I'm free, to do what I want, any old time

[venta]

One of these days, I fear I will be found dead in mysterious circumstances on a Monday morning and some CSI-style person is going to make a meal of the fact that the backs of my hands and wrists are covered with bruises and small abrasions.

Such things are, of course, the result of an all-day rapper practice on Saturday, followed by a rapper pub crawl on Saturday night. With the best will in the world, you end up with swords scraping over your knuckles and forearms and taking small chunks out.

But you know all about my rapper weekends... too much dancing, too much red wine, not enough sleep. So instead, I present some new culinary experiences from the weekend:

1. Christmas Pudding Cheese
OK, technically it isn't called that. It's a cheese called Bowland, which when packaged in plastic looks rather terrifying - dark brown and gnarled.

It's Lancashire cheese, mixed up with sultanas and cinnamon and regardless of how they market it, it's Christmas pudding cheese. I'm usually quite a big fan of cheese with fruit in (Wensleydale with apricots, or even better with ginger, is brilliant) but this was just too cakey for me.

I mean, I'm not against cake. I'm really quite in favour of cake. I just think if that was what you wanted, you'd be better off just eating cake. We speculated that it might make nice cheesecake.

I left the Bowland to the others and instead motored through the Swaledale-with-Old-Peculier, which was bloody fabulous

2. Haggis and Whisky Soup
For reasons that weren't immediately clear to everyone, Ang decided to make haggis and whisky soup for tea on Saturday. Her justification was that it's St Andrew's day next weekend.

Anyway, it basically consists of cooking potato and "neeps"[*] in stock, and cooking haggis separately. Then you crumble the haggis over the soup, and pour over whisky to taste.

I'm all for new culinary experiences, but I've met me and I was damn certain that the amount of whisky that would be to my taste would be exactly zero. So feeling like a proper fraud I asked for mine to have no whisky in it (it was served instead with a side-order of mild mockery).

Sadly, I then had to go and sit on the windowsill at the other side of the room because even sitting near people eating the whiskified version was making me feel queasy (it was Ardbeg, for people who care about such things).

Actually, the soup was pretty good anyway. I should try cooking haggis sometime.

[*] We settled on calling them neeps, because we had the perennial turnip/swede debate. I think turnips are white and swedes are yellow, but apparently that's the southern way round, which our northerly contigent grumbles violently has "taken over these days".

Comments

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

Free like a butterfly, free like a bee?

I had some fruitcakey cheese at a party a while ago, sounds similar if a bit more cheddary (and was delicious)! Never managed to find out where it could be procured, so I might have to check out Bowland.

[eniel]

A swede is a turnip, but a turnip is not a swede (since swedes are crosses between turnips and cabbages) :)
I also grew up calling swedes "rutabaga", and that it and Jerusalem artichokes were staples during WW2 in France. And I think you only get turnips in heraldry, not swedes.

That said, I think it's one of those cases where local tradition trumps classification!

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

...OK, how the heck do you know venta?

(Occasionally the way my 'separate' social circles all blend into one another starts to scare me)

[eniel]

I don't :) But she has so many interesting comments/posts/opinions (especially on food), I just had to friend her.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Hello! Thank you very much :)

I was also wondering how you knew me, and am relieved to hear that I haven't rudely forgotten you or something. Come on in - pull up a chair, and call the cat a bastard.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Also why are you not on my friends list? I thought you just didn't ever post, or something!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well! I was going to say "no kudo", but it turns out to be "yes kudo" and you have a better memory for weird middle-eights than I do. Nice to be free, nice to be free.

The Bowland I was eating came from an Asda somewhere on the outskirts of Oxford, so shouldn't be very hard to track down I shouldn't think.

[venta.livejournal.com]

swedes are crosses between turnips and cabbages

They are? Really? I'd have believed that of - say - celeriac, but swedes don't look like the sort of vegetables born of consorting.

And yes, this was definitely a local terminology question, not a botanical one!

[zotz]

Reminds me of the time in Cambridge when I noticed that my boss had obvious fighting bruises up and down her forearms. I tactfully didn't mention it. Turned out she had a new boyfriend and she was going along to his kung-fu club.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

No, I just never post anything interesting :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Recently a friend told me that one of the perils of learning to fence as a teenager is that adults tactfully draw you to one side to ask if everything's all right at home ;)

[philipstorry.livejournal.com]

I must admit that even as a whisky advocate, I'm not sure I'd be putting Ardbeg into soup.
It's too robust, too forceful. It might be an interesting counterpoint, but I think something softer and more subtle would be better. (And with Ardbeg, a brick soaked in whisky counts as more subtle.)

Still, if everyone else enjoyed it, then practically I'm wrong. ;-)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Still, if everyone else enjoyed it, then practically I'm wrong. ;-)


... or, possibly, I just hang out with the sort of people who would in fact eat a brick if soaked in whisky :)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

To add further confusion, swede is the same species as rapeseed.
(Brassica have quite interesting genetics, and modes of expressing themselves…)

[rapperaddict.livejournal.com]

So while you were dancing with Boojum, you didn't, by any chance, work out how they do Sallyport did you....?

[venta.livejournal.com]

I tried! The trouble is, the answer is "everyone runs round in an individually crazy pattern". I know what 4 does (it's easy), and I can do 2 without thinking (but critically cannot do it if I do think, and cannot explain it to anyone else).

I've never managed to grasp an overall pattern, only my own bit, which makes it difficult. Ang will probably know what 1 and 3 do... so in theory you'd think it'd be fine.

In theory.

In practice, I suspect I can only do it from any position if the other four people are doing the right thing.