For the last few days I’ve been pounding my fingers to the bone and suffering all sorts of vision problems because I’ve been at my computer transferring all my old blogs from Myspace to here. Now, with a simple click of your mouse button you can switch over to my old blogs.
Just click the link in the Blogroll window on the left and by the magic of the internet you’ll be taken there as fast as your connection can do it.
Hope you enjoy it.
A bit of catching up to do here, been distracted by a few things recently including power cuts and storms that dampen the enthusiasm a bit. One of the things I like about the weather here is that it will rain like hell for a few days then clear up and be sunny and warm(ish). Today started well but it looks as though some rain is going to arrive before long.
A while ago I got a little Sony Vaio computer, a bit like a net book but not, if you see what I mean. Well now I have my Samsung smart phone I can get emails and access the internet anywhere there is a mobile phone signal so I was wondering what to do with the Vaio. Then I had an idea and hooked it up to my guitar amplifier and accessed BBC Radio 2, now I am sitting here having the delight of listening to Terry Wogan. Some may not be as delighted as me.
Three weeks ago I harvested the olives, I have two trees but only one had olives in it, the other one is too small yet. I got 1.6kg off it and asked Suleyman’s wife Hatice how to prepare them to be edible. I tried one once straight off the tree and nearly made myself sick. So they are now marinading in salt and with another couple of changes of salt to come they should be ready in another six weeks or so. That’ll save me buying any this year.
My New Year’s resolution this year is to take more photographs so I had a drive down to Buyuk Çakıl (Big Pebble) beach to take a few. It looks quite inviting but the water was pretty cold, a couple of the bars/restaurants were open though. Afterwards I went over to the other side of the town to the theatre.
I’ve been told that I shouldn’t call it an amphitheatre because they are completely round and the semi-circular type are correctly called theatres, I didn’t know that. Well ours has had some restoration work done on it since I last saw it, a few people were very upset and disappointed to see concrete in the restoration and let the world know about it too. Personally I don’t think it looks that bad, at least they used white concrete which fits in with the rest of the colour and at least it’s safe from falling down and hurting someone. Actually I doubt many people would even realise it was concrete.
Yesterday I made a couple of cakes, banana and yoghurt. The flour looked a bit unusual and upon inspection it turns out that I should pay more attention when I pick up things in shops because it wasn’t ordinary flour but wholemeal. Both cakes turned out well although with a bit more of a texture than they would normally have. Actually I think I like it more but I need an independent tester to check them out for me before I rewrite the recipe, any volunteers?
I now have a 6.67kg turkey sitting proudly on the bottom shelf of my fridge. Whatever possessed me to buy it instead of a reasonably sized chicken I have no idea, I hadn’t been drinking, it just seemed like a good idea at the time. So that explains why I have spent this morning perusing all the cooking websites I can find in the quest for hints, tips and recipes for cooking the bird. Delia Smith’s advice was first on my list but since then I’ve looked at two dozen other sites at least. The basic cooking instructions are fairly straight forward, I’m pretty sure I can cope with that but I would like to put a stamp of individualism on it if I can, you know, a little personal twist that says “I prepared the meal”. I’ve come up with a few ideas involving the addition of fresh fruit and the like so we’ll see how it turns out.
To everyone who reads this I wish you all a Happy Christmas or the equivalent seasonal wishes in your own religion.
One of the things I like about being here is that we don’t get too much food imported from all around the globe all year round so the different seasons bring different foods. At the moment quince and green apples are in abundance so I decided to make some quince chutney. I made some a few years ago and it lasted for two years but I made a few changes to this year’s batch. This is a great addition to meat or cheese sandwiches and goes well with roast chicken and most curries too.
This is how to make it:
Ingredients:
2½ kilos of quince finely diced or coarsely grated.
700g of soft light brown sugar (Esmer Tozu Şeker)
1 level teaspoon (tsp) Cumin seeds.
2 heaped tsp Coriander seeds.
12 Cardamom pods.
1 level tsp Cayenne pepper (Tatli Kirmizi Biber).
1 level tsp ground Turmeric.
110g fresh root Ginger (Zencefil) peeled and grated.
1 level tsp ground Cloves
800ml Vinegar.
8 cloves of Garlic peeled and crushed with 2 tsp Salt.
2 Spanish type onions finely chopped.
Notes:
I prefer my chutney to be more finely cut so I use a coarse grater on the quince rather than chopping it.
You can use malt vinegar if you like, I prefer to use apple vinegar but experiment with others if you wish.
If you chop the garlic then mix it with the salt and crush it with the side of a big knife it makes a paste which blends into the mix well and doesn’t cause any exciting surprises.
You could use the same recipe but substitute green tomatoes for quince.
This picture shows the mixture at the start of the simmering process.
Day One:
Peel and grate/chop the quince. Put in a large bowl with the sugar and turn to distribute and mix it all well. Cover with clingfilm and leave in the fridge overnight.
Day 2:
Preheat a small frying pan and dry roast the cumin, coriander and cardamom. Crush or grind and put into a large preserving pan or saucepan add the quince and bring to a gentle simmer and let it simmer for 3 hours stirring from time to time. The liquid will turn to a thickish syrup. Remove from the heat and let it cool for 15 minutes or so then ladle into warm sterilised jars. Leave in a cool place for 8 weeks minimum.
Had another visit to the Greek island of Meis the other day, a lovely little harbour with a villagey feel to it on an equally lovely little island. I was a bit disappointed that the duty free shop had no brandy so I had to make do with a bottle of Glenfiddich single malt whiskey, poor me! As usual I also got two 400g bars of Cadburys Whole Nut chocolate.
When the Meis fishermen bring some fish back the restaurant owners usually clean them on the harbour side, I was going to say harbour wall but there is no wall, the road just stops and the water is next, you can easily take a wrong step and get very wet if you’re not careful. Well this day Angelos was cleaning and filleting a big fish and throwing the innards and spine into the water. I have often seen a big turtle swim up and eat the bits but this day two of them came and started to push each other out of the way to get the bits of fish. It was quite a startling sight to see the two of them performing all sorts of diving, wheeling and flying right next to where I was standing, like an aquatic ballet in three dimensions. I hadn’t taken my good camera with me so these photographs are only from my phone camera, apologies for the quality.
Yesterday I woke up to grey skies and later it started raining. A steady rain fell for most of the afternoon and a friend told me that the forecast was for it to continue for about three days. Well I’m glad to say the forecasters got it wrong, at least until 10.00 today when I’m posting this. It was a lovely morning today so I went up to the top of the ridge behind my house to photograph the valley. Here is one of the shots that I took showing most of the village, my house is at the bottom in the middle with the green roof. The last time I took a photo like this you could see all of the house and my car park but the trees have grown a lot since then.
Well here’s another sky photo just to show that is not all sun, sea, etc etc. The weather is bad sometimes.
Not technically a great photograph but all I could manage at the time.
This time of year we get some really interesting skies, I’m lucky being on my side of the valley because I get to see what’s happening for a hundred miles or so to the west of here. This is tonight’s show, tweaked a little bit to give it a bit more drama but essentially the same as it looked in real life.
Just got back from a ten day trip to France. I went to a place called Les Sables d’Olonne on the west coast in the Vendee region.
One of its claims to fame is that it is where the Vendée Glöbe round the world yacht race starts and finishes, it is also a place I visited nearly 20 years ago so it was interesting and a bit nostalgic to see a couple of the places that I’d been before, particularly a little white wall around the Puit D’Enfer car park that I had misjudged and ran into head on with my Jaguar XJ6, luckily I was parking and only going at a snail’s pace and it takes a lot more than that to upset a Jag, no harm was done to protagonist or defender.
Of course the intervening years have seen a lot more building going on but mostly in areas surrounding the town and the sea front area remains unspoilt to a large extent. The weather was cooler than Kas which helped me get over some sort of infection that I picked up in an airport or plane on the way and dampened my spirit a little bit for the first few days. I don’t really like travelling unless it can be by boat, car or motor cycle, I like being in other places and I really like flying but by air it’s a bit of a chore to have to get to airports and go through the rigmarole of queueing and waiting, check-in and waiting, baggage claim and waiting, immigration and waiting. To be honest I think I’ve had enough of it, I wonder how much it would cost to learn to fly and buy or hire my own aeroplane, no check-ins, no baggage claim, no worry about baggage being in Timbuktoo when I’m somewhere else. Wouldn’t that be fun? I’ll have to win the lottery first though. There’s the other option of going by train of course, I may well investigate it.
One of the attractions of the area is the Motor Car Museum with cars and motorcycles through the ages on display. A lot of the old French cars have the steering wheel on the right which would lead you to believe that they drove on the left like we do in UK.
Back in those days it is unlikely that there were many roads with markings and a tarmac surface so it is more likely that they just drove down the middle and moved over to allow room to pass each other.
There is another theory that has to do with travelling on horseback when men carried swords, you would have to be on the right of each other to be able to have a sword fight on horseback and the tradition of being on the left of the road was continued.
This car above was made in 1934 and as late as that they were still making right hand drive models! Whatever the reason for it, a construction regulation eventually put an end to the right-hand drive models in France and the rest of mainland Europe.
British bikes were exported to France too, here’s a nice Velocette.
I’ll post more about this trip in the next few days.
For the past few years my sleep at night has been disturbed by my cat Stanley. He lies around the house most of the day and only stirs himself to stroll the few paces to the food and water bowls to keep body and soul together. Yes, I believe animals have souls, how could they give us so much pleasure if they didn’t?
Stanley likes to have a big feed at about two in the morning and then go out to check on what’s happening in the garden. To go out someone has had to let him out of the window, me. Then about two hours later, after he has chased all the little furry and scaly creatures back into their hiding place and maybe had a bit of a fight with another cat (the black and white murderer) he jumps up and hangs onto the window frame and scratches at the window to be let back in, me again. Well I was telling a lady friend about this and she said that she had fitted a new cat flap because her cat was bringing his friends in through the old one that didn’t discriminate and let all and sundry in. The new cat flap had a device that recognised a device on the cat’s collar and kept gate crashers out. Would I like to have the old one, she asked. What a nice offer I thought and said yes please.
The cat flap has been installed in the door at the front leading onto the patio and Stanley is slowly getting used to it. He doesn’t mind coming into the house through it from outside but going out through it seems to give him trouble. He sits and bats the flap for about ten minutes with his paw trying to make up his mind or gather the courage to push his way through it. The flap itself is transparent so he can see if there is anything scary hanging around outside waiting to pounce on him but he still goes through this routine. He was doing it the other day and I happened to have my new phone handy, it has a camera and I snapped him. Here he is:
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