Film, shopping & an encounter with some food

On Friday the Championship season started.  This matters not a great deal to me with the exception that weekends are now planned around games for the next 10 months or so.  Away trips are planned in advance to maximise visits to family and friends as Mr follows the Canaries up hill and down dale.

So, I spent the evening with a friend, drinking sparkling Pinot Grigio and watching Gomorra, an italian film.  It's a very good film, a little violent in places, very funny in others.  I found the italian hard to follow because it is very fast, very accented and very Napolitan, but I tried!

On Saturday we went out to a reclamation place.  We needed a 'bit' for the bathroom door - the oblong cup bit which sits on the door jamb that the door latches into - and I knew this place sold them. They also sell bathrooms, fireplaces, finger-plates, locks, latches, statuary etc etc.  It's an amazing place!  Anyway I found what we need, £2.50, a bargain!

Then we went to Bungay and had fun in the antique shops.  I found a few paperbacks, one I thought was possibly a duplicate but couldn't be certains and at £1 it was worth buying in case I was wrong.  So if anyone wants a paperback of Sylvester by Georgette Heyer, let me know...

Then I found a very odd pudding boiler with a lid.  It's a bit like a tall bundt or kugelhopf tin, the kind that makes the cake with a hole in the middle to fill with something.  It's lovely and retro and goodness knows if I'll use it, but it's just FAB!

Then I had to make a lasagne because I'd been craving one for DAYS! 

Onto today, and a day at Louis' cafe and deli in Norwich, cooking with Stuart Oetzman of Metfield Bakery.  We played with a lot of pork and game, made a fab pork pie.  The squeamish should look away now...

We gutted pigeons and then skinned and gutted rabbits.  It was really rather visceral.  But I'm a meat-eater so them's the breaks. 

Anyway, the rabbit was braised, the pigeons roasted, and then we ate them and they were very delicious.  So, thanks to Stuart and his Mum, to Inga, Valerie and Ming, it was a brilliant day and the food was lovely.

And then it was Sherlock which was great, Benedict Cumberbatch FTW!  

Long time...

Oh August. How did that, what, where...

Busy few days lately. On Saturday I saw Inception. It's hugely enjoyable, hokey nonsense, but entertaining! Leonardo Di Caprio is pretty good - much better than I expected as I am not normally a fan, apart from Catch Me If You Can. I liked the effects, and the story reminded me slightly of the kind of thing William Gibson or Michael Marshall Smith might write (although MMS, now he writes mostly as Michael Marshall, doesn't do the 'Where do you want to go tomorrow?' thing anymore, which I loved - I like the other stuff, but I LOVE the MMS early stuff .)

Anyway, Inception. Yeah, it's good if you like shooty, sci-fi, madly complicated films! My companion asked me what was going on, I had to reply "I have absolutely no idea"! I think we kinda understood what had happened by the end, but I can't be sure.

Sunday saw a wedding anniversary party for some friends which was great fun - I made a HUGE cake (see above), it was a success and almost all got eaten or taken away to eat later. Oh pride, thou cometh before a fall. The following day's jam-making soon knocked me back down!

On Monday, first of all we went fruit hunting - finding a pick-your-own proved tricky. The first one didn't do it anymore, the second one was basically Brigadoon and was, despite the sign by the roadside, absolutely nowhere to be seen, the third one was closed, but they let us in anyway.

We picked 4lbs of raspberries and about 2lbs of gooseberries and I now have 9 pots of jam. The raspberry was a challenge, in my usual roller-coaster-y way, it started fine, turned into a disaster and finally settled into being edible and, ah, quite nice actually. It is not very firm, we jam-makers call this 'soft-set', ahem...

Gooseberry is setting now, I have a weird RSI thing going on from topping and tailing them. How does a green fruit produce a reddy-pink jam?