I was thinking of pumpkins after yesterday's post and remembered some odd lines from "The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo" by Edward Lear (well they would be odd, wouldn't they?)
On the coast of Coromandel
Where the early pumpkins blow,
In the middle of the woods
Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
Two old chairs, and half a candle, -
One old jug without a handle, -
These were all his worldly goods.
Real life has started to impinge on my blogging time. I'm studying and teaching at present w
ith a lot of reading and preparation for both. Then there's the knitting and sewing for the March Baby, not to mention all the Christmas cooking. The puddings are made and the fruit for several special cakes is soaking in brandy. I'm hoping that a slice of boozy cake will help people overlook the shortage of presents this year: my first Christmas-on-a-pension!
ith a lot of reading and preparation for both. Then there's the knitting and sewing for the March Baby, not to mention all the Christmas cooking. The puddings are made and the fruit for several special cakes is soaking in brandy. I'm hoping that a slice of boozy cake will help people overlook the shortage of presents this year: my first Christmas-on-a-pension! My daily 30-minute indulgence at the moment is watching Barefoot Contessa on the UKTV Food channel. No, not the Sophia Loren film, it's an American cookery programme featuring Ina Garten. She appears to be a great deal wealthier than our Nigella but a lot less pretentious. She conveys the real cook's purpose and satisfaction in producing food to delight friends and family, not to impress them.
On a show devoted to Christmas preparations, Ina Garten said that the rule among her friends is that gifts must be something to use in a day e.g. something to eat or drink or tickets for a show. Having seen some of her friends houses and lifestyles, I can see it would be difficult to think of anything they don't already have but it strikes me as a really good idea. The charity shops might miss their influx of "unwanted presents" in January but think of all the shelf and cupboard space we would save if we didn't have to house "STUFF". It might be fun to stretch the imagination instead of the bank balance. I wonder if there's enough time left for me to start making ......
I have to leave the room or change channels if Nigella is on, especially the latest series, which is so bad that it's embarrassing. Ina sounds much more interesting. Unfortunately, in a fit of pension-induced money-saving, I switched from Sky (the only way to get a decent picture here) on subscription to their free service, which is a bit like Freeview. So, although I still get all the terrestrial channels and Film4 etc (not to mention True Movies!), I don't get any of the UKTV channels. I will have to rely on you M for interesting bits of Ina.
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks for the Coromandel reminder. One of the best opening lines of a poem, I've always thought.
I can't sit through that dreadful introduction to the new Nigella programme either. She was always OTT but now she seems to be doing a parody of her old shows.
ReplyDeleteI'll feed snippets from Ina when I have time. Life seems very full at present but I do hope we can fit in another rendezvous before too long.