Gdansk. Danzig. It’s belonged to Germany, to Poland, to Prussia. It’s been proudly independent. It’s been an economic powerhouse as a Hanseatic town. It was reduced to rubble in the Second World War. And now it’s reinvented itself as a must-visit tourist destination. Here’s why.
For a few weeks now, we’ve been watching the geese. At first just a few, but in the last week or so, huge skeins of them in groups of V formations take over the sky, honking as they fly, at about half past eight in the morning.
Saturday was The Big One. Two thousand or more birds invaded the sky above. And somehow, though we were looking out for them, we missed them. These are the birds, far fewer, that flew over yesterday.
I’ve spent time on the net, trying to find out more about where they’re coming from, or going to. All I know is that while they’re here, they enjoy scavenging in the recently harvested fields, and Mecca, for them is the wetlands of the former quarries at Nosterfield. And I also know that their massed flights mean that summer is over.
We’re migrating too, albeit temporarily. We’re off to Poland, my father’s country of birth. If I can I’ll do a daily post while I’m there.
Waiting. That’s what herons do. Ever patient, they stand in the shallows, or on a handy rock: maybe even in the low branches of a sturdy riverside tree. Immobile unless frightened by the sight of a human passing too nearby, they’ll stand and stand until suddenly …..stab! That long spear of a beak plunges down and secures a fish dinner.
Here’s one we spotted on the River Wharfe near Grassington a few months ago.
This second photo is a bit out of focus, but I like it anyway. I took it only about a fortnight ago, walking along the River Skell one evening. The heron cocked his head and regarded us with some interest. He didn’t fly away, but looked at us looking at him. That’s quite unusual. In the end he flew off, empty-beaked. Perhaps he hadn’t picked a good spot.
This week’s WordPress photo challenge is ‘waiting’. Apparently there is no challenge next week, so …don’t watch this space.
It’s been quite a year for blackberries. Fine juicy berries tumble from every bramble bush, staining our clothes and ruining our shoes. Even if, like me, you work on the principle of eating one berry for every two you collect for the pot, you’ll soon have more than you can realistically deal with.
Then there are apples. Kind friends have given us fruits carefully picked from their trees, but we consider these too fine to mix with other ingredients. When we have jellies and compotes to make, we prefer to rescue windfalls from back lanes in the village, cut away the bruises and discard the insecty bits.
This year, we have two best uses for blackberries, and for apples too.
This is a blackberry bakewell tart. The recipe is from the wonderful Mrs. Portly, and her recipe called for raspberries. I used blackberries instead, and my greedy family demolished the lot in a single sitting.
Much of the rest of our harvest has been used for blackberry and apple jelly. We no longer eat jam, but the intense flavour, and rich ruby colouring of this jelly is pure essence of blackberry, and a souvenir of late summer days in the dreary dark days of winter. It’s really worth making a few pots.
Take equal quantities of blackberries and apples. Roughly chop the apples, which you needn’t core or peel, and place in a pan, barely covering the fruit with water. Bring to a simmer till the apple softens and the juices run from the berries: 10 – 15 minutes.
Strain the juices through a jelly bag, or through a muslin-lined sieve for several hours. Measure the juice. Although I usually cook in metric, at this point, I go all avoirdupois, and work exclusively in pounds and ounces and pints. It just seems to work better for me.
Return the extract to the pan with the juice of a lemon, and for every pint of juice, add a pound of granulated sugar. Stir till the sugar has dissolved and boil rapidly till a ‘jell’ is obtained on testing. If you’re new to making jelly or jam, this article is helpful.
Our blackberry jelly will taste all the better because we had help from grandson William, aged two. He gathered berries, and hunted for windfalls. He’s a London child, and his parents were keen for him to help with any job not available to him in a city park.
His parents have taken a pot of jelly back to London as a souvenir, of course.
I was at Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal. And it was raining. I stood beneath the shelter of the Temple of Piety, and enjoyed the gracious structured elegance of the Water Gardens. Centre stage was Neptune, Roman god of the waters, and of the Moon Ponds over which he presides.
And then I noticed that amid this ordered beauty, a coot family had built a ramshackle and highly unstructured nest. I think the gardens’ creators, John and William Aislabie would have enjoyed the water birds’ cheeky appropriation of this most peaceful of scenes.
My contribution to this week’s WordPress photo challenge: Structure.
As you walk the fells, moors and dales of northern England, this is what you’ll see.
Miles and miles of drystone wall. In the Yorkshire Dales alone, there are some 8000 km. of wall, compared with only 990 km. of hedgerow, and 250 km. of fencing. These walls keep flocks of sheep contained upon a single fell. They provide a boundary between moorland heather and bracken, and more productive farmland. They divide one farmer’s plot into more manageable fields.
Off they march down the fellside, turning a corner and skirting the valley bottom, before cornering again to march back up. Or they’ll make snug little criss-cross squares in an ancient family farm. Well maintained or slightly ramshackle, they make Yorkshire and the Pennine counties instantly recognisable. Here’s a selection:
I’m a reluctant and easily sea-sick sailor. Yet a backdrop to my life has been the hypnotic daily rhythms of the shipping forecast on Radio 4. I love to listen to those poetic names of the areas round the British coast where seamen find themselves as they tune in to hear what the weather will bring.
Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Forties, Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight, Humber, Thames, Dover, Wight, Portland, Plymouth, Biscay, Trafalgar, FitzRoy, Sole, Lundy, Fastnet, Irish Sea, Shannon, Rockall, Malin, Hebrides, Bailey, Fair Isle, Faeroes and Southeast Iceland.
Yesterday, the Shipping Forecast was 150 years old.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/embed/p04l37bw/41030909
A public service since 1867, it’s been broadcast since the 1920s, with a break during World War II. Never more than 380 words long, it always follows the same strict format. The late night broadcast, preceded by ‘Sailing by’ is a bedtime story, a soporific sleeping pill to many land-based listeners. We couldn’t do without it.
Look! We even have a cushion, and a breakfast mug dedicated to our beloved shipping forecast.
We don’t seem to eat jam any more. And gifts of English style chutneys, full of summer and autumn fruits and piquant with the inevitable malt vinegar sit reproachfully at the back of the food cupboard, uneaten and unloved.
There are only so many plum frangipane tarts you can eat, delicious as they are (thanks, Mrs. Portly!) Or plum cakes.
What to do with all these plums we’ve picked? Open freeze some for winter cakes and puddings? There, that’s sorted a kilo out. Now what?
Well, perhaps we could make some chutney after all. Fired up with chillies and warming spices, they could make a decent addition to a simple winter supper. Finding a recipe that fits our bill is a task Google was made for. And here it is, courtesy of a blog new to me that I’ll be following with interest from now on, The Cottage Smallholder.
We haven’t had the chance to taste the fully matured version. But this seems to be the business. Hot, fiery, with complex flavours that aren’t overwhelmed by vinegar.
And if you still want another chutney, good old Saint Nigel delivers another spicy treat in his cooking bible, ‘Tender’
Nigel Slater’s hot and sweet plum chutney
. 750g of plums (about 1 1/2 pounds)
. 350g of onions (about 3/4 pound)
. 125g of raisins (about 3/4 cup)
. 250g of light muscovado sugar (1 1/4 cups)
. 1/2 tsp of crushed dried chillies
. 2 tsp yellow mustard seeds
. 150ml of apple cider vinegar (5 1/2 fluid ounces)
. 150ml of malt vinegar (5 1/2 fluid ounces)
. a cinnamon stick broken in two
Halve the plums, discarding the stones. Peel and roughly chop the onions. Put the fruit and the onions into a large heavy bottomed saucepan. Add the remaining ingredients. Bring the mixture to the boil, then reduce the heat to low. Simmer on low heat, stirring occasionally, for about an hour. (DO not forget to stir it occasionally as it may catch if you don’t and you don’t want that to happen!) Pour into hot and sterilized jam jars. Seal. Allow it to mature for at least a couple of weeks.
Now then. All you have to do is source your plums …. and get cooking.
This week’s WordPress Photo Challenge invites us to share images of those things that distract us from the important business of Getting On With Daily Life.
This is an easy one. Since about Easter, here in our village, the distraction has been ducklings. Sweet little balls of fluff that appeared at Easter, rapidly matured towards lankier childhood then … oh! …. vanished. A jealous mallard? A fox? Who knows? Another brood appeared soon after. Here are two of them.
This time, they’ve managed to grow up. They sit around the pond in bored huddles in the manner of teenagers everywhere. They’re still charming enough to be distracting when they put their minds to it though.
But those moorhens who moved in. They’ve been nothing but a worry. One day, a chick broke its foot, and distressed us all by somehow rolling and dragging itself forward across the grass as its mother looked on with apparent indifference. Since that day, we’ve had occasional sightings of a lone parent, a lone chick. But the family seems to have scattered. This has been distracting too. But not in a good way.
We’ve been getting in touch with our inner Ariègeois(e) today.
We spent six years in France, living in the foothills of the Pyrenees in the Ariège, a département where almost everybody still had firm roots in the simple self-sufficient lifestyle of their forbears. Nobody that we knew would have considered installing, as David Cameron recently has, a faux shepherd’s hut in the back garden. Instead, most people had a serviceable shed, built of bits of this and that and adapted to personal requirements.
Nobody that we knew ever bought firelighters for their wood burning stove. Instead, we’d all hang around as the weekly market packed up, rescuing the wooden fruit boxes, now empty of peaches and pears, which when broken up provide perfect kindling material.
Everyone we knew never left home without an ‘au cas où‘ (‘just in case’) bag, to fill with wild mushrooms, or walnuts, or sloes, or chestnuts, or apples, or any free food that came their way.
That’s been us this week. We don’t need a garden hut. But we have got a wood-burning stove. And today we’ve been re-purposing the wooden casing that our delivery of logs came in. It’s soft wood, so we know we can only use it sparingly on our stove. But it’s there – and we will use it. So here we were, sawing it into manageable lengths, sorting and storing it.
We’re the odd-bods who gather the discarded fruit boxes at Ripon market. We’ve been breaking those up today too, for kindling.
And yesterday, our friend Gillian had us over to raid her plum trees. We came back with a pail full of greengages, and a pail full of czars. Today was the day when we started to convert this ripe fruit into chutneys and cakes and hooch and crumbles. Our French friends would definitely approve.
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