Quick update

I know you all are looking forward to exciting posts, but I have to say that there's not much exciting stuff going on here. Mostly we have been painting the walls of the new wwoof cottage and raking leaves off the lawn. Today Josh and I walked into Bungay to visit the Indian restaurant. On Fridays we go for at drink at a really nice pub in Broome, which has a fine and regularly rotating selection of Real Ales. Norfolk and Suffolk have good breweries and we are rapidly drinking our way through their offerings. Best thing I've had so far: Adnam's 1 Year Old Tally Ho! Josh likes the Elgood Black Dog Mild and the Adnam's Broadside. Can you get these beers in the states? No idea, but I would say they are worth looking for.

This week we will hopefully be getting into the hall's Victorian walled garden. Our host wants it up and running to supply veggies and fruit to the household. There are a bunch of undesirable fruit trees that need to be taken out so better varieties can be put in. Also, there is a 70 foot pine tree in the middle of the garden that was planted by the Colonel when he was but a wee lad. This is apparently controversial, but everyone but the Colonel believes that a giant tree is not the appropriate thing to have in this particular location. Getting it out will be a difficult task, as the tree is taller than the garden walls are wide. Jimmy, the one armed tree pirate, however, is expected to rectify the situation with as little damage as possible.

Theoretically, at least, this week will also see the return of our host Vaughn, the intrepid journalist, from Afghanistan, where he's been tromping around Khandahar Province with his old regiment, the Grenadier Guards. Incidentally, these are also the dudes who guard Buckingham Palace in the big fur hats. No, they do not wear them in the desert (sorry).

Thoughts for future posts (in no particular order):

1. Chinese water deer (they have FANGS.)

2. Bungay, Diss, and Beccles

3. Moroccan pot roast

A Good Pud'

I say pudding and you think of chocolate mousse. A Brit says pudding and thinks of any number of possible desserts. These range from the familiar fruit pies to the questionable spotted dick. We've eaten some spectacular puddings in the last month or so (I'm looking in the direction of Diane's flatmate, Margaret) and I feel the need to share a bit of the joy with you.

[Also, to demonstrate the level of obsession with dessert here, let me offer up the example of a certain booklet entitled "Suffolk Cooking: A Collection of Favourite Recipes," which I found on the bookshelf here. There are 10 pages dedicated to meat and poultry, fish, and cheese and egg dishes and close to 30 pages entirely about dessert. Seems a bit out of balance, if you ask me.]

1. First, let me introduce something I made last week. I wanted to make carrot cake, but instead of carrots, only discovered an over abundance of parsnips in the pantry. Rather than forgo baking, I looked up an Alton Brown recipe from the episode about getting children to eat more vegetables by sneaking them into baked goods. You can watch them on youtube or just follow the third link right to the recipe.

Undercover Veggies Part One

Undercover Veggies Part Two

Foodnetwork.com Recipe (It's for muffins, but I just stuck the batter in a loaf pan and baked it for about an hour. After all, muffins are just tiny versions of quick breads.)

If the idea of eating parsnip bread/muffins doesn't appeal to you, do what I did, and rename the thing Breakfast Cake. It'll be eaten before you know it.

2. Now on to panna cotta, which is Italian and not British, but this is my pudding post, so I can post what I want. We ate panna cotta several times while in Italy, but I'm pretty sure that each time we had it, it was from an instant box mix. This is a pity, because it turns out that panna cotta is really, really easy to make. It takes about 15 minutes to assemble and 2-4 hours to cool and solidify.

The Perfect Panna Cotta Recipe

I served this for pudding with two sauces:

My Mother's Chocolate Sauce

4oz dark baking chocolate

2-3 tablespoons water

In a small sauce pan over low heat, melt the chocolate with the water until it is a nice, smooth consistency. Add a little sugar if the darkness is too scary for you.

Mixed Berry Sauce

2 cups mixed frozen berries (or fresh, but this is a sauce you'll want to make more than just in the summer)

1 orange, juiced

3 tablespoons white sugar

Mix all the ingredients together in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Simmer gently until the fruit starts to break apart and the liquid thickens a bit.

3. Finally, something that's actually British. Matt, our fellow wwoofer, made this delicious horror for us a few days ago. I say horror, because it really just amounts to fatty, sugary flour that's been nuked in the microwave. I know that's a terrible way to sell this thing, but if you understood the UK's national obsession with dessert, you would know why this kind of thing is so appealing to them. It tasted awesome, I'll give him that. But afterwards it sat in my stomach like the unhealthy lump of pudding that it was.

Steamed Pudding

4oz suet (butter will probably suffice)

4oz sugar

4 eggs, beaten

8oz all purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

2 oz golden syrup (or jam)

Place the syrup in the bottom of a microwavable bowl. Whisk all the other ingredients together until they are smooth. Carefully pour the batter over the syrup. Cover the bowl with cling film. Microwave on high for 4-5 minutes. Let the thing rest for a few minutes before up-ending into a bowl. This is traditionally served with custard, which we made following the recipe in Jaime Oliver's Cook with Jaime.

Goings on at Ellingham Hall

We spent most of the week painting the inside walls of a cottage that will be the wwoof residence at the farm. Several months ago, when the previous tenet left, it was thought that it would take less than a week to clean it out and move in the wwoofers. Once the farm manager got a good look at the place however, he realized that the wallpaper had to go. There is still some left, hiding out in a closet upstairs, so Josh and I have seen first hand how hideous the stuff is. Imagine a piece of uncooked tripe. Now imagine it in various shades of purple. That's what the wallpaper looks like: bumpy, purple intestinal lining. And underneath that, there are two more layers of ugly textured wallpaper. It looks like someone at some point decided that this train wreck was an improvement over previous bad interior decorating decisions. Once the wallpaper was finally removed, it was discovered that the walls were in such bad condition that they needed to be replastered. Luckily, this was all done before we arrived.

Our task all week has been painting every wall in the house a shade of off-white called, Magnolia. We spend a good deal of our work day making fun of this boring and entirely inoffensive color which we are spreading to every corner of the house. The skirting board gets a narsty smelling coat or two of glossy white and the doors get an equally foul covering with wood stain. Hopefully the cottage will get at least a week to air out before we are asked to move in. I guess it comes down to when the carpeting people come to install the carpet, which will apparently be a shade of brown guaranteed to not show dirt. It will be just the kind of place to house a bunch of ne'er-do-wells like us wwoofers.

I'm looking forward to the day when we can actually deal with vegetables again. Given how it keeps snowing, that day might not be soon in coming.

The farm will be holding a shoot next week. Bob says they are always short on beaters, so we will probably get to join in. The farm raises 6,000 pheasants every year, and about 2,000 of them are offered for shoots. The rest are either eaten by predators or escape into the wild somewhere. Shoots cost about $5000 and the shooters generally kill around 150 birds each event. This is considered a sport and is different from hunting. The shooters stand at one end of forest and the beaters start out at the other. We're supposed to walk in a line making a lot of noise and driving the pheasants in front of us. When the birds reach the end of the trees, they try to fly away. That's when the shooters get them. After all that expense, the shooters don't usually take even a single bird home. The farms sends them down to the restaurant in London, so they essentially get to sell the pheasants twice. Not a bad deal. The farm makes about $60,000 from the whole thing, and the rich people who participate get to have a jolly good time. Josh and I will get some fresh air and a taste of the catered lunch.

The Landed Elite

This little adventure has gotten us into some interesting living situations along the way, but nothing quite compares to where we are right now. We are at a farm called Ellingham Hall, which appears to be the ancient seat of our host's family stretching back several centuries. The house is huge and decorated with an assortment of ancient-looking firearms and various other artifacts that give the whole place a museum-like quality. Our room is the Admiral's Room. We perform our ablutions in the Admiral's Water Closet. We are currently sleeping in a Four Poster Bed, where the aforementioned Admiral allegedly met his end. WHAT?!

[I am writing this update from a room with TWO stuffed tigers in it. Both were man-eaters that one of our host's ancestors shot, along with 97 other man-eaters. Or that is the story. He says there were a lot more tigers back then. I say, there'd be a lot more tigers today if those 99 had lived long enough to reproduce.]

The cast of characters at this farm includes Bob the horticulturist, with whom we are currently painting a cabin. Then there is Jim, the one-armed tree pirate, who despite missing a limb can still climb trees and chop them down with equal finesse. And we cannot forget the Colonel, who apparently rides around side-saddle on his ATV with his pruning sword. In comparison, the rest of the people on this farm seem quite normal, but they are all a likable bunch.

The farm is trying very hard to supply food to a restaurant that our host runs down in London. This is a somewhat new situation, so things appear to be quite chaotic. Our host appears to have a lot of ideas, but not enough time as of yet to get them all going. The restaurant is part of the Frontline Club and it appears to keep him quite busy.

I think things are going to be fun here. The work doesn't seem like it will be too hard. And if it does turn out to be more than we bargained for, we can at least be comforted by the fact that the British never go more than two hours without stopping for a cuppa tea.

Post Outerspace Post

I was prepared Saturday to spend the entire day cleaning the apartment. It was around 11am and I was organizing half-finished boxes of food in the kitchen when the phone rang. It was Margaret, who said she was leaving for Edinburgh in 20 minutes and wanted to know if we wanted to come along. Of course we did. We layered on the winter clothing and were soon on our way to the city. The roads weren't great, but we made it without incident. We met up with Margaret's son, Jack, and a New Zealand burger joint and ate ridiculously tall food. I had the weirdest thing on the menu, the Kiwi Burger, which among other things, had beet root, egg and pineapple on it. It was pretty good, though I could have used an ingredient or two that really popped. Despite all the unusual toppings, the whole thing was a bit bland.

The weather was not pleasant. Rather than wander around the streets, which seems to be our normal activity in Edinburgh, we decided to see a movie. We were trying to decide between Sherlock Holmes and Avatar and settled with the latter because it had an earlier showing. Avatar certainly lived up to my expectations: it had a vapid plot overlayed on the the best computer generated images money can buy. We saw it in 3D and that's probably the only way you'll want to see it too. Or you know, you could skip it. If this technology is truly as revolutionary as James Cameron believes, then you'll be seeing a lot more movies coming out that will look just as beautiful. And maybe one or two of their producers will actually bother hiring someone who can write a decent story.

The trip home is where the day's adventure began. It took us about 3 hours to go less than 10 miles. In order to get from Edinburgh to the north of Scotland, you have to cross over a large body of water. Like the Tappan Zee, there is only one convenient bridge and it is often quite busy. Saturday night, the snow and the extra traffic from discount shoppers caused things to come to a stand still. Two or three major roads come together just before the bridge, so it's impossible to tell where the problem started from. We never saw any accidents or even police, but it took us close to 5 hours to make a drive that normally takes one. Yuck!

Anyhoo, we are on our last day at Pillars. Our train leaves from Edinburgh at 3pm and we should arrive in Norwich at 8:22pm. Hopefully we will have access to a decent internet connection and the updates will continue!

I have committed an unpardonable sin:

I passed up on the chance to see The Mars Volta play in Edinburgh.

Later, we got a brief synopsis from Jack, who is a pretty cool young cat to whom we have a tenuous connection (the son of the flatmate of my mother's childhood friend). He's a big fan of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs - who I have to admit are much better than I thought they were - and of Mike Patton, so I should've taken it as the sign it was when he said he was going to this show. I told myself I should save the money and the hassle of making the travel arrangements. I AM SUCH AN IDIOT.

Listen to me: I cannot be satisfied by rock and roll that is merely loud, or heavy. I cannot abide gravelly male vocalists who try to substitute some kind of half-assed machismo for training or talent; nor will I tolerate ad-hoc "bands" assembled by record company cyborgs scanning the social networks for an appropriately photogenic cluster of 3-5 malleable young turds who, when push comes to shove, will sign the papers. Fire and brimstone upon all that. I demand rock music that comes to us from OUTER SPACE. I demand complex arrangements cunning enough to conceal alchemical formulae, ancient prophecies or the names of fallen gods. I am totally serious! Rock and roll should propel us like rockets toward the benevolent pyramid aliens at the outer rim of the galaxy! It should blast off the tops of our heads and let Thor and Odin into our brains! It should set the planet on fire!

This is what The Mars Volta does for me, and I missed an awesome show. Jack went late anticipating an opening band. There wasn't one. The Mars Volta played for two and a half hours. My brain would've dissolved. I wouldn't be writing this right now. I would be a cloud of posthuman gas floating between the stars or some shit. Instead I'm writing this blog post so you can laugh at me and remind me to NEVER DO THAT AGAIN.

Happy Hogmanay!

Hogmanay is just like New Years except that three-quarters of the way through Auld Lang Syne a mosh pit breaks out. Really. There we were, standing in a circle holding hands--some of us singing the words loudly, the rest of us mumbling along--when around the third verse, our companions began hurling themselves against each other. Something about entering into a circle? But when everyone in the circle tries to enter into the circle at once, you get a mosh pit? Then people just jumped around and banged into each other for the rest of the song.

But I suppose I'm getting ahead of myself a bit. Yesterday was a pretty normal work day. Josh and I reported down to the staff room at 8:30am. He started up the boiler and I checked the veg section of the store to make sure everything was stocked. Then we bagged and sorted some stuff. Bruce wanted some more black kale, so we ventured out into the snow to see how the fields looked. The entire patch--and it is quite large--had been decimated by various wildlife. While out there, we scared off a flock of pigeons, four pheasants and a hare the size of a small dog. I think we managed to gather up less than 2lbs of kale, the rest of the stalks had either been eaten by animals or crushed by the snow.

Work ended around 3:30pm and after a tea break, we walked over to the town of Falkland to pick up some rum to make our evening's drinking chocolate that much more fun. When we got back, I started cooking. I made a bunch of food for the evening, mostly because I could. There were a lot of over ripe bananas in the stock room, so I made banana bread (here's the recipe, just substitute 3-4 bananas for the pumpkin and walnuts for the pumpkin seeds.) Next I whipped up a batch of red lentils, because most of the people on this farm are vegetarians. Finally, I made about a quart and a half of drinking chocolate and spiked it with half a bottle of demerara rum.

The party was held in the farm's Bothie. It's a small space and the 12-15 people in there made it quite crowded. Some of the girls managed to clear out enough room for a dance floor, which if you could see the space you would understand what a feat of furniture arrangement this really was. The night consisted of music, dancing, drinking and chatting, which is a pretty fun way to spend the night/wee early hours of the new year.

Today we will have a post-hangover brunch and then a New Years Day hike up the mountain. I hope my folks have a good soup party and that the rest of you have a pleasant and refreshing start to your new decade!