h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Mornin All

Breezy but dry and warmish.

Bicycles have been the order of the day up here, with the tomcat hurtling up and down the lane on his new one....then getting grounded for the day when he was spotted without his helmet on.

A dry beautiful morning is disappearing behind clouds. More DIY on the horizon before our friends and their kids arrive this afternoon. Frantic vacuuming later on!

[z]

[mags]

What fun to catch up with old friends, Eats and GDZ.

Amy, raw beetroot has the same texture as raw carrot but it's much much messier!

Bagpuss, that certainly does not seem long enough for the scheme to be trialled. Sounds like an easy excuse to scrap it to me.

I took a couple of snaps for David and Hypatia while I was wandering around the town where my car was being fixed. The world's first Carnegie Library:

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/EUysSdQIpImE09wKsnlSYQ?feat=directlink

and

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/-hWgqcFM7P01R957xN1rOQ?feat=directlink

Ben

How times have changed. Cycle helments came out when I was about 9, and I asked if I could have one because the school had shown us a scary videor.

My dad told me that 'bike helmets were for wimps with fussy parents, and made you look like an idiot!'

I'm really glad I didn't get a serious brain injury.

Roast beetroot is

Peel, cut into smaller bits if necessary, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle on some herbs and spices and a bit of balsamic vinegar. Roast in oven.

Lovely library building there, Ben.

No-one had helmets when I was a kid. Actually, I think wearing seatbelts came in in my living memory. Car seats for kids were a bit of a novelty too - we had them because my Dad likes nifty gadgets. They were deeply uncomfortable and had orange belts. My Dad recycled them for harnessing for various sailing doodaas later on. 'Course, he also bought a cot with _lead-free_ paint. Which is nice as the Star was using it up until a few months ago.

He he for David's new number.

Weather here is really muggy. Most unpleasant. I am weeding toys. It is astonishingly hard to throw out even the mankiest bit of chewed and incomplete plastic. My name is Solnushka and I am a (recovering) horder.

Borsche is good for beetroot. Boil some beef with the usual veg to make a stock. Add beetroot and boil that for a bit. Add a white cabbage and keep boiling. Fry some onions and tomatoes and grated carrots and add them. Vinegar and sugar help too. You serve it with sour cream and herbs like dill and parsley. It's nice and sweet.

I was thinking of Borsche. Prolly do that with the non-stripy ones. And roast them. And I've a good recipe somewhere for beetroot risotto. But I'm going to roast and pickle the striped beetroot.

We have an infinite amount of greens at the moment. Beetroot tops (which are like tough spinach) and kale, chard and lettuce from the Veg Box scheme.

So any ways of cooking spinach, kale and chard gratefully accepted. There are only so many Eggs Florentine I can eat, yummy though they are. (A non-fattening comfort-food, how rare is that?)

B

Spinach lasagna is a big hit around here. Even the steak-n-potatoes crowd doesn't seem to mind the absence of meat.

I do a mean veggie lasagne, a layer of spinach and lentils, another of tomato and red pepper sauche, and a final layer of creamy eggy cheesy calories. In fact, in one village do it was more popular than the generic meat lasagne.

Unfortunately Z is turning into a vegan and I'm not keen on pasta....

I keep on thinking of spinach and feta tart, spinach quiche, spinach and paneer, spinach and feta in filo pastry...

In fact, spinach is great with chick peas or with toasted pumpkin or sunflower seeds.

It's hard to think of a vegan pie filling though. I wonder if mashed-up tofu would work...

*reaches an arm up and takes the h out of the sauce*

Chard (AKA leaf beet) is lovely (and easy) to grow, especially the multi coloured varieties.
All of those will work in a risotto or steamed as a side dish to something else. If the leaves are very young and small they will work uncooked in a salad.

Spinach ravioli is yummy but a lot of work.

Spinach soup! One of my favourites!

Last time I made some, I didn't have any flour at home (carbs = nono) so here's what I did:

Butter or oil
Finely chopped shaliot or other leek/onion of your choice
When soft, add stock of your choice, bring to a boil
Then add spinach, whether fresh or frozen, lots of it
Once the spinach is completely dissolved, add a generous splash of double cream or the vegetarian alternative

Serve with hardboiled egg halves and sliced hotdog of your choice.

Ah yes, do not re-heat spinach dishes!

You could do a white sauce using soya milk rather than an egg topping for your lasagne. Still doesn't stop it having pasta, of course.

Must get that recipe from you. Sounds lovely and after a number of days eating through the lasagne I made earlier, I may never eat meat lasagne again. Why I didn't think to share it with the downstairs neighbours I don't know. Mind you, she's Polish and I am conditioned never to offer eastern europeans lasagne because of B's horror of it.

Actually, you could use a soya white sauce for a pie filling. A chicken and ham type thing rather than a quiche type thing of course. Without the chicken and ham, of course.

Spinach soup is very popular in our house. Well, actually it's a spinich and sorrel soup, but you can do without the sorrel if you add some lemon juice. I prefer it with salmon. You make the stock out of the heads and tails in the usual way. You cut some potatoes into chip like wedges and cook them in the stock. You then sweat down the spinach with some horseradish (the recipe thinks is should be fresh, but I use sauce. Mind you, it's Russian horseradish sauce which is more like preserved horseradish than actual sauce). You add that to the stock, with the lemon juice if no sorrel. When you want to eat it, you add a crumbled boiled egg, some poached salmon and some sour cream.

Actually, there's a cold version where you don't add potatoes and use kvas (sort of unalcoholic beer drink) instead of stock. That's for the fish version. B prefers it with beef stock. Obviously you can use veg stock and leave out the boiled egg for a vegan.

Actually that was a smlpost with Ti. Northern Europeans obviously agree about the boiled egg. Interesting.

Is anyone else's internet playing silly burgers at the moment?