petermorwood

[petermorwood]

Let us know how it turns out, and yes please, post the recipe.

Currently got some honey-cured bacon and parsnip soup on the simmer! I was inspired to come up with my own recipe using @dduane and @petermorwood as a jumping off point.

Hopefully it's good enough to drop my copy of Good Omens in! If it turns out well I'll post a follow up with the recipe.

[petermorwood]

i want this sandwich to impregnate me

Sounds like the story prompt for a cheesy romantic sub-plot.

kill the shift manager in your brain

[petermorwood]

This was really good. Just poking the meat with a fork made it fall apart...

...and we needed two attempts before any of the shanks came out for their photo-op with a bone still in place.

The first two were so tender they came apart under their own weight as cleanly as a knife leaving its sheath, and the second two held together only with the assistance of a spoon underneath.

This one is DD's, presented as it came from the casserole.

We were surprised at how well the potatoes held together (maybe Not Stirring helped), and the baby carrots ha done their usual trick of absorbing flavours and becoming tiny tender taste-bombs.

This one is mine, garnished and coloured by the aforementioned home-made tracklements of hot / sweet pepper relish and hot / sweet pickled oranges.

Though not too hot - DD made them, so Worcester-sauce level rather than Tabasco or higher - their spiciness and especially their sharpness were a perfect foil to the rich, unctuous lamb, vegetables and gravy.

This is definitely one to make again, and I'm going to use the hay-box for the entire low-and-slow process, with the stove only for initial searing, softening etc.

Lamb shank is, as DD says, a cheap, tough cut of meat and its magic transformative ingredient is Time. At the end of the oven cooking that transformation had already happened, but by then it was a bit late for a rich, heavy meal so into the hay-box it went.

If not eating immediately, that's an excellent way to finish off or refine any dish like this, and will also keep it hot if eating later is just a few hours away.

For reference, the lamb went into the box at about 9:30 PM on Friday and came out at about 1:45 PM on Saturday (about 16 hours) and was still warm enough to eat right then if we'd wanted to, needing just 10 minutes on a low stove-top to fully re-heat.

Anything up to the 12-hour point and maybe more, it wouldn't have needed even that 10 minutes, with not a penny / cent on the power bill.

Finally, despite what we removed for yesterday's hearty lunch there's plenty left, so there's going to be another hearty lunch today.

:->

...So that was lunch. Lamb shank (that best of cheap meat cuts, except maybe for shin) braised low & slow, using this recipe from Fifteen Spatulas, for a couple of hours in the oven and then finished in the "hay box" overnight. Merely prodding it gently causes the meat to fall off the bone.

On the side: rice, chunky potatoes & carrots that were cooked in with the lamb, with some hot/sweet pepper jelly and hot and sweet pickled oranges on the side.

And now back to work. ...But wow, I love these dishes that can just be thrown together and then left to themselves to get on with things.

#food and drink #recipes #braised lamb shanks #cook low and slow #hay-box cooking #time as an ingredient

[petermorwood]

I posted about this - AND THE TEETH - a few years ago, here.

*****

Here are more magical portals, wall-tiles with built-in disposal slots...

...and one built into the back of a bathroom cabinet.

The first lot are old (pre-1960s and beyond) but these are current:

Just cut a hole in the drywall and put a cover on it.

"Years ago, medicine cabinets would have a slot cut in the back of them for used razor blades. You'd knock a hole in your wall, install your medicine cabinet over top it, and drop blades into your walls for years and years. This is a simple, efficient solution to the sometimes annoying problem of safe disposal of old blades. We decided to come up with a way to add a slot to your bathroom wall so worrying about used blades is a thing of the past, and add a great conversation piece to your bathroom!"

Unconcern for the future ain't just an old-time Boomer thing, and is ridiculous when you can buy blade banks...

...or even make one at home - mine is a Colman's Mustard tin painted in black and mustard yellow (surprise!) hazard stripes, with a slot cut in the lid.

Even back when blades-in-the-wall was a thing, there were novelty blade banks like these:

The elephant and donkey date to the 1936 US presidential election, but "I fed the frog / parted Toni's hair this morning" sound like euphemisms for who-knows-what bit of TMI.

*****

I've never seen razor-blade wall slots in the UK or Ireland. Maybe it's because I haven't been looking - at their simplest they look like a pen mark - but more likely it's because house-building techniques of that period were different to USA timber-framing and didn't leave this kind of space in the walls.

Modern plasterboard (drywall) construction would allow it, but the cartridge razor-blades used nowadays need a much bigger hole, which is far less out-of-sight / out-of-mind and also involve a wodge of plastic which people actually do sometimes think about.

Of course that might change with the return of old-style shaving using old-style blades, though I've been doing it for nearly 15 years and haven't yet felt a need to dispose of used blades through a hole into another dimension someone else's future.

*****

BTW, this old pic of my stuff includes a useful tip: if the shaving cream and the toothpaste are both in tubes, don't keep them on the same shelf, otherwise something inevitable will happen.

Trying to raise a lather with toothpaste is merely annoying. Trying to rinse away the lingering taste of mentholated lanolin soap is something else again. Even Listerine Classic took a while to get rid of it and that's been discontinued at least here, in favour of ridiculous sweet-shop flavours.

Still, with good soap and the right brush a gentleman can still start his morning with a Chubby and say so without embarrassment.

Yes, really.

Though that does rather depend on who he says it to...

I think an easy way to sum up american domestic architecture is that if you are remodeling and older bathroom you have to watch for razor blades in the walls

#razor blades #razor-blade disposal #use of wall space #traditional wet shaving

[petermorwood]

[petermorwood]

That's one of the prop Daleks from the 1966 film "Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.", NOT the 1965 film "Dr. Who and the Daleks". Those vertical slats around the gun / claw section only appeared on the Daleks in the later movie. (*)

Peter Cushing played Doctor Who, and the movie also featured Bernard Cribbens, who much much later played Wilf Mott in the new-version "Doctor Who" TV series.

AFAIK the white cat was not involved in either (or at least didn't get a mention in credits).

*****

(*) How do I know this?

Because I was a serious Dalek fan back then, so I Knew Stuff (which is apparently still cluttering up bits of memory) and even entered a competition which offered actual film-prop Daleks as prizes.

I didn't win one, which was a bit of a let-down, though my Dad was a bit concerned in case I did. After all, once you've got a full-sized prop Dalek, what can you do with it?

Indeed, where do you put it?

I remember my Mum suggested parking it alongside the sweetie counter in my Grandad's grocery shop; if a Dalek guarding the Dairy Milk, Mars Bars and crisps didn't bring in more sweet-buying customers, nothing would. Dad, however, pointed out that if it was as big as it seemed to be in photos, it would reduce the shopping space available for customers of any kind.

So in retrospect, not winning one was probably A Good Thing. :->

*****

With that memory awake again, I wonder what ultimate fate befell the prizes, which would now be serious collector's Items.

Also, what about the Dalek in that photo: is it a DIY repro (commercial repros look much slicker) or a movie original?

I bet the cat doesn't care, just that the seat is comfy.

#caturday #Daleks #Doctor Who films #nostalgia

[petermorwood]

That reminds me, it's been a while since I made a really hot curry.

[petermorwood]

Memories of one particular year in primary school where my class had not one but two swots, and when a question was asked to which they knew the answer, their hands went up so fast there was a pair of small sonic booms.

Those were followed by a duet of "Miss! Miss! I know, Miss! Pick me, Miss!" which always sounded like enthusiastic deflating tyres, accompanied by jiggling and bouncing in their seats as if those hands were up for another far more urgent reason.

That's a memory which has stuck for...

Good grief, almost 60 years.

Sheesh. :-P

#caturday #I know miss #nostalgia #neuralgia #school swot

[petermorwood]

This is the cat Thor tried to lift...

...unaware it was in fact Jormungandr the Midgard Serpent and not just a giant cat doing The Thing.

Or indeed a Skogkatt doing Ðe Þing.

#caturday #thor and the cat #midgard serpent #jormungandr

[petermorwood]

This is your 07:30 alarm call, with optional snooze function.

We also offer our 07:40 alarm claw, (snooze function not available on this setting).

Wake up

[petermorwood]

Yup; swearing first (fuurst?), asking nicely second.

[petermorwood]

Black is the new orange...

[petermorwood]

Looks like this happens often enough for the kitten to get used to it.

“My time has come”

[petermorwood]

Bringing the image to life; it's odd how incomplete a cat looks without whiskers.

[petermorwood]

Previously on "Cats Jumping"...

The orange kitty presented...

[petermorwood]

There's another "cat jump" video where, after the tape reaches a certain height, the cat essentially says "Sod this for a game of soldiers", bites through a lower one and goes on its merry way with minimal effort. 

Cats are smart - they just don't often show how smart they are, which is another indication of being smart... :->

How high can a cat jump?

[petermorwood]

If there's something in it for the cat, a cat can be very obliging. :->

Very smart and talented little cow