shewhomust | Entries tagged with wine

The Wine Society has been celebrating its 150th birthday by commissioning a series of wines which reflect different eras in its history. We haven't been moved to order any of them, but I have enjoyed reading about all the choices which this involved. In the current mailing, the series reaches its conclusion with not the last but the next fifty years: what wines will we be drinking in the future? Short answer: wines grown sustainably, using resilient hybrids, at high altitudes or in new regions (or England).

There are, of course, accompanying recipes. The future of food will be plant-heavy, with a focus on local produce. I wouldn't argue with that, but I was tickled to see that two out of their three recipes feature carlin peas. Chef Paula McIntyre explains that there is a Lancashire tradition of eating carlin peas on Bonfire Night; my father used to talk about them as a tradition of his north-eastern childhood, when they were eaten on Passion Sunday, two Sundays before Easter. Carlin, Palm and Pace-Egg Day... (More here.)

I have seen the future, and it is not what I expected.

But then, there are aspects of the present I still think of as living in the future: which presumably makes me a person from the past. On Friday

durham_rambler was deep in WhatsApp conversation with the rest of the pubquiz team (I have a dumb phone, which makes phone calls, and leave the smart stuff to

durham_rambler, who enjoys it); they were trying to organise a farewell dinner for a departing member. And really I should not be surprised that one of the contributors to the conversation was in Buenos Aires at the time. It did slightly take the futuristic gloss off the situation that he was trapped in a lift in Buenos Aires. (He was released within a couple of hours, and the hotel gave him free breakfasts for a week.)

ETA (02.10.24) Our Gardening Correspondent adds:

In spring [a friend from Whitley Bay] handed me some seed packets she had bought at a Heritage Seed Event. These included a pack of The Carlin Pea, which she said was of local historical interest. Beamish celebrate Carlin Sunday when they tell of the peas saving the population of Newcastle from starvation under siege in 1644.

I grew them. They wouldn't have saved us this year. Germination was poor. I had intended them to be planted out into a raised bed but those that did germinate did not look strong. I grew them in two pots on the patio & gave them lots of attention. In due course we podded them & had them for tea.

As with many heritage varieties I was interested but not that impressed. I can usually tell why heritage varieties have gone out of favour.

There you go.

We dined out spectacularly last Friday, with not just one but two pub quiz teams. It is the practice of our team to pay our entry fees from, and pay our winnings into, a kitty: we don't always win, but we cover our costs, and over a period it mounts up. Once in a while, we spend our accumulated capital on a meal out; and since those whiles are pretty long, the meals out can be quite fancy. We haven't done this since the eve of lockdown, and in the interim our restaurant of choice has closed. But another door opens: not only has coarse opened, they have now also opened an upstairs floor. When we discoved that another team had similar plans (our friends and rivals, usually referred to as 'the Physics Department', because several of them work there), we got together, and booked the two big tables which fill the entire upstairs.

It was enormous fun. The food was good. The discreet lighting increased the sense that each course was a surprise, and some dishes more successful than others: there were scallops, which I can never resist, though I didn't think they were enhanced by the little sphere of deep-fried haggis (tasty in itself) nor by the Italian red wine which accompanied them. None of the wines was a revelation, though I enjoyed the chasselas: people were generally pleased to taste a Swiss wine, and there were comments about not having done so before; we had, but enjoyed doing so again. And the company was great: perhaps we should have made more effort to move about, and mingle between courses, but I enjoyed staying where I was and talking to the people around me.

On Monday we went to lunch with A and D in Barnard Castle. A complete contrast: lunch, not dinner; at home, not in a restaurant; more relaxed, continuous conversation. Simpler food, though D's smoked haddock soup was as good as anything we ate at coarse (and his sancerre was nicer than most of what we drank). We lingered, talking books and politics and gossip and work until late in the afternoon.

From the sublime to the ridiculous: tonight we will eat at the Elm Tree, so that we will be there early enough to secure a table for the quiz.

The Carol Evening last Sunday went well. The mulled wine that I had left to mature after breakfast was pronounced the best yet by several different people: so, for the record, Banrock Station shiraz mataro and heavy of the (fresh root) ginger. A slightly altered seating arrangement meant that GirlBear was in the middle of the musicians and had a slightly different view to her usual, and when I grabbed the seat by the door (so I could slip out after Down in Yon Forest to put mince pies in the oven and refresh the mulled wine) I was just at her shoulder and could enjoy this. Some of the usual singers had carelessly absented themselves, and one had to withdraw at the last minute with which covid: we have been doing this for 40 years, so we are always conscious of absent friends. But A is still finding copies of the songbook in which she has not yet corrected the spelling and punctuation. At the Winter Songs concert

boybear had asked me how old was Il est né, and I had looked it up. The initial response, of course, is "We learned it at school," but now we were able to add a proper provenance, that it was first published in a nineteenth century collection of Christmas songs from Lorraine (which doesn't actually go much further than "Nobody knows!") As we say each year: always different, always the same!

On Monday we celebrated

durham_rambler's mother's centenary: for many years, trying to allocated our Christmas visits among three sets of parents, we would spend her birthay with her, a week ahead of Christmas Day (I'm not sure she ever found this an entirely adequate substitute for spending Christmas with them, but better than nothing): this year we met with those members of the family not detained by work (his brother, sister-in-law and nieces at the cemetery where

durham_rambler's parents' ashes are interred on the margins of the memorial to his illustrious relative; after which we adjourned again to the home of Younger Niece, who had prepared a lunch which would remind us of her grandmother (she had not recognised

durham_rambler's suggestion og banana custard, and prouced a very elegant cream, in the manner of a fancy restaurant deconstructing a familiar dish).

In the evening we went with the Bears to Unity Folk Club, which is where we learned to sing Deck us all with Boston Charlie. C. startled me by singing A Sailor Courted a Farmer’s Daughter (what Mainly Norfolk describes as Dominic Behan's version): why was this song which no-one else seemed to recognise so very familiar to me? (Mainly Norfolk blames Robin Hall and Jimmie Macgregor, which means I knew it very well more than 50 years ago). It's a very supportive club, and wedid actually take up our turns on the singaround: since we had had some (political) parodies of Christmas carols, I, with the help of

boybear sang Hark the jelly babies sing..., and

durham_rambler with the help of the assembled company, sang The Man who Waters the Workers' Beer and Alex Glasgow's Socialist ABC.

What did we do on Tuesday and Wednesday? A little light shopping: guided by GirlBear, we went to Kentish Town, to the Phoenicia Food Hall and the Owl Bookshop, and then to the Wellcome Collection, whose gift shop filled the last few gaps in my Christmas present list. We had planned to meet

boybear at the East West restaurant which serves various Indian inflected pizzas; I wasn't sure about this, but the Bears recommended it. Anyway, it was closed, so we crossed the road and ate Thai instead, which was fine. Back at our flat,

durham_rambler and I caught up with an episode of Only Connect which delighted me by including a reference to Peter Dickinson in a sequence of fictional detectives (his was the difficult first one, which you aren't supposed to recognise, and I didn't, until we reached 'the second son of the fifteenth Duke of Denver' whom none of the contestants identified).

Wednesday was mainly packing. Lunch with Bears, an evening of tapas with

helenraven in Southwark. High points, catching up with

helenraven, fishy rice, excellent wine (Montsant,adjacent to Priorat); low point, spilling a glass of said wine over myself (and the table, but luckily no-one else).

And yesterday we left London via Waltham Cross, where we had coffee with A. Now we are in Ely, with D. and

valydiarosada. Not going anywhere right now, just lazing with crosswords and internet, watching the wild muntjac deer browsing in the garden, being looked after by our hosts.

Yesterday afternoon was a big family gathering hosted by the Younger Niece: this overlaps substantially with tomorrow's event, but also included some people who won't be at that one, including the whole of the youngest generation (great-nephew level). We also met for the first time the Elder Niece's new partner, and his son (bonus great-nephew-person).

Quite late in the day, Younger Niece informed us that there was a challenge, to come wearing or carrying a clue to a seasonal song, but that it was purely optional. With no time to think and very limited resources, I decided to pass, but

durham_rambler cut up the packaging from our lunchtime mini-panettone and made himself a festive badge. "Life is a panettone," seemed the obvious comment, but caused confusion when our host tried to add it to the party playlist, and couldn't find it. Our hostess with her mistletoe wristband collaborated with her husband who didn't have to work too hard to represent Mistletoe and Wine; an Elvis fan in a blue Santa bonnet (never seen one of those before) indicated Blue Christmas; and thoughtful Elder Niece had a bag of seasonal odds and ends for anyone who hadn't brought their own reindeer antlers and very shiny nose, or even a stick of jingle bells.

We left the party early, to go to Leytonstone Folk Club's concert of Winter Songs: a completely different set of winter songs, I don't think there was any overlap at all, though there will certainly be overlap between the concert and tonight's carol evening - and some overlap of performers, too! We had Cranbrook, for example, with almost no audience participation, which was odd. Sweet Bells got slightly more response, but the fun aspect of that one was that singers were sent out from the stage to the back of the church, to sing "Sweet Bells" back at the performeers. Il est né le divin enfant turned up in a sequence of French songs, between a splendid Noël nouvelet (I should hunt down more of this song) and something I didn't know and couldn't grasp, but suspect may have been humourous. Two Joni Mitchell songs: River, which has become a Christmas regular, and, unexpected but welcome, The Circle Game; Sidney Carter's When I needed a neighbour; the Rolling Stones Winter (how did I not know this? I mean, it wasn't that special, but surely I should have heard it before...?); and assorted Muppets and Greg Lake. No Fairytale of New York, and I'm happy about that, since I think it is very overexposed, but I'm quite surprised, too.

This morning we breakfasted with the Bears, did a little light tidying, and I combined the ingredients for the mulled wine and left them to get acquainted.

durham_rambler and I lunched at the Tufnell Park Tavern: the soup this year is chestnut, and the wine list is full of things I want to try (I had a glass of txakoli, dry and almost saline, which cut beautifully through the richness of the soup). We had hoped that J & J would call on us before the Carol Evening, but they have worn themselves out doing other things, and have spent the afternoon recuperating, ready for this evening - and we have done likewise.

Two excursions this week, neither requiring any great degree of intrepidity, but each, in its way, feeling like an adventure.

On Tuesday we went to Newcastle for a Wine Society tasting. We don't do this often, but this one was particularly tempting, wines of the Languedoc Roussillon with representatives of the growers in attendance, and held at the Station Hotel, which made the journey as straightforward as it could be. I agreed that I could manage the walk up to the station on the way out, and

durham_rambler agreed not to fuss about getting a taxi home from the station, and this worked pretty well. I coped with the walk and was no slower than I had anticipated (which was, admittedly, pretty slow) and with the amount of standing required throughout the evening (there were some chairs, but it was pretty crowded) and although there were no taxis to be had at the station, we managed to hail one before we reached the foot of Station Bank. And the wines were worth the effort.

( a beaker full of the warm South... )

The second excursion was around Durham, to entertain visitors: it is they, not we, who were intrepid, having taken the train from York into the blizzard:

( Third time lucky? )

So all in all, despite the day not having gone at all according to plan, I'd call it a success.

Damsons from the greengrocer; blackberries from the garden.

Salon des refusés: dark but not exactly black fruits:

An outsize aubergine from the greengrocer; 2015 Gigondas from the wine cellar.

And girl it looks so pretty to me
Like it always did
Oh like the Spanish City to me
When we were kids

On Monday, for my birthday treat, we went to the seaside.

We spent the day in Whitley Bay: a bright, breezy stroll along the front, brunch in Valerie's Tearoom at the Spanish City, and then we hit the shops... Fewer artisan speciality shops than I had expected, but plenty of charity shops, and

durham_rambler indulged me, so we went into them all. And bought a surprising variety of books: from a nice little copy of Daisy Ashford's The Young Visiters to Jo Walton's What Makes This Book So Great, and even a detective story for

durham_rambler (a Martin Edwards, whose title escapes me at the moment).

Then we came home, and I cooked a fennel risotto and opened a bottle of Jurançon. A day well spent.

D. departed from his most recent visit leaving behind him Edith Somerville and Martin Ross's In the vine country. One of the constants of our friendship is that we have very different tastes, often completely misjudge what the other will enjoy, and keep trying, anyway. So, Somerville and Ross? As in that classic of Victorian humour, The Irish RM, which I have not read but remember being ambivalent about the television version in the 1980s? Yes, that Somerville and Ross.

But D.'s edition was published by a specialist wine publisher (it's also available from Project Gutenberg) which was promising: I like old-fashioned travel writing, I'm interested in wine and I have visited (though I don't know it well) the area of France concerned ... How could it fail to be entertaining?

That's only half a rhetorical question. Somerville and Ross have a distinctive flavour: Irish (or is that Anglo-Irish?) ladies, called away from hunting to go to the Médoc, not for their expertise (they claim none) but for their wit and humour - and they oblige, they are resolutely witty, which can be wearing. Their comedy horror at the unhygienic practices of wine making (the peasants treading the grapes) is displayed at length, and the text is liberally sprinkled with "Irishisms", turns of phrase delivered as if they added some comedy value which was invisible to me... I was very conscious of enjoying reading their account of their travels more than I would have enjoyed travelling with them - but I did enjoy reading it.

Then right at the end, it startled me. In the final chapter, on the homeward journey, the cousins spend a day in Paris. They are familiar with the city, they feel at home, they revisit a hotel, a restaurant that they know of old,they make their way to the galleries in the Jardins du Luxembourg (now the Musée du Luxembourg):

When we got out into the gardens again, with their linked battalions of perambulators, and their thousand children courting sea-sickness on the zoological merry-go-rounds, the afternoon was still young. The tops of the tall horse-chestnuts were yellow in the sunshine, and above them, in the blue sky, the Eiffel Tower looked down on us, suggesting absurdly the elongated neck of Alice in Wonderland, when the pigeon accuses her of being a serpent. Its insistent challenge could no longer be resisted; in spite of the needle-cases, yard-measures, and paper-weights that had horridly familiarised us with its outlines, it was decidedly a thing to be done. People who would go to sleep if we talked to them about the vineyards, would wake to active contempt if they heard we had not been to the Eiffel Tower.

I like the Alice reference, and I recognised that sense that it's hardly worth visiting the Eiffel Tower, its image is so inescapable.

But when the travellers got off the tram at the wrong stop, and "consequently had a long crawl through the empty Exhibition buildings and grounds", I thought again: the tower was built as part of the Exposition Universelle, held on the centenary of the French Revolution. It wasn't old and familiar, it was a new intrusion into a well-known townscape. Somerville and Ross visit it almost against their will not because it is hackneyed, a cliché, but because it is a novelty. How could they refuse to visit the tallest tower in the world, when they were so close, and they might not have another chance (it was intended as a temporary structure, to be demolished after 20 years)? Somerville and Ross's account of their visit to the tower is a lovely piece of writing anyway, a mixture of their trademark self-deprecatory humour (they are not keen to enter the life cage) and vivid description ("the girders that looked like all the propositions in Euclid run mad") but this shift of perspective makes it stand out from the rest of the book.

Not for the first time, the Eiffel Tower hogs the limelight. In the vine country as a whole is very much a case of if this is the sort of thing you like, you will like this. But that final chapter has a much wider appeal.

A random post about our holiday in Brittany; only not exactly random, because I could equally have titled it Good things in unexpected places, or A tale of two mills. Not to mention, what could be more connected, less random, than bread and wine?

First, the bread:

En route from Saint Malo to Paimpol, we plunged into a commercial centre on the edge of Saint Brieuc where our information told us there was a supermarket with a charge point. By the time we had definitely failed to find it, we were sufficiently ready for a late lunch to risk the bakery and tea shop at the entrance to the centre, the Moulin d'Elise. My tuna sandwich was good; even better was a kouign amann, a traditional Breton cake dripping with butter; but best of all was the view from our table of the bread counter. I wished I could buy a loaf, or two ...

Most of the wine we drank in Brittany was the local muscadet; we also drank quite a bit of cider. We enjoyed both of these, but neither was exactly a suprise. But twice we were served red wine which was quite unexpectedly good, and both times that wine was a corbières.

The first time was that same evening, in Paimpol. Weary and a bit frazzled after a day's car-wrangling, we walked along the row of restaurants which line the harbour, all of them offering variations on much the same menu, and settled on the last and most casual looking of them (once we had checked that yes, despite appearances, it was open and serving food). We sat outside, and we ordered steak and chips. Red wine, then, and from the narrow selection on offer, we ordered half a litre of corbières. It came as a full bottle, and we confirmed that it was what we had ordered, before two thirds of it were poured into a jug for us (I hadn't met this practice before, but it happened several times this trip: it means you get more choice of wines in smaller quantities, which is good). Then the bottle was taken away, of course, so I can't be more precise about what it was. It wasn't so phenomenal that I rushed into the restaurant and demanded to see the bottle again: it was just a really satisfying, rich red wine, good enough to remind me that we used to drink corbières quite often, and to make me wonder why we had lost sight of it lately.

Once upon a time, corbières and minervois were our two go-to reds: Sainsbury's stocked both, and they were more than reasonably priced. That's probably my earliest memory of the wines of the southwest, and it could go back to 1985, when the two regions gained their AOC status. We have actually visited Corbières (though we were more impressed by Minerve, on the same trip).

The second corbières of the trip was equally unexpected. We were in Dinan on the last night of the holiday, and we had identified a restaurant which looked really interesting. It wasn't open at lunchtime when we passed, or we'd have tried to book, but we hoped that turning up early would get us a table. It didn't, perhaps because it was Monday, and many places weren't open. Eventually we found a large and not very busy restaurant in the market place: it didn't look very promising, but it would do. I can't even remember what I ate there (it may have been pizza, which was certainly on the menu). From a very short wine list I chose what looked like the most interesting option (it was certainly the most expensive), a bottle of faugères. What we were given, though, was this Vieux Moulin corbières, which hadn't been on the list. I can take a hint. We drank it. It was spectacular, elegant, fruity, well balanced... Am I overreacting to having had such low expectations to begin with? Perhaps. Bring me another bottle, and I'll tell you. It certainly rescued what set out to be an anticlimactic end to the holidays.

ETA: I was forgetting to say that as a result of these two bottles, we were on the lookout for corbières when we made our end-of-holiday visit to Terre et vins, our regular stop on the edge of Dinan. We didn't need to be: there was a big display, front and centre, of two wines from Castelmaure co-operative: these two, in fact, Castor and Pollux. They are described as 'ephemeral wines', which I think means they produce a different themed wine each yeat. It could have been a triumph of marketing - well, it is a triumph of marketing, but they are also a couple of very drinkable wines. Pollux is grenache / syrah, open and fruity, Castor is dominated by carignan, more structured.

We were thirteen at table: last Saturday, for dinner after the match with visiting cousins and family. The match itself was nothing to celebrate: Sunderland had lost, and had in any case played atrociously badly - I have no opinion on this, but note that the supposed fans very often judge it tobe the case. The party, in addition to ourselves, were three brothers (including a pair of twins), one wife and one partner, a daughter (and, I think, her partner), her daughter (in her first term at university) and boyfriend, a step-grandson - and one more: his girlfriend, possibly? The table sorted itself, as if Maxwell's demon had been at work, older generation at one end, younger at the other, so I never really sorted out all the young folk. We can't help being aware of those who are missing from the party, and that each time we all meet may be the last, but any family gathering which is not a funeral is cause for celebration.
Celebrating a Hatfield man: More or less by chance, and at the last minute, we spent Sunday afternoon at the Assembly Rooms with John Watterson, Paul Thompson and the songs of Jake Thackray. Part tribute act (Watterson has an ongoing existence as Fake Thackray, and his mimickry of Thackray's voice is at times uncomfortably good); part book launch (the pair have collaborated on a biography), part homecoming: I think of Jake Thackray as a Yorkshireman, and a French chansonnier, but it turns out he was also a Durham graduate, specifically a Hatfield man. There was to be a further, more conversational, event in the college bar the following evening, but I bought the book, durham_rambler bought the DVD and we decided that this was enough. It wasn't until we got home that we discovered that the DVD, a BBC compilation of Thackray's half-hour shows, also contained performances by guests, including Alax Glasgow - I'm looking forward to playing those.
Celebrating Georges Brassens: I probably travelled in the opposite direction to most people, because I discovered Jake Thackray through Georges Brassens, rather than vice versa (There's this man who is undertaking the impossible task of translating Brassens, and - gasp - doing it rather well!.) So this photo from Leclerc's autumn wine promotion seemed appropriate:

No, I didn't buy a bottle: I love the marketing, but who knows what the wine is like? The Leclerc catalogue doesn't say what region it comes from, what grape it's made from - it's a 'vin de France', which could mean anything...
Still active at 80: The City of Dur ham Trust celebrates its 80th birthday this year - which means it was founded in 1942, when you might have thought local residents would have other things on their minds. But a plan to build a huge power station just along the river from the cathedral sparked the creation of a Durham Preservation Society, and it's being going strong ever since. There have been various serious events to mark the anniversary, but Wednesday was the actual birthday, and a group of us got together over a glass of wine to gossip. The Mayor was there - he's a member -- wearing his chain of office, not for our benefit but because he had come straight from a gathering of the Showmen's Guild...
Other people's parties: A student party in one of the houses in the street that backs onto ours finally wound up about two o' clock this morning. Mostly I can sleep through the roar of their conversation, but the beat of the music gets into my bones. Several times I almost got up to phone the police, but it seemed to be abating - and then started again. Oh, well, a month or more into the term, and this was the first really bad one.

Back on the train, northbound this time, and not as busy, thank goodness. Yesterday was full of many things, which I am still processing: what follows is ordered by chronology, not importance -

( Mercy cut )

And that was that. This morning we had time in hand - I had thought we might enjoy the opportunity to look around the area, but that didn't seem to apply. We vacated our room, booked a taxi, waited and read in the sitting area, lunched at the Upper Crust at Parkway (better than I had expected) and now we are on the train. Homeward bound, mission accomplished.

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/772544.html

There are two men in my back garden, dressed in orange head-to-foot, wielding sharp implements and buzzing at an ear-splitting volume. Is this Hornetman, a hitherto inknown superhero? No, they are tree surgeons. Not that 'surgery' is the first word you would think of, because the instruction we gave them was "Clear the lot!" Everything must go, the elder tree I unwisely planted and all its self-seeded offspring, the shrubs that a friend planted long ago and which are now taller than I am, the ash of unknown provenance which is suffering from ash die back (is that how you write it?), the brambles... What will I do thereafter, with the blank canvas? I don't know. One step at a time.

Last night I had my second vaccination, and this morning my arm is sore (thankyou to everyone who warned me that the second one may have more impact than the first). It was administered by my GP, who apologised for forgetting my name: "You're with

durham_rambler, aren't you? I can remember him, because I saw his face on a piece of paper ..." "Ah, you live in our ward, do you?" I confirmed that

durham_rambler was standing as an independent councillor, but shopped short of actually canvassing a vote.

We came home via Lidl, disconcertingly busy between five and six: I bought onions and couscous and a bottle of the riesling with a wombat on the label.

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/753085.html

Yesterday, in honour of World Book Day, I may have ordered a book. It's a bit uncertain, because I was so excited about it being available from Waterstones that I tried to order from them - and I may have succeeded in doing so, though it felt as if there was a final step missing (possibly because payment is due on dispatch, and there are still a couple of weeks to publication ...)

Oddly, the other book I was thinking I needed, and for the first time this year, is a diary. It felt odd at the end of last year not to be shopping for a diary, but I haven't actually missed having one - until now, with the year a quarter passed. Suddenly there's a Bank Holiday weekend I hadn't been expecting, and I want to be able to consult an actual paper diary before saying 'yes' to appointments (and then to write down what I have said 'yes' to...)

Am I just jumpy because I have agreed a time and place for my second vaccination, and don't want to get that wrong? This is, like my first vaccination, out of sequence: durham_rambler has a long-standing appointment for the day after the Bank Holiday, but despite being younger, I will be a week ahead of him.

Last night we attended a virtual 'wine tasting and tapas' event, organised by local wine merchant Guest Wines (they took over the business of Michael Jobling, expecting, I think, that Michael would be retiring, and so acquired both us and Michael): they work with a caterer, who turned up on our doorstep with a selection of little dishes and little bottles. At the appointed hour we fired up Zoom and (with two other couples) were talked through a tasting of the wines, and then encouraged to consider how each wine worked with the food. This was slightly awkward: we wanted to, and eventually did, start eating while we were still supposed to be tasting, and actually this was the right call, because if we'd done the tasting properly we'd have had no wine left to go wirth the food, and where's the fun in that? But our guide surprised himself at how well the fino sherry worked with the chorizo and bean stew, and I was sorry not to try that - I ate it wirh the Monastrell, which was good, but not startling. The star of the show was probably the white rioja, completely atypical and out of my price range. A glass of PX to accompany the dessert was a treat, but had me checking the Wine Society's list rather than tempted to order this one. Outstanding taste of the evening: the prawn croquetas.

What can I say about the lead story in this morning's news, other than that I was not expecting to be lectured about integrity by Dominic Cummings? This, possibly: how far below the standards of competence and integrity the country deserves would you say Boris Johnson fell when he made the Downing Street rose garden available to you, Dominic, and backed your explanation of why you had broken lockdown, and vouched for your phone giving 'proof' (which he wasn't going to share) that you had made no second trip?

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/752457.html

There's no great excitement to cooking Christmas dinner: I'm happy to go traditional, with a roast bird and all the trimmings, and I don't feel any urge to get creative about the bird, either. I've cooked goose, and liked it well enoughL better cold than hot, and the supply of goose fat for roast potatoes through the months that followed better still. But the bird generated more fat than even I could use, and less in the way of leftovers - the fun part of the exercise, as far as I'm concerned. I've cooked turkey, and occasionally been pleased with the results, but mostly found it (the breasr, at least) too dry and bland. So, left to my own devices, I boil a ham for Christmas Eve, roast a chicken on Christmas Day, and build the following week's meals around the results.

So there has been chicken and stuffing pie with a suet crust (memo to self: the sausagemeat and dried fruit stuffing was good, do it again; suet pastry also good but you need less than you think), and there has been lentil soup, and the cranberry sauce has been baked in a sponge pudding (hot with cream, and the remains tonight cold with custard) and ham with pasta; there is more soup in the freezer, and sprouts, and enough chicken and stock to make paëlla when I can buy some seafood. There's still enough ham for sandwiches of some kind, but - hooray! - there is some free space in the fridge.

In other years I might have enjoyed shopping for interesting wines to accompany - more than accompany, to orchestrate our lunch, make it into an occasion; well, that wasn't going to happen this year. But there was a Gaillac from a case of white wine from the southwest of France which we'd ordered from the Wine Society (because mmm, Gaillac); there was a Châteauneuf from our stash of Rhône (also from the Wine Society) and - a pleasant surprise, because I don't remember ordering it, but a half bottle of South African sticky from The Liberator, which seems also to be a Wine Society project (with labels worthy of Randall Grahm). Ours was in fact Napoleon Bona Part Three Paarl 2001: "Liquid tarte tatin springs to mind," says the Wine Society, "leaning more towards homemade caramel toffee on the palate." It was luscious and raisiny, and I'd order more, except that the Liberator range is built on one-offs, so I can't.

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/742086.html

As I was explaining to

helenraven in comments on my previous post, I'm trying to keep track of my shopping orders. On the Today programme this morning, a representative of Tesco's explained that lockdown has transformed our shopping habits, and we have reverted to the big weekly shop which we used to do ten years ago. When he says "we" he is not speaking for me: in this household we still - or rather, we did until the beginning of March - have a weekly ritual of comparing diaries, and then shopping together, either locally or at an out-of-town supermarket. Without that routine, the days of lockdown flow by, one much like another (and for other reasons too, of course). Waitrose ask me to think of others, and only book one slot a week: the chance would be a fine thing! Nonetheless, I feel apologetic about ordering too frequently. Hence this series of boring posts: feel free to skip!

Encouraged by others, who have ordered the bumper bundle of fish offered by the market fishmonger, I have telephoned and placed an order. It turns out that they have a website and accept individual orders. I've tweaked their 'fish box' offer to be going on with, and expect a delivery on Thursday.

I have ordered what feels like an inordinate amount of cheese (but there's very little left of the previous order, so why not?).

In the process of placing these orders, I may have destroyed the upstairs telephone handset (which is the one that was already misbehaving) and had to phone the cheese stall using the red dial phone on my desk. The old technology still functions, it seems: and because things don't happen singly, the same is true of the light bulb in the bathroom, which

durham_rambler was able to replace from his stock of bayonet-fitting, energy inefficient bulbs (saved for this very reason). My watch has died, too, and I am assuming that all it needs is a new battery, but this will have to wait until the market re-opens. One more item of to be done when we can do things again, I am overdue a visit to the optician. It's possible that now I have been passed on to the opthalmologist, I don't need to visit the optician for new glasses, but my current pair have grown very loose, and need attention.

On a positive note, the second instalment of our Wine Society order arrived yesterday: the rosé had become separated from the red and the white, but has now arrived, so we are ready for summer.

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/718392.html

Life is not, I admit, skittles and beer. But yesterday we ate the strawberries that the greengrocer had brought us, and this evening we ate their asparagus (with a roast chicken and a bottle of French sauvignon blanc which H. had given us).

In between those two seasonal firsts, this afternoon we went out for a walk: yes, both of us.

durham_rambler, being over 70, is cautious about leaving the house, but he accompanied me on a stroll as far as the allotments:

where a number of people were hard at work, each in their own allotment.

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/717102.html

Christmas eve already: how did that happen? The solstice has passed, the sun is returning: yesterday there was actual sunshine (which we wasted in a supermarket) and today, right now, it is not yet dark at four o'clock. All that carol singong last week seems to have worked. So, picking up with the notes I made on that internetless train:

Sunday was all about the carol concert. Some of that, of course, was more directly 'about', some less. I accompanied

boybear to the supermarket / hall of wonders, where he was probably very focussed on preparations, but I just swanned about saying "Oh, look! Camel milk!" (no, I didn't buy any). The Christmas cards had to be admired, arranged, displayed, discussed: why are there so many hares this year? The party in residence had to be sustained with soup and the progress of any early arrivals determined, in case they too needed soup.

In the absence of F., I had a free hand with preparing the mulled wine, and assembled the wine, fruit and spices well ahead of time, to allow the flavours to blend. I don't know how much difference this made, but the end result was pleasing. Other variables are that in the absence of F. I went easy on the honey, and was nervous about this until an Ent arrived and pronounced it good; also the choice of wine, so, for the record, this was the Wine Society's Lascar Chilean carmenere, probably the cheapest wine on their list but very rich, good in the mulled wine and good in itself later. Also for the record, four bottles, and add another before the break.

The Carol Evening is always the same and always different (that's what I always say) and this time the difference was the absence of F. No doubt he has missed years before (and no doubt so have I) but he has been a regular since the very early days. He contributes an expertise with the mulled wine, which by now is more traditional than actual, and a powerful bass (for which we substituted S's rather more musical version). But you couldn't look at the carol books (which F. compiled and illustrated, long ago) without thinking of him. He had told us that he was spending the evening with an old friend (in both senses of that expression) who was visiting from Scotland, and this, though disappointing, was hard to resent. i would have been more upset had F. not been part of our lunch date the following day (when we learned that actually, his absence from the carol evening was based on his misremembering the date as the Saturday, the previous day. Oh, well...). Other than that, it was a splendid evening, with much fine singing and many fine songs. Only two Shepherds this year, Cranbrook and Sweet Bells, and some interesting information from people who had been watching programmes about carols on television (that Oh come all ye faithful is 'the Portuguese hymn', and a Catholic rallying cry, for example).

Monday felt like a continuation of the Carol Evening, in various ways. Lunch was a chance to talk to A., with whom I had conversed only briefly between carols, and F., whom I had missed. The 'absent friend' from lunch was A.'s husband (another A.) who died shortly before our corresponding lunch last year. That's not the reason for the change of venue, simply that A. had identified a better option: and although I knew this was in Waltham Abbey, it was only as we walked from the bus stop that I realised it was directly opposite the house where I used to visit her when we were schoolgirls (now the town museum). Old friends in old haunts, the conversation dwellt on old times - and also on the awfulness of Christmas cracker jokes!. That evening, a different selection of the carol singers reconfigured themselves as Dorten Yonder, and

durham_rambler and I accompanied them as guests of the Cruising Club for a very select musical evening at the Waterpoint. Not all of the songs were the same - I hadn't heard Dorten Yonder's King Harry's Men before, and

durham_rambler led the singing of The Man who Waters the Workers' Beer.

We managed to make a Tuesday lunch date with his niece and, on condition we met near his office, her husband: but that's a day out in London which deserves its own post, and illustrations. Wednesday was more family visiting, in Essex this time, but home early enough to catch Dorten Yonder's weekly band practice (more carols).

Then we came home. And now it's Christmas ...

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/703510.html

Sunday morning was bright and cold - a change of weather for the change of month, except that yesterday was even colder. November had been wet - in fact the whole autumn has been rainy. I'll start this post with the previous Saturday, and it was raining steadily then: which was appropriate if not very agreeable, because that's when I took the train into Newcastle for Bryan and Mary Talbot's presentation of RAIN at the the Books on Tyne book festival.

durham_rambler had been to the actual launch, in Kendal, and had had our copy signed then, but I had skipped that because it clashed with a talk about Belgian comics, and because I knew there'd be another chance in Newcastle. So S. and I met for lunch in the Tyneside Coffee Rooms, in all their art deco splendour, and went together to the talk. Which was not as well attended as it deserved - but then it was very cold and wet, and Bryan and Mary barely made it, having taken an hour and a half on the road (a half hour's journey); and the audience was an interesting mixture of people who were interested in climate change and flood prevention, people who were interested in comics (only myself and L. from the Reading Group, though the man in the front row in a Luther Arkwright t-shirt was clearly a hard-core fan), and people who were making the most of the Books on Tyne programme. Someone asked "But who is your intended audience?", which rather nonplussed the speakers. But they seemed to be selling plenty of books, so that's good.

I didn't hang around town after the event: cold and wet, as I said before; also I had a tummy upset about which I won't go into detail, but I was ready to go home, so I did. The next day I was - let's say - 'better, but still not well', so we took things very gently, visiting Broom House Farm for lunch and a little light shopping. It was already misty when we left home, but as we drove up the long hill to the farm, the fog thickened, and at the top you could barely see from the parking to the coffee shop. I may have been a bit hazy myself: being wrapped in cotton wool felt entirely appropriate.

The rain continued through the week - we got soaked on the way to the Elm Tree on Wednesday - but Saturday morning was bright and frosty. It felt like a new month: I turned the page on the kitchen calendar, so we could compare commitments for the week ahead, and the calendar, which has been a sad disappointment to me all year (you'd think a National Geographic calendar of islands would suit me, but it's obsessed with tropical beaches) finally, at the last opportunity, gave me something to enjoy: a pair of blue footed boobies (in the Galapagos). It felt like December, too, because this has been the weekend of the Christmas Festival: the kind of festival that is all about shopping, and I went out and shopped.

durham_rambler accompanied me for the first stage of the shopping, in which we did some errands and failed to buy a haggis: the cheese stall had not stocked up for St Andrew's day, and had sold out. We didn't buy any cheese, either, because J, who had spent the night with us on THursday before catching the very early morning train for Milan, had given us a miniature brie (given the diameter of a full-size brie, a miniature one is still a substantial cheese). Besides, I knew there would be cheese sellers at the profucers' market in the cathedral cloisters. We went there next, and we did indeed buy cheese, also bread, and some smoked foods (haloumi and black pudding, separately).We lunched together in the cathedral café, which was pleasant enough but very busy.

And then

durham_rambler unleashed me to do my worst in the marquee, which in theory is dedicated to crafts, but also offers various edibles: in fact, a major reason I didn't want to mss the festival is that I wanted to buy some wine from the Domaine de Palejay - anf I did, and it was delivered that evening, so I have shopped successfully, which is good. I also had some entertaining conversations, including one with a cartographer (ah, here he is!); bought a couple of small gifts (not as many as I had hoped, but when does that ever happen?); bought myself a garment (picture the least you would have to do to a scarf to turn it into a jacket, and it's one of those). And did I mention the cheese? I had forgotten that Lacey's were likely to be there, but since they were, and since they make very good cheese, I chose a couple of pieces - but I was greeted like an old friend (which I am, but) and it's three for a tenner, and that's not a very big piece, have this one, and this one, and look, have this as a gift... We will not be running out of cheese any time soon (which is not a bad thing.)

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/701718.html

Is it really only a week ago that J. came to dinner? We had a lot of catching up to do: we'd been to Kendal, and to Hartlepool, and she'd been to Madeira which is even more impressive. Her home improvements rumble on, but we seem to have missed the drama surrounding the replacement of the conservatory roof. And replacement of her kitchen is about to start...

There were roast sweet potatoes for dinner. There were other things, too, but the remains of the sweet potato went into the next loaf of bread. I decided not to worry about the smoky paprika with which I had Seasoned them, even though it is quite hot, and that was a good decision, because you couldn't taste it in the finished loaf. You couldn't taste the sweet potato, either, but it does affect the texture of the crumb, making it looser and more open. Of course, this is partly because, although I tried to adjust proportions of flour and liquid to allow for the potato, the dough was still quite wet and sticky. Not worth roasting a sweet potato specially, but certainly worth erring on the side of generosity if you are roasting some. As if that weren't always the case.

I spent the afternoon of Hallowe'en at a conference on antisocial behaviour organised by the Parish Council: this seemed appropriate. The police were keen to tell us what they are doing to tackle drunken and aggressive behaviour in the streets, especially around the Bus Station, and it sounds as if there is a genuine problem, and they are doing their best to deal with it. But what all the local residents attending wanted to know was, what could they do about late nhight nise in the streets, and why had they discontinued their clampdown on noise from house parties? A certain amount of light was shed on this, which was helpful. The University had been invited to send a speaker, and declined: the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Colleges and Student Experience) was present in the audience.

We did not leave the European Union on October 31st: that's something to celebrate. I opened a bottle of wine: "European wine!" specified durham_rambler. Of course. We had a Greek white, from the Wine Society.

The household at the top of the seize any excuse for fireworks, so naturally we were under fire last night. Were fireworks always this noisy? My childhood memories of firework parties have almost no soundtrack: there were bangers, I suppose, but we weren't allowed them, and maybe some of the fountain things made a sort of whooshing sound... Anyway, at least I could watch last night's fireworks taking off (I may have missed their more spectacular effects, because of the angle of my viewpoint), which made the noises less alarming.

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/699623.html

We have in the past attended tastings organised by the Wine Society, but not recently. This is a self-perpetuating state of affairs, because the Wine Society tries to tailor its mailings to your interests, which means that if you fail to respond too many times, you fall off the circulation list, and may not realise that offers are still being made, but not to you. So it was just luck that I was pottering around the Society's website, muttering about how the tastings within reach were never the interesting ones, when I came across a dinner in Newcastle, tasting the wines of Domaine Jones in the company of the winemaker, Katie Jones herself. We had already sampled these wines: we had been tempted by a mixed half-dozen which the Wine Society had called 'Katie Jones' Locker', and indulged ourselves in a Christmas treat - in fact, we drank one of them with our Christmas dinner. It was short notice, but we could do it; it would be fun to revisit the wines, it's always interesting to hear the winemaker's side of the story, we'd never managed more than a cup of coffee at Blackfriars, and that was long ago. life owed us a treat for an anniversary which we weren't going to be able to celebrate on the day... What's more, we wouldn't have to rush away to catch the last train back to Durham: our winnings from the quiz at February's Crime Festival included an overnight stay at a Newcastle city centre hotel, an anonymous business-type slabe of glass, but close to where we wanted to be.

Tuesday morning was blood samples and dental check-ups (routine, but not fun) and Tuesday afternoon was work, so it felt particularly like getting away to be heading for the station in the late afternoon sunshine. The hotel was even better situated than we had expected: we emerged from the metro under the skirts of St James Park and there it was, looming above us - and when we were ready to set out, it was just through the Chinatown arch and along Stowell Street to Blackfriars. Arriving at the restaurant was the only point I thought was mishandled: we and other guests were left to mill about until we could find restaurant staff to direct us, and then we were sent into a bar and invited to buy additional drinks, an invitation which most of us declined. We didn't have long to wait until someone came and fetched us, and we all trouped round to the banqueting room, where we were greeted with glasses of fizz (Crémant de Limoux, and apparently from a magnum, though since it was ready poured I wouldn't have known). We were invited to seat ourselves at the two long tables, and when

durham_rambler played the deafness card, we were sent to the head of the table next to the speaker. Since she moved to somewhere more central to speak while she was showing her slides, it wasn't entirely justified, but it gave us a chance to chat over dinner, which was fun.

( Dinner with Katie Jones )

No fantastic discoveries, then, but all in all a very happy evening. And when we left Blackfriars, we discovered that short though the walk from our hotel had been, there was an even shorter way back: we just followed the city wall and it took us to the road crossing.

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/682668.html

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News from Nowhere

Entries tagged with wine

Days of future past

Eating out

Where was I...?

Winter songs

To boldly go...

Black fruit season

A keepsake and a kiss

I'm sorry, I'll read that again

Bread and wine

A week of celebrations

Many things

Stings

What do five things make?

Seasonal catering

Shopping update

Spring is here, spring is here ...

The rising of the sun, and the running of the deer ...

Rain, mist, frost and an inordinate quantity of cheese

Five things make a week in autumn

Along came Jones