What a nice long family weekend we have had.
On Thursday evening, our Ian came over from Wrexham in North Wales where he had been to visit a big food factory that creates and ships ready meals for a range of supermarkets. That night we ate some sample vegan ready meals for dinner.
On Friday, Ian's girlfriend Sarah came up from London to Sheffield by train. We picked her up from the station and that night we all went out to a popular vegan restaurant in an old industrial part of the city called Kelham Island. Baby Phoebe sat at the head of the table like the chairman of the board. She was very well-behaved and the food was tasty too.
Ian and Sarah went climbing on Saturday morning but returned for lunch. I made vegan burgers in "Bosh!" brioche buns with homemade chips (American: fries) and the weather was warm enough to eat out on our decking in the sunshine - something that has been in short supply recently.
Frances attended a friend's wedding in the city centre on Saturday so there had to be a couple of "milk runs" because Phoebe still refuses to take mother's milk from a bottle. Stew made vegan fajitas for dinner. Delicious.
Ian and Sarah spent time with a number of his old friends on Sunday. Though our son is happy in London, he is very fond of his home city and always enjoys coming back. In the late afternoon, I prepared a big vegan Sunday dinner with Linda McCartney "chicken" roasts, roasted potatoes, parsnips and carrots, sweetheart cabbage, runner beans, courgette slices, leeks in a vegan cheese sauce, stuffing, vegan gravy and Yorkshire puddings for the non-vegans which meant everyone but Ian. Even Phoebe had a Yorkshire pudding (see above).
A good while after dinner, Ian, Sarah and I chose a film from Netflix to watch - "Chernobyl 1986". It is a Russian film with dubbed American voices - in that sense quite weird. The film focuses on brave heroes of Chernobyl who undertook critical safety work under dire conditions. It failed to point any fingers of blame or to highlight the terrible effects that the disaster at Chernobyl had upon the local population and the natural environment. Even so I quite enjoyed it.
This morning, Ian and Sarah visited a golf driving range but at lunchtime we met up with Stew, Phoebe and Frances again at "The Broadfield". Great food. They do amazing pies but I had fish and chips with mushy peas, tartare sauce and gherkin slices. Very good.
Afterwards Ian and Sarah headed back to London in her car which Ian had borrowed for the drive up to Wrexham. Phoebe was pushed home by her parents and Shirley and I returned to this now quiet house in which I sat down at the "Lenovo" laptop that is in front of me right now.
A very "foodie" post today YP.
ReplyDeleteI like the Phoebe Pudding photo.
Yes. We had a lot of food this weekend JayCee - and good food too.
DeleteIt sounds like wonderful food and company. (busy but in a fun way!)
ReplyDeleteExactly Margaret.
DeleteSounds like the cooks (plural? or just you?) were busy on the weekend. In my callous youth, I never realized how much darn work went into preparing the feasts I enjoyed at home and later at my inlaws. I am only too familiar with that aspect now, and enjoy cooking for my mother and mother-in-law who understand the work involved. If it's anyone else, I tend to wish they'd bring their own!
ReplyDeleteIn that photo, Phoebe reminds me (sorry!) of Scottish comedian Kevin Bridges!
A singular cook who looks just like me. As for Kevin Bridges - I agree that he looks like a big baby girl!
DeleteOops, sorry - I had it backwards :)
DeleteShame on me, I might have pinched one of Phoebe's Yorky Puds when the wee soul wasn't looking.
ReplyDeleteA Big Vegan Roast sounds braw. No chicken's neck to be wrung.
Roastit Tatties with Gravy.
I have a weakness for capital letters and a weakness for Leeks.
English Bitter in a pewter tankard or a glass or 3 of Claret?
I have a book of old photos of Wrexham though I have never been there, nor to Kelham's Island in post-industrial Sheffield.
Put me out of my misery.
Are home-made Yorkshire Puddings much better than M & S Yorkies?
Haggerty
"These are not just M&S Yorkshire puddings, they're Yorkshire Pudding Yorkshire puddings..." Far, far better. Accept no imitations.
DeleteLife is what happens when you are busy making Yorkshire Puddings as John Lennon would have said if he had moved to Sheffield.
DeleteMacaroni cheese. Fish Pie. Cauliflower Au Gratin. Doughboys. Irish Stew.
Trifle. Apple Crumble. Lemon Pancakes. Rhubarb Fool. Meringues.
All my home cooking friends do them superbly well.
Only the Chinese can do Crispy Fried Duck.
Folk said my late American brother made the best omelettes, for he separated the yolk from the white, folded them delicately, and left them for a time, before the mix. Like Len Deighton he added a wee bit of water to the yolk.
He made Omelette Arnold Bennett for Jeffrey Barnard not long before Jeff passed into the great Coach and Horses in the sky.
Haggerty
Your brother's omelettes sound delightful.
DeleteGlad to see the Yorkshire Puddings were on the menu YP.
ReplyDeleteThey rose nice and golden to impress Ian's girlfriend who comes from Down South.
DeleteAll of the food you have listed sounds great, but I don‘t know what sweetheart cabbage is. Is the cabbage as such called like that or is it the dish, the way of preparing it?
ReplyDeletePhoebe looks like she is doing well with her very own Yorkshire pudding this time!
You had a wonderful family weekend, and now you can mull over all the conversations etc. during some lone walks, no doubt also very welcome.
Sweetheart cabbage is also known as pointed cabbage in England. It is the plant rather than the way it is cooked.
DeleteIan should come out with a vegan Yorkshire Pudding. Although, having just googled a recipe for your namesake dish, I see that would be virtually impossible.
ReplyDeleteSounds like you had a very fine weekend and I imagine that you might ready for a nap.
Ian has actually made vegan Yorkshire puddings after many failed attempts.
DeleteA wonderful weekend by the sound of it, but it has made me tired and it is only 9am.
ReplyDeleteYou could always go back to bed.
DeleteThat was a busy happy week end. It's great that all of you can get together.
ReplyDeleteEspecially when we recall COVID restrictions.
DeletePhoebe looks just like a little doll. Just precious.
ReplyDeleteAll of the food you described in this post sounds wonderful! One day I would like to try a Yorkshire Pudding. I'll probably have to make my own just like when I wanted to try Scotch eggs. Your family is lucky to have you to cook for them. Cooking is an act of love.
I would like to think that I passed some of that down to Ian. Thanks for calling by again Jennifer. You are always so kind and supportive.
DeleteI envied all those vegetables you cooked, always thought 'Sweetheart' cabbage was sweeter, it is definitely less cabbagey. A lovely family week end.
ReplyDeleteSweetheart cabbage should always be served to one's spouses or lovers on St Valentine's Day.
DeleteI watched that movie a number of years ago but preferred the miniseries version on the same subject that came out not terribly long ago. But like many things, the book "Midnight in Chernobyl" is the best of them all.
ReplyDeleteI spent a little bit of time once in Manchester and Liverpool but never made it over to Sheffield. I like that part of your country though.
Was your visit connected with work Ed... or perhaps football?!
DeleteIt was connected to my then girlfriend who is now my wife. She was practicing medicine in Manchester at the time.
DeleteCooking is an act of love as Jennifer said, watch any parent cook for children.
ReplyDeleteFay Maschler made dinner at her home in London for writers, her husband Tom Maschler being senior editor at Jonathan Cape. She did not want to write, just cook.
If I had to choose a favourite thriller writer it would be Nicolas Freeling (1927-2003) who trained as a chef and spent most of his life in Holland and France.
He wrote two books about food, *Cook Book* and *The Kitchen and the Cook*.
I am re-reading his last novel about Commissaris Van der Valk, A Long Silence (1972) in which the Dutch detective is shot in the last pages.
Van der Valk's wife Arlette sees him lying dead in the rain:
*And he had a contented look. As though he knew that after all it hadn't been wasted.*
Freeling then invented a cooler French detective, Henri Castang, who operated in a fictional French city that sounds like Toulouse.
Freeling's fans never forgave him for killing off Van der Valk, who liked food, beer and cigars. Cafes and bars in Europe are a feature of the stories.
Freeling's gossipy novels are character-driven rather than plot driven, and say more about Europe than any other English writer.
He lived latterly in Strasbourg but ventured into Germany and Czechoslovakia.
Food and wine are prominent in the stories.
On the small screen Van der Valk was played by Barry Foster which I have on DVD.
Filming was in Amsterdam and the Gelderland.
Haggerty
You have Barry on DVD? Is that an intravenous drug?
DeleteBarry Foster (1931-2002) played the Commissaris with a blend of bravado and sensitivity : the Dutchman had the empathy of Simeonon's Inspector Maigret.
DeleteBarry Foster was a good jazz pianist, and I am sure I saw him in a Pinter play, but I can't find Pinter in his Wiki entry.
Barry could do sinister and accepted the role of the strangler in Hitchcock's 1972 film *Frenzy* which Michael Caine turned down as disgusting (it was).
As for drugs, now and then I miss a roll-up or a half corona from the Dominican Republic : I have too much respect for my lungs to succumb.
Haggerty
P.S. Check out John Windsor-Cunningham (YouTube) an English actor living in New York. A scholar and gentleman, he is good on Pinter and Shakespeare.
Sounds like a great weekend. I admire Ian and Sarah's energy -- climbing AND golf! (Although, granted, I guess golf isn't that strenuous.) I laughed at the image of Phoebe as chairman of the board.
ReplyDeleteShaking her giraffe rattle like a gavel..."Order! Order!"
DeleteThat Yorkshire pudding looks inviting - and glad to see Phoebe tucking in this time!
ReplyDeleteMy husband's aunt was from Wakefield and always boasted about her Yorkshire puddings made the "proper" way. When we finally sampled it, I can only say that it was almost inedible (as was her overcooked beef). The pudding was heavy and greasy. When I mentioned this to another Yorkshire friend sometime later, she told me that the aunt's pudding was in fact the correct way it had been made in the old days. Apparently miners took a big slice of the pudding with gravy, for their Monday lunch. It was stodgy enough to give them energy and fill their stomachs until their evening meal.
Boasted about her Yorkshire puddings? Was she speaking euphemistically? My mother was from a Yorkshire coal mining family and never made stodgy puddings like that Carol! Mum's pudding were as light as "Nimble". Remember that?
DeleteWell, auntie was not someone you could argue with, and perhaps she was talking about the "good?" old days - probably turn of the last century or earlier? My mother, (who's not from Yorkshire) made featherlight Yorkshire Puddings - hers were light as "Nimble" too. Whatever happened to that?
Delete