Chapter 1 ended with @theoldmortuary taking time out to enjoy an Easter Sunday Roast. Over the long weekend we had a dig around in food cupboards to see what ingredients we had to make celebratory food even though there are only two of us here.
Mincemeat was the most obvious make, using up dried fruits, marmalade, nuts and suet from Christmas. We had no Brandy so the mincemeat will have the flavour of Cuba.
More Dried fruit and a curiously large amount of ground almonds in the store cupboard lent itself very well to a recipe for Simnel Cake. A very traditional part of British Easter, but not in our house. The closest we had ever got to Simnel Cake was a special edition chocolate bar from Kernow Chocolate company last Easter.
https://www.kernowchocolate.co.uk/
Undeterred by inexperience Hannah set about making the cake and I learnt the sticky art of making home-made marzipan. We were pretty far through the process when we watched Mary Berry making one on TV. Mary appeared to be using shop bought Marzipan!!!! She also burnt her Apostles , the 11 marzipan balls on top, with a blow torch. As luck would have it we have a blow torch, of course we do.
I took before and after pictures just in case the whole blow torching thing went terribly wrong. It didn’t so here is our inaugural Simnel Cake in all its torched glory.
And here is the before shot which was a little more artistically staged.
Here is our main event, it sets the stage for what will be a rather meaty chapter.
Whilst we were enjoying the fruits of our labours, and those of unknown West Country vegetable farmers and a distant New Zealand sheep farmer, other roasty photographs were tumbling into my in box. The first a fabulous Bird Roast from Becky Reep who lives up the river from us in Cargreen.
Unexpectedly some fabulous Greek images came in while we were enjoying supper. Another work colleague from the Heart Hospital, Alayna Malamoutsi sent me this facebook message and photographs from last year’s Greek Orthodox Easter.
“In Greece they fast for 40days in lent. They break the fast Saturday night of Easter weekend with a goat Offal soup.
Then on the Sunday they spit roast a Lamb and the other meat in the photo is kokoretsi (which is offal wrapped round the spit with intestines).
Their Easter is also going according to their Greek Orthodox Calendar. So doesn’t fall at the same time as ours normally. ”
So much meat! Next week Pandemic Pondering#25 will be filled with lockdown Orthodox Easter feasts. It’s lovely to see a normal one with families close enough to hug.
Hugs are the thing I miss most currently.
Alaynas gorgeous lamb pictures lead me to Poland, although not actual Poland as our Polish relations in Poland couldn’t get what they needed for a modified lockdown feast. So no photo’s.
Our Polish pictures and a super tenuous link take us to Truro where Sam, Justyna and VV live. Justyna created Polish breakfast for them all including, Sheep shaped butter.
Less tenuous a link and to balance the somewhat meaty core of this blog, Sam’s sister Jenna and her boyfriend Charlie, isolating in Wimbledon, sent us this beautiful shot of Cinnamon Almond Lentil Stew.
I love it because it gives Chapter 2 such a beautiful full stop.
If Pandemic Pondering Chapter 1 or 2 have inspired you to hunt out or create any feast pictures, either Lockdown or past Real World feasts please email them to me julietcornell@gmail.com. Pandemic Pondering #25 will run until the end of Orthodox Easter next week. I am lacking Passover feasts at the moment.
In other news the cutlery drawer is tidy.
The dog walk/ permitted exercise took on a whole new shape today. We took a picnic and the delay gave us the chance to see nature just highlighted by a setting sun.
Finally some lovely texture randomly created by a pile of stuff actually in the old mortuary.
Painting the decking is a simple task, it usually takes me a day of moving stuff, cleaning, painting and moving stuff back. In normal times getting supplies is a simple matter of going to the local industrial estate to click and collect.We were fooled by two half full cans of our favourite decking paint in the shed. Two of them should have rung alarm bells but it didn’t. Given the luxury of time the deck painting this year has the added glamour of a borrowed power washer, a scrub with soap and some gentle moisturising.With two of us painting this was going to be simple. We would each start at opposite ends and meet in the middle.All went well, the sunshine was fabulous and we made good progress. The paint looked a little different from what we were painting over but we were confident of drying resolving any concerns. Drying did not present us with a gorgeous dark charcoal. More like the charcoal of a barbeque, multicoloured from white to black.The decking paint possibly from two different summers had not overwintered well. On reflection our decking takes a tin and a bit to give good coverage. We had used the partial left over tins left from two previous seasons. Loads of time made us hugely tolerant. We would just consider this an undercoat.In Britain DIY businesses are running click and collect services during the lock down so buying a new supply of our regular Decking Paint shouldn’t have been a problem. Well that was a rabbit hole I hadn’t expected to disappear down for quite so long.Locating the paint was easy enough on many sites but having it in my basket and purchasing it any time before Christmas proved to be impossible. It seemed a multi grey deck would be the look for us this year. To say nothing of the stern warnings about my frivolous purchase being way down on anyone’s delivery schedule. In the face of such opposition I gave up.Our town has one of those huge, cheap outlet stores for food and many other random things you didn’t know you needed. We were in there for some essentials when Charcoal decking paint from an unknown brand grabbed our attention.So cheap we couldn’t not buy it. Two tins so we could use the same technique of both painting at the same time. Not all Charcoals are the same, this one was quite a vivid, lively grey. Not our thing at all but needs must and we finished the job, same technique. When we met in the middle we matched. Then the internet got involved. What you need with grey decking apparently is a ‘ pop’ of vivid orange. Asking an artist for vivid opens up a world of tangerine/orange/ yellow/red or in our case some old theatre prop paint in fluorescent orange. Swifter than you can say Seedless Jaffa an old fruit box that we use as a garden coffee table was turned into a fluorescing creation of truly orange vibrancy.
In a heartbeat the decking was restocked with chairs for five people , the vibrating orange table and various planters. Not only that but the cheap out of town store had forced us to buy solar panel Christmas lights, so at night we twinkle,and like something from science fiction the fruit box glows.The simple job took 4 days …
Evolving Bookworms. I belong to a small bookgroup. We provide ourselves with book sets loaned by Cornwall Library Service, we’ve just read our last book issued before libraries closed their doors as part of Coronovirus. The system is pretty easy, groups choose a years worth of book sets from a list on the Library website. The sets are then delivered to our local library once a month. The system is not foolproof and we don’t always get a set that we selected but every month there is a set of books waiting for us at the library. Unexpected books have given us the opportunity to read something none of us would have chosen, we always have lively discussions regardless of how much the book was enjoyed.
theoldmortuary.design 