Frydmania

Back fill

It’s a gardening term, isn’t it?  You dig a trench, and move the soil back into it.  In this case, with Christmas around the virtual furrow, it’s time to back fill some more stories onto the blog, so that there’s something there for people to read when you eventually send them their Yuletide email.

Last year, after getting the laptop, I spent quite a chunk of time filling in the blanks of previous months’ activities, for that very purpose.  This time, I’m filling in the Spring-Summer Hiatus (ooh, there’s some sun out there…somewhere…I’ll not turn the computer on), which isn’t so daunting.  You never know, I might even get Dan to remind me how to add pictures again.

One of the features of this year is not so much back fill as tum fill.  We have started having weekend breakfast options, things to help you feel like you are actually resting, and that take longer to make and eat than you might make time for on a week day.  It feels very peaceful, anyway, building family traditions, that kind of thing.

I should probably add that various of the options have come out of Nigella Express.  But I would add that for some reason, reading about breakfast or brunch options in cookbooks is particularly restful.  One of my early memories of cookbooks for pleasure was managing to borrow an American one from somewhere, where it devoted large sections to the value of breakfast or brunch as a way to do relaxed entertaining.  It even had quotes about food items for breakfast, which your then very literary writer was particularly pleased about. 

Summer has brought in the partially frozen banana smoothie - an alternative to filling my freezer with bananas that have gone beyond eating point, without as much effort ask making a banana cake.  Now we’re back to central heating days, the main options are porridge or pancakes - Scotch pancakes, drop scones, you know the ones.

The porridge making started on our Easter holiday, staying in a cottage that had not been visited for a few months.  We needed to be warm AND we needed options for not consuming milk too quickly, being on an island.  Porridge fitted the bill very nicely, particularly with the discovery of adding brown sugar to the top. Crunch vs smoothness.  Even for a child brought up to believe that syrup was the real way ahead with porridge, this was a definite discovery.

We have also happily discovered that two people can indeed eat their way through a whole batch of pancakes for brunch, although if they have a guest staying, they will be polite enough to share.  We’ve even invested in a large silicon pancake flipper, when I realised the spatula I’d been using was threatening to become another flavour on the pancake.

Our particular tip is slightly acidic jams to offset the thicker pancake - apricot was particularly good, blackberry also worth considering.  Marmalade can be good, but not as good.  At least with a batch, you have plenty of opportunity to experiment on which toppings work. 

So, send in your brunch options, and we’ll even fork through a few, if they’re good.  Avoid overly eggy suggestions, or pass them straight to Dan, who has a better stomach for eggs than me. 

But more importantly, start a few food traditions of your own at the weekend, if you haven’t already.  Particularly ones that cause you to linger, and admire the day outside, the person sitting next to you, or simply the notion of slower food as a regular household blessing.

1 comment November 24th, 2008

Reading rats and book worms

Sometimes, a title comes to me, and I know I have to use it.  I’ll bung it down in the notebook, waiting for a point at which I can write about it.  And following a holiday to a house whose inhabitants love books just as much as Dan and I, it seems a suitable time.

A reading rat  - Leseratte - is the German equivalent to a bookworm.  It was featured on a set of postcards from the Goethe Institut - they know how to do their advertising, I have to say.  I sent it over to David, who is interested in German at the moment, and rediscovered it in a book, while we were over. 

Shame in a way to choose rats and worms for such things - here are these wonderful things, books, and our way to talk about people who like them is to relate them to animals which are often the source of fear or disgust.  My guess is that there’s probably some implied reference to devouring anything, which probably is true of serious book dependency after a while.

An alternative might be to talk about book fever - the illness that besets one when discovering just how addictive books are.  I’m not just talking ‘can’t put them down’ thrillers.  Even Enid Blyton can hit that craving button, when you are six or seven, and there just aren’t enough hours in the night to read.   Talk about reading yourself into an early pair of glasses, as I did.

They warn you about sweet shops, and fast food stores, but libraries are pushers too. Want one? Why not take six?  In fact, read three in the first day, take them back, and take out another six in addition to the ones you’ve not started yet.

This visit to Italy, both the older girls were getting stuck into books.  The younger of the two is into Geronimo Stilton, mouse detective, whom I can only hope will get translated into English at some point.  The cartoons that go with it are certainly fun. And I remember my discovery of Asterix at a previous age.  The one thing better than a really good read is the discovery that you’ve only just started the series, and that they are still writing more…

These days, it’s getting harder to let animal instinct take over when it comes to reading.  Time is shorter, and I find that I read several shorter things, rather than start a longer one and have to stop. 

I quite fancy the idea of being some kind of reading polar bear - take on enough books to see you through the winter, in the way that they take on enough food supplies to keep going, and then dig yourself into a nice snowdrift (or equivalent) for a few months.  If only they’d let you stay in bed to read during the winter, rather than going to work,  I’m sure we could all achieve fuel efficiency too, because we’d still be warm enough. 

If there’s any readers who can comment on what imagery is used for voracious book reading in other languages, would be interested to know. Next week, magazine locusts… 

Add comment November 24th, 2008