Wulf's Webden

The Webden on WordPress

23 October 2023
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Allotment Tidying

September’s harvest bounty is now a long way through October’s dwindling up at the allotment. That isn’t to say that there aren’t still pickings to be had but I’ve now got some more patches to plant into and most of the time I spent up there today was about tidying things up. For example, it has been time to take down most of my forest of tree spinach (Chenopodium giganteum). I’ll have to take loppers next time I go as some of the remaining stems will make great plant supports for next year but they are too thick and woody for me to risk breaking my secateurs on.

22 October 2023
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Piri-piri Chicken

Down at my mum’s last week, we had a dish which was billed as piri-piri chicken. It was a little underwhelming and I think the blame for that lies squarely with the recipe (I was cooking so I hope it wasn’t the cook). Bits of chicken breast were fried in some oil and set aside, before adding sliced onion, chilli pepper and garlic. Once softened, the chicken was reintroduced, a dose of white wine was poured on and, with some seasoning, it was simmered on the hob until combined. To my taste, it didn’t really come together and the chicken ended up on the tough side.

My version started with the chicken breast marinated in wine (red, because that was what I had open) with salt and also the zest and juice from half a lime. I wanted more moisture in the chicken and to get some sourness going which, along with heat, is what I associate with piri-piri dishes. After a few hours in the fridge, I took that out and lifted the chicken pieces out of the liquid, drying them off a bit and rolling in a mixture of flour, cornflour, salt and pepper. I also chopped up some chilli peppers and onion along with a couple of bell peppers and one of the cucumbers out of the polytunnel (crying out to be used and a ‘thick liquid’ ingredient). The chicken pieces got lightly fried and set on one side before I added the veg and squirt of garlic paste and cooked it a bit to soften.

Once ready, I put the chicken back and poured over the marinade, supplemented with a bit more wine and a glug of cheap sherry, as well as a generous squeeze of tomato puree. The oven was on in order to cook some bread rolls, so I finished it off in there for twenty or so minutes.

The result was much more unified and succulent. If anything, I think the sourness (more lime or some vinegar) and heat (more chilli) could have been pushed but there was always the option of adding store-bought peri-peri sauce as a condiment. I think this was a successful reimagining. Not every recipe in a published book is great but they often give a good starting point from which to nudge things forward.

21 October 2023
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Sing Around Tunes – 21 October

It was a fairly full folk session at The Plough Inn this afternoon and with some longish songs bought to the table (album length versions of both Stairway to Heaven and Layla!) so my turn to lead only came round a couple of times.

My first contribution was the jazz standard Autumn Leaves, befitting the season, and my second, apropos of nothing in particular, was Diving Duck Blues. As far as I can find out, the latter was originally recorded in 1929 by Sleepy John Estes although I discovered it about 30 years ago through the work of Taj Mahal, who I think is responsible for the cool riff I associate with the song. It is a blues with fairly nonsensical lyrics so I took versions from Estes, Mahal and Johnny Winter and distilled them down into my own take on the piece.

Today’s pieces were all on the double bass although I’m seriously considering how I might get the tuba back in for the next one.

20 October 2023
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Looking Down on the Back Garden – October 2023

Looking Down on the Back Garden - October 2023
Back Garden – October 2023

It has been a wet day – rain which doesn’t seem to have stopped. Unfortunately I was a bit late to catch the glorious yellow leaves on the birch (front centre – just a few of them left). I was hoping to get it against the red Virginia Creeper towards the back. The trouble was, that the creeper hadn’t turned before I went away for a few days on Monday and, now I’m back and the creeper is red, the birch is past its best. Autumn is moving into winter though.

15 October 2023
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Flat bat(tery)

This morning, I opened the boot of the car and loaded it with the instruments and equipment I needed for church. Because of the narrow width of our drive, I then needed to go through the house to unlock the main car door and get in to head off but I was surprised to find my key fob didn’t work. I had to borrow Jane’s and filed it under likely flat battery.

This afternoon, I did some more investigation and a new CR2032 battery solved the problem. I don’t remember a key fob battery going flat on me before but I suppose it is only to be expected over time. Anyway, that can be another small tick on my list of life accomplishments! I’m glad it was such a simple fix and didn’t require a visit to a garage to mess around with resetting computers and the like.

14 October 2023
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Uncategorised

If you make a post in a hurry and forget to add it to a category, WordPress files it under ‘uncategorized’. Myself, I prefer to use the s, as in this blog title, but that is the default spelling adopted by WordPress. This morning, I spotted that I had two posts under this heading, which I’ve now refiled.

I should admit that they both ended up under Misc, as neither really linked to any of the significant major categories of my blog but it is another tiny bit of tidying up. At least they now both have some descriptive tags too so I might find them if I look back one day.

13 October 2023
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Keyboard Adventures

This week, I’ve had some adventures of the (typing) keyboard type. At the start of the week, the X key popped off the keyboard I’ve been using for the past 18 months and I couldn’t get it fixed back again. Fortunately x is one of the less commonly used letters but it was annoying when I needed it. Most of the time I could get a result by hammering down hard but that wasn’t going to be a long term solution. Since the face on some of the keys had also started to wear away some months ago, that one was lined up to become an emergency spare.

I ordered a replacement, which looked very smart but the A key didn’t work at all, a much more significant impediment for typing in English. That one came from Amazon, who have a pretty straightforward returns process (I dropped at at the local post office yesterday and the refund has already come through) but that left me back with the a faulty keyboard. In fact, I put in the existing spare I had but that also has some dodgy keys and, although I’ve also got a wireless keyboard, putting that onto charge reminded me why I had changed from that in the first place.

In the end, I decided to go for a slightly more expensive unit with mechanical keys, which I ordered from Argos last night and picked up first thing this morning. Argos is even closer than the post office and, if I got a dud, I could probably get it swapped without losing another day or two and having to wait for delivery.

So far, so good on the new one. It is a bit more clicky-clacky, which is typical of mechanical keys, but I’m hoping it will last me a lot longer than 18 months. This one also has a gently pulsing rainbow LED background, which adds nothing to the typing experience but does look very pretty sitting on my desk!

12 October 2023
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Sowing begins (again)

It has been a few weeks since I last put seeds into soil and, of that batch, there seems to be little evidence of sprouting. That was direct sowing at the allotment but I’ve been meaning to make more use of the polytunnel to get seedlings going for quick winter crops and ones that will overwinter into next year. The trouble was, I needed to do some tidying in the polytunnel to make space.

Several of the cucumber plants were coming to an end (and it feels like we’ve had enough cucumbers for one year!) so those have come out this week and I’ve been able to make a start on sowing again. Today it was just a few pots with spinach seeds but I’ve got a lot more to try before the month is up, both for planting out at the allotment if the frosts don’t come too early and for growing on under the protection of the tunnel as the other summer and early autumn plants come to an end.

11 October 2023
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Appropriate Precision

When measuring things, it is important to pick a suitable level of precision. For example, when I drove to Bangor (Wales) last week, it was enough to know it was about 160 miles from home. The car estimated I had about 140 miles range in the tank so I knew that I needed to fill up enroute. It would have been unnecessary and silly to try and pin a more precise figure on it.

My trusty kitchen scales allegedly offer precision to the nearest half gram but that can waver up or down on the display and I’m not convinced that it is highly accurate. When I need to measure 500g of flour, being a gram or two off is negligible but, if I need 10g of yeast or salt, there are cases where I would like to be more precise.

That’s why I finally purchased a set of precision scales a couple of weeks ago. They are really quite inexpensive and I’d estimate that they are reasonably accurate. In theory, I can weigh things out to two decimal places, which is far more precision than I need for any cooking or home brewing application. However, it does mean that I can be more confident when weighing things to the nearest half gram, where being a few 1/100ths out is as insignificant as straying by a gram or two on larger amounts.

10 October 2023
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Busy week

It was a busy week last week, including a trip to Wales, a hike up an iron age hill fort (on top of a small mountain) and a gospel blues gig with the Wulfpack. Regular blogging service to resume shortly!