The evening before last was devoted to ‘Last Night at the Proms’ which is always somewhat nostalgic as it seems to mark the very end of the summer. Given that it is 250 years since the Declaration of American Independence, there has been a heavy US theme to this years music and the ‘Last Night’ was no exception. A tribute was paid to Dolly Parton which was wholly appropriate given her recent death and her impact upon modern American folk music. As they did last year, the organisers were anxious to include contributions from each of the nations of the UK and so we got the two verses of ‘Danny Boy’ Now the first of these is very well known but the second hardly known at all as it is a call from the grave to those left behind. After last year’s Prom where I learned about this for the first time, I have committed this second verse to memory and recite it each day before Meg’s little memorial in our Music Room so the rendition of it at the Proms was somewhat poignant for me as one might imagine. I had devoted some time in the evening before resurrecting my soup making skills, enhanced by the soup-maker which I have not used in the hot summer months. I thought I would start off with carrot and coriander so I had already purchased a big bag of carrots. The recipe I decided to follow in my ‘Soups’ book called for 1.2kg of carrots so I prepared these together with an onion which I then parboiled. But then I realised that this was far too much for one filling of the soup-maker, so I ended up doing it in two batches which suited the ‘maximum’ line on the soup-maker. The recipe called for the addition of some creme fraiche and, naturally, some coriander. Although I had bought some fresh coriander with the soup-making in mind, I was not convinced that this would provide enough across the two batches so I raided my store of herbs and found some coriander seeds, some of which I ground up in a mortar and pestle. For my supper in the evening, I took about a third of the total and then heated it up in a saucepan adding the coriander and the creme fraiche at the end which seemed to be the right thing to do. The overall result was quite pleasing and I enjoyed it, although there is a certain amount of clearing up to do. Now I have two jugs of soup in the fridge, one of which I will have as part of my Sunday lunch and the other during the week. I needed a bit more creme fraiche than I had bought but I had substituted sour cream anyway. I wondered whether I could extend this with some plain Greek yogurt so I consulted the web and soon found out this was quite a sensible thing to do as the two products have a similar consistency and tangy flavour and the suggestion was to combine them in a 1:1 ratio which is actually what I had already done. This information is useful to me as I will probably use this combination a lot in my soup-making activities in the weeks ahead. I have already decided that next Saturday will be devoted to a parsnip soup which I will enhance with a bit of curry powder. Again, the web tells me that this is quite a common addition to the preparation of parsnip soup so that I will do. The week after that, I will devote to a winter vegetables chunky soup (swede, carrot, parsnip, potato) and then for the week after that, I will try and emulate what my daughter-in-law was excellent at making and that is pumpkin soup. I know that a little tip is to use coconut milk which adds natural creaminess, rich body, and a subtle sweetness to soups, making it a great dairy-free substitute and I happen to have some stock in any case. I am running short of glass containers for my excess soups and I have an aversion to storing this in plastic lest the subtle flavour gets impaired so next time I am in a charity shop and see some glassware jugs or containers, I will enhance my stock of them.
After church this morning and delighted that the Parish centre was open again for teas and coffees, I spent a pleasant 20 minutes or so chatting with a young mother together with her husband and 15-month-old child. I can remember the child as a babe in arms so not very long ago but the child was now of the age where he could make a few tentative steps from the arms of his father towards his mother. I quite like talking to the younger members of the congregation as otherwise I would only be speaking with members of my own generation for the rest of the week. Then I went and picked up my copy of the Sunday newspaper, got the car washed and then set about doing quite a lot of cooking for a post-birthday Sunday lunch with my American friend who has not been very well of late. I was cooking some sweet potatoes which after par-boiling and roasting, I then mashed up with some butter and sour cream before serving this veg up with some sprouts to accompany the gammon joint that had been slow cooking in the slow cooker. We seemed to have a mountain of washing up to do but fortunately this was a task shared between the two of us. After lunch, we engaged in watching some episodes of ‘Downton Abbey’ (my friend’s choice). When it came to my choice of viewing, we watches the last two episodes of ‘Pilgrimage’ where a diverse group of seven (including two Muslims, one of Jewish faith, a Catholic, a convinced Christian and a couple of agnostics) Although a little formulaic in the way in which the programme is constructed, the Pilgrimage route chosen was one of the Camino de Santiago trails that started in Austria and trailed through Switzerland. My friend and I found the programme to be quite inspirational and totally appropriate to a Sunday when it was originally transmitted. As well as a physical journey (which can be pretty arduous upon occasions) the group members explored their feelings about faith and by the nature of the programme, the journey was a journey in self realisation and self exploration in which the group members learn a lot from their each other until their pilgrimage has to end after twelve days. After my friend had returned home, I got the excellent news that one of my great nieces had successfully completed the required half marathon in the ‘Great North Run’ She had been in training for this and although approaching the total distance in training had never actually run this distance before until this morning’s achievement. She was being sponsored for a lung charity but I need to ensure that my sponsorship money gets winged over in the next day or so.