My biscuit nemesis

I started the new year with a workable plan to get healthier. and it's going really well, except for this one thing - I can't resist a biscuit! Especially with my cuppa.

Now, a nice cup of tea, a biscuit and a sit down are one of the best everyday pleasures for a Brit. Bill Bryson, the American travel writer, noticed this. He writes in 'The Road to Little Dribbling',

“ The British really are the only people in the world who become genuinely enlivened when presented with a hot beverage and a small plain biscuit.”

I must admit I'd never realised it until I read that, but he's quite right. At least for my generation and those that have gone before me.

There is even a whole book devoted to tea and biscuits, called 'A Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down' by the improbably named Nicey and Wifey (Yep. Really). Saggy gave it to me in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way a few years ago, and it's actually a cracking good read.

But it's not just the nice cup of tea, or even the sit down that is my problem. To quote from the book...
… ‘a nice cuppa while sitting down is the cornerstone of British society, possibly even more important to us than the television or queuing up for things.’

 BUT, (and here’s the thing)…‘Tea without biscuits is a missed opportunity’

A nice cup of tea is just begging for a biscuit to keep it company. That is just the natural order of things. Who am I to go against it?

You see, biscuits have been part of my life since I can remember, and for some reason I find it almost impossible to resist them. Even the plain ones. Especially the plain ones! There’s something so comforting and familiar about the ones you grew up with. Apparently the first words I uttered were “Bickie, Daddy!” I was less than a year old and had crawled across the floor for my first attempt at winding my Dad round my little finger. Mum had said I couldn’t have a biscuit, but even then I was a girl who knew how to get what she wanted. I’m not saying I actually fluttered my eyelashes, but I definitely turned the charm on.

I got my biscuit. 

Recently I vowed to cut out eating between meals, and I can do it! I have done it…except for biscuits. Offer me chocolates and I can say no. Show me a luscious home-made cake, and I will say not for me, thank you. Recently I even resisted a cheese straw my Mum tempted me with – and I love cheese straws! But put a cuppa in my hand and I will sink into a comfy chair with a happy sigh and reach for the biscuits.

That’s the way it’s always been and probably why it’s such a tough habit to break.

As my Tesco biscuit tin so aptly puts it;

If you feel there is something missing in life, it is almost always a biscuit...

Well, a little of what you fancy etc., eh?

A Bit of Both Worlds [Or how to dabble in the good life...]

For many years I have watched YouTube videos on self-sufficiency. It has always intrigued me.

Even before the internet when we first married in 1975, we bought books on having pigs to raise our own meat and on keeping chickens for eggs, we read books about making wine from brambles and cheese from sour milk. We even drew up plans to build our own house – a round one with a central spiral staircase.

But we never took the plunge. When I used to I read about people digging their own wells and milking goats and making straw cob houses, I felt drawn to that sort of life, but I also wanted to live in the real world where my friends were.

So I have lived in the real world and brought my kids up with fitted kitchens and supermarket shops and wall to wall carpets and a tumble drier. But the hankering never really leaves you. So now I have a veggie patch and two allotments. I have tried my hand at sourdough and sauerkraut and kefir. I have kept chickens and have boiled organic bones for broth at the same time as we run an automatic washing machine and two cars. The thing is; I am dabbling….

And I have found I am perfectly content to do so.

At the same time as shopping on Amazon Prime, I am making soap. Yes soap. Organic soap which is ridiculously expensive to buy, but cheap when homemade and it turns out great. It works! We wash our hands with it and it lathers up just like it is supposed to! I made black pepper and ginger soap and I am so proud of myself.

 

I also made my own non-toxic talcum powder from arrowroot and rose petals which I ground up in a coffee grinder that I keep for that sort of thing.

So if you hanker after a sort of self-sufficient life style without the self-sufficiency, then I recommend you start with soap for the sheer feel-good factor. Watch videos on YouTube so you know how it’s done, then open an account with The Soap Kitchen and Aromantics. And you are away….

https://www.thesoapkitchen.co.uk/

  

https://www.aromantic.co.uk/

Good luck.

A dog's life!

Sometimes I think it must be nice to be a dog. I mean the kind of family pet who has no worries about where the next meal is coming from, no responsibilities except greeting visitors and not pooing on the carpet. While we humans do all the worrying and get all the hassle.

What prompted this thought? Well, I’m having trouble thinking  about anything except the looming house move upheaval. Which naturally is not featuring large in my dog’s thoughts. If he has any at all…

So, we move into the last phase of the moving fiasco. It’s been three months since sale was agreed. I cannot for the life of me see why things need to drag on for so long, but this seems to be normal from what I’ve heard. However, the length of time between sale agreed and completion of sale is not as bad as the uncertainty that goes with it.

I have had, you might think, three months so far to get organised and start the packing. But because the whole thing could fall through at any point up to and including the week you actually move, you can’t do much until contracts are exchanged. After that point, everyone is committed. But this point happens very late in the proceedings. So you live on tenterhooks, wondering if the phone will ring and you get told it’s all off. This has happened once already. I wasn’t too worried then, but now I’ve had enough! I just want the upheaval and uncertainty to be over.

My physiotherapist didn’t do much for my attempted serenity when he cheerfully told me how, years ago, he and his family had been all packed up and ready to move house on a Monday, and got a phone call at 6pm on the Friday before to say it had fallen through. Thinking about this has fuelled my imagination quite a bit, especially in the wee small hours.

So, anyway, I got a phone call yesterday from the estate agent to say our buyers are raring to go and when can we get out please? It’s just a question now of our sellers’ seller getting a move on, apparently. Everyone is working towards the end of January for completion. Yay! Good news, eh?

But hang on, that means only two or three weeks! So much to do! So much to organise! So many exclamation marks!

Now the thing is, said buyers have asked to come round today. This threw me into a bit of a panic. What if they change their minds? After all, the house isn’t exactly in show condition like it was the first time they saw it. Oh no, indeed not! For a start, Debbie’s room is piled high with boxes and all the stuff out of the loft (loft is what I call the under eaves storage space). The garden has had little or no attention since they last saw it. The windows have suffered from recent storms…

I really must get a grip! There’s a lot to do. Starting with taking my dear little dog friend Archie out for his walk and try and absorb some of his laid-back attitude. He always helps me get things in perspective.

Here we go then for the final push, before I run out of exclamation marks altogether.

The Inside Story....

English mince pies with English clotted cream. Made in Norway.

Outdoors

Why do the Scandinavians need hygge? Why do they make so much effort for ‘cosy’?

Because of outdoors is why.

Outdoors gets cold; very, very, cold. And dark. And icy.

I said I wanted snow at Christmas and I got snow. What I didn’t want was to drive in snow on uncleared roads. But I got that too anyway. Just so you know; I drove several kilometres on a motorway and then up a steep snow-deep hill, and I slipped and swerved but I didn’t crash. It was tense.

We went for walks. A walk through the forest was long and snowy, getting lost on ski tracks and practically climbing vertically in some places. Five kms later we saw the orange lights of home [dimly in the mist, behind the trees like some eerie Narnia].

Everything had a dusting of snow. All trees looked like Christmas cards and the air was quiet and still. It was mostly a majestic 'hush' in the countryside. Nearly every porch carried a sheaf of grain, to feed hungry birds. On one walk near a town I saw a child in a snow suit playing in a snow pit. Talk about tough....

Towns were just the same as ours after a snowfall; the mushy grey slosh that gathers in the gutter and hardens into icy pavements. Though, once inside the shops you can appreciate all the funny little things the Norwegians have as 'normal' but that fills me with fascination. Woollen underwear for children. [Knitted. Expensive.] Ice skates in a sports shop. And skis of course.

Indoors.

It was warm, very warm. Too warm to wear my new sheepskin slippers, so I saved them for my UK house which has draughts and no underfloor heating.

We made mince pies [with mincemeat brought from the UK] which we ate warm with clotted cream [also brought from UK]. I made konfekt kavringer, boller and Berliner kranser.  I learnt how to say ‘Skru den ned!’ to my Grandson when his playstation was too loud, and ‘Vil du gå ned?’ to my little Granddaughter when she had finished eating in her highchair.

We ate traditional Norwegian salted boiled lamb and mashed swede, the popular Christmas Pork Ribbe, and a very tasty moist cod garnished with mushrooms. My husband’s favourite was Fenalår, a salted, dried and cured leg of lamb which is sliced thin with sour cream and eaten with tiny crackers with walnuts and honey.We went to bed late and got up late. Some days the sky was so dull we passed from morning to evening without any apparent daytime in between. Some days had brilliantly clear sunshine with light reflected in the crisp white snow, and the glare pierced your eyes.

We were surrounded by grandchildren and friends, sons and a daughter and in-laws, we lived it up royally with no responsibilities. I may have emptied a dishwasher or two, and done a brief spot of baking – but I mostly lazed around doing nothing. My husband experienced a day of work helping one son build a house in the middle of a snow field.

It did prompt me to think about the traditions we have in England at Christmas, and to be proud of them too – just like the Scandinavians are proud of theirs. But for now, I will just leave you with a string of pics from a Norwegian Christmas and write about English Cosy another time….