A rather amusing thing happened to me this morning after I got up allowing myself the luxury of a small (half an hour) sleep in. The day before, my son and I successfully installed a new seat on our downstairs loo but I had not at that stage disposed of the cardboard packing in which it came. When I read the advertised qualities of the toilet seat, the most important thing that the manufacturers seemed fit to inform us was that it was made of inflammable materials and was guaranteed to resist even the fiercest of flames. Now toilet seats come with a variety of features and this particular one is one of the designs which closes silently and slowly after use but if I were to be in the market place again for a toilet seat, its inflammable qualities would be the farthest from my mind. As have indulged myself in the last week or so with some new cookware, I knew that the time had come for a good sort out of the pans that I possess because some that not been used for in the last year were surely destined for the charity shop. In the event, I did discover about three for which I no longer had a use and so these will be donated to the Salvation Army (who, I believe, are always on the lookout for both cooking and bedding materials). I did look at some old favourites, though, including a rather original tall sided sauce pan sold at the time in the John Lewis store. I say sauce pan deliberately because I think it was designed and sold with this in mind. The internet informs me that such pans are characterised by high, straight sides (forming a 90-degree angle with the base) and a long handle. They minimise moisture evaporation and are ideal for simmering liquids, boiling, and making dense or reducing sauces. Over the years, I have found this pan to be particularly useful when preparing a small quantity of vegetables as the tall straight sides means that it is always guaranteed not to boil over and the contents can be observed at a glance, so this one was preserved. I also discovered a smallish ‘Masterclass’ frying pan, the interior of which looked to be in fine condition but there were some burnt on marks on the outside which can be removed (so I read) using my ‘Barkeepers Friend’ powder (a weak oxalic acid). I think that from now on, I shall adopt the policy that I do with clothing of a policy of ‘one in, one out’ so that one does not acquire an accumulations of items that are never going to be actually used. I thought would scope out the rest of the week so that I could plan one or two outdoor jobs, of which the most important is the final grass mow of the season. I consulted a weather app on the BBC for the days ahead and we can expect a high pressure system for a few days in which it will be a little breezier but it will still be largely dry with variable low cloud and sunny breaks. So I shall probably timetable my grass mowing for the later part of the week but the high point of the week will be Wednesday which is when the counts from the USA mid-term elections will start to roll in and these may well be actual counts rather than just exit polls. The night before on the TV, there was an excellent account of the later part of the life of Shakespeare and is common with many other writers, the content matter is often associated with their own biography. So, for example, the traumas exhibited in King Lear (contretemps with his two daughters) may well have been a reflection of the turmoil that Shakespeare felt when he returned to Stratford from his sojourn in London, experiencing some guilt to having abandoned his wife and daughters whilst he pursued his own career in London. Some actors commenting on Shakespeare made the wry observation that this conflict between professional and domestic life had affected them as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After quite a delayed start this morning as I had been busy sorting out my pans, I popped into town, picked up my newspaper and then had a Waitrose<\/em> ‘free’ coffee. Then I made my way to the Salvation Army shop where I handed in my old saucepans and also a pair of practically brand new Hotter shoes which had belonged to Meg. I must admit it caused a few pangs of the heart to see these again in a very pretty mauve and I can remember Meg wearing them. Once I returned home, I set about preparing my midday meal which took a long longer than usual as I prepared a swede and carrot mash to accompany my shoulder of pork. Now that I have rationalised my cookware sections in the kitchen, I am resolved to keep all of my regular pans in the same positions so that I can put my hands on what I need speedily. I did spend a certain amount of time renovating a mid-to-high range 20cm frying pan where I tackled some of the burnt on stains on the exterior with a paste of BarKeepers friend (which is actually oxalic acid and almost universally praised) I looked on Amazon for something else and it told me that I had purchased this item about 7 years ago. It received good reviews then, no doubt due to a heavy thick aluminium base and what the makers claimed at the time was a superior form of Teflon coating, I found a spare lid which is pretty near to an exact fit nd I discovered with some satisfaction that it fries eggs without the need for basting. I think the addition of the lid traps some available steam (for a standard large egg, this means roughly 38 grams – or over 75% of its total weight- is pure water, which is why eggs add significant moisture to baking and cooking recipes) and this must cook the egg from the top down as well as the normal bottom up. Whilst I was in the supermarket having my coffee, I browsed through my copy of the newspaper to read two things I found gladdening. The first of these is that the Milburn review of Neets (Not in Education or employment \u00a0or further training) has been impressed by the approach taken in Holland where their approaches to this problem have resulted in a rate that is only one third of the UK rate. The other item that caught my attention was a calculation of the economic benefit that migrants bring to the British economy as their younger age structure means that the contributions they make via tax and national insurance outweigh the small demands that they make in pensions and age-related health issues. When Theresa May was presented with a similar report some years ago, to her shame she demanded that it be re-written and any positive contributions that the migrant community make should be downplayed or even removed altogether from the report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A rather amusing thing happened to me this morning after I got up allowing myself the luxury of a small (half an hour) sleep in. The day before, my son and I successfully installed a new seat on our downstairs loo but I had not at that stage disposed of the cardboard packing in which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8697,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8696\/revisions\/8697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}