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

- apologies to Blur and the Mamas and Papas for blending their lyrics.


So, in deference to your struggling through previous journals about shopping and vegan cooking, I thought I should balance the books a bit and bring you the Traditional Sunday Roast entry.

Back peddle a little bit to recap on the fact that we have a freezer full of produce. So we need to consider the evening before, what takes our fancy for the best meal of the week. (Well, probably.) Once this is decided, a decent joint is laid out to thaw overnight, carefully covered and on a drip proof plate. This week it's a piece of lamb. In the words of the advertisement, this is 'Not Just Lamb', this is free range, Staffordshire Moorland lamb. Basically, if you had to buy it as a single piece you'd be shocked by the price, but due to the fact that we shop in a very sensible place, with local butchers who buy direct from the farmers we get incredible value for money. Add to that the quality of the finished meat and we're doubly well satisfied.

A whole lamb will last for a year, and makes perfect sense if you have room in your garage for a chest freezer. Also, the welfare of the animal is paramount to me, I'd be totally vegetarian these days if I had to eat meat from those factory type farms. And as a resident of a rural area, I feel I should contribute to the local economy as well. Last year's lamb was produced in a farm from this actual village. *end rant*

So, how it goes is this. Dad gets up, makes himself some porridge and then starts preparing the vegetables. So when I stumble downstairs eager for coffee, the potatoes and so on are peeled and ready to go. We have a great many vegetables with our roast, depending on the season and our preference. (Dad is a star, he's going to be ninety in February.)

He also goes outside and cuts some fresh rosemary, for the lamb, or sage if it's pork. My tiny job in all this is to put the roast in the oven at the allotted time. I might bake a cake or make a pudding, but this week my mum did that. I was struggling with the Front Page of h2g2.

Then we all have another 'rest' and watch Countryfile on TV later on, with some homemade cake and a cup of tea. Although this week for a crazy reason - ie no good reason whatsoever - we had mince pies. Disappointing to be honest. Even the no good reason whatsoever was too far-fetched a reason to eat them this early in the year.

No defences are needed, Lanzababy! I enjoy reading your journals and I am sure that goes for all your other readers as well

Your journals take me back and make me think of family life in all the homes I have shared over the decades. Dear Bob, some of the same "rituals" were even practiced in the different communes I lived in!

Others however not so much

I never knew you lived in a commune? Do tell!

There's nothing much to tell, really. As a young student I moved in with a few comrades. We rented a small cottage in the rural surroundings of Aarhus, Denmark's second largest town, where we studied at the local university and other schools.

Living together was cheaper - and practical too: We could take terms cooking, doing the laundry and such, thus freeing time for studying - and endless debates about about the revolution everybody was talking about back then.

In order to find out more about it we attended lectures on Marx, Lenin and Trotsky. If it wasn't raining. We were living in the countryside after all. And only had one car (a Ford from 1928), plus a moped and a couple of bicycles.

It did not last, but later I moved in with other guys and I'm glad I did. It taught me a lot about living together with people you weren't forced to live with (like parents and siblings.

Ah! I thought you meant it in the sense of "she went to California and joined a commune" ie the hippy sense.

I wish my Sunday had been good to me, but unfortuately Man City could not bring themselves in person to play at the Stadiium of Light yesterday and sent a very poor represtentation of the team instead . It could have been worse, I suppose, but not by much.

Seriously, when did Garcia make any positive contribution to the team? I really hope he's one of the first against the wall in the January transfer window.

"Ah! I thought you meant it in the sense of "she went to California and joined a commune" ie the hippy sense"

Oh, "that" happened also - not so much in the first commune, though. But in at least one of the others. Interesting really to look back on how different the communes actually were

We should have known - in Danish communes, everybody probably helps with the washing-up.

It's like what Marx said about the Germans. If they tried to have a revolution, and someone said, 'Occupy the train station,' they'd all buy a platform ticket first.

It has been suggested to keep Denmark as a kind of "working museum" after the revolution to show coming generations how depraved and perverted capitalism is - but I'm not sure it would be deterrent - at least not deterrent enough

[Amy P]

Nah, they'd just come for the butter.

That sounds like my kind of Sunday.

Deb

You don't have platform tickets in Germany.

Deb, you're not so far from me. We really should have a micro-meet

My supper tonight consisted of Chickpea Masala and Cabbage Potato Bhaji.
I rarely cook lamb, but I started to do it recently when I was trying to think of dishes that my father would like. The same goes for chowder. He loves chowder and seafood bisque -- always orders them when he's at a restaurant. I figured out how to thicken the broth by pureeing mushrooms and corn with a little water, then adding it to the milk and spices. The result is very tasty. I'm going to make fish chowder to bring to him this Thursday.

A chowder recipe? now that would be useful paulh.

As a guide entry? I'll consider it.

I remember platform tickets in Germany, TC. And the one armed veteran who sold them from his little ticket office (I do hope it was bigger on the inside because a small man he was not!)

In my childhood there were quite a few one-armed men. (Or maybe they just stood out because they were different? Or maybe just because there weren't many men left of certain ages?) Ticket sellers and collectors, postmen and the like. After two world wars there was an abundance of one-armed who were still willing and able to do some work - and luckily the authorities worked to help them settle back into society.

I don't like to think about the many unfortunates who didn't have these opportunities. The legless, the blind and the insane that Eric Bogle sings about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=471-ucVd7o0

In every bus there were seats reserved for "Kriegsbeschädigte" (people injured in war). We didn't think much about it, kids as we were. We did think a little about the atomic bombs though.

this sounds rather gloomy - but it is appropriate for November 11th to remember this