsic part of their culture. We just get beaten up for every move we make because we are white and thus ever in the wrong especially because our several times great grandparents colonized half the world and left them with railways, telephones, postal service ... in some cases they didn't even have a written language until we came. And yet we are to blame for all their present ills. That makes me sick. What is a meme? OK I'll come find out
Mellowlee: the appt is in about 2 hrs. I'd almost forgotten it was today (again).... grrr it HATE DOCTORS sometimes
Nicole: thanks!
Ruth: I will try but it's not my computer. Doing these things always seems to be exceedingly complicated
Raffi: haha!
Naomi Joy: thinking all the time is too exhausting anyway!!
recommend tonight?
christiano ronaldo blog: http://byteresavideoscronaldo.blogspot.com/
recommend tonight?
http://ssipd.blogspot.com
chel & chel's comical observations
Gledwood, my man, you seem to be on your way to becoming quite the chef. I have trouble reading your post without salivating. You should have some friends over to try the stew.
I might bring some over to theirs. Nobody wants to come to my place understandably bc it is such a dump
Congrats! Evil Spock has been awarded that a few times.
Hmmm I don't know how to put the medal on my thing!
Congratulations, gled, you deserve it! Your blog is both provocative and thought-provoking.
Sorry I can't help with the techie bit: I have no idea what you should do.
Yes, you can get vegetarian suet; it's the one I use ever since BSE. In fact thinking about it I'm surprised they can still sell beef suet - oh, no, I was thinking it came from round the spine but it's from round the organs, isn't it? We can get vegetarian Atora in Sainsburys here.
Wholemeal flour might make your dumplings a little heavy, do you think? Let me know how it goes.
Gledwood, you certainly know how to put together a very tasty-sounding melange of flavors. Like yourself, I prefer less spud and more dumpling. I make the latter using cake flour. It has less gluten, so you'll find that made this way, there's no change of them turning out like lead weights should one overmix. And now, I have a hankering for a comforting bowl of stew with airy dumplings! Ah, the power of suggestion. :)
"See" you again,
Chef Jules
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