22 Foxhole East

joedenise

Can I have your recipe for Mock Duck please?  Never had that.  Does it actually taste like duck or even look like it?

f0xh0les

For that one I am using Linda McCartneys Hoisin duck from the freezer section.  We have made it with  home made  5 spice seitan run through the grater setting on the food mixer before, but currently I have 'a bag of Linda' in the freezer.  You can get mock duck / chicken / abalone quite cheaply in tins from Asian supermarkets, and for absolutely silly high prices in H&B, and it even has the dimpled 'skin' effect on it, so the stuff in tins does look like it, but the frozen stuff is shredded already, so it is a heat and eat type thing fit  for pancakes or a fried rice. Time to get it out of the freezer.

It is so utterly hammering it down wet here right now, I cannot bring myself, even in a coconut gathering fantasy, to go out.

f0xh0les

And they took another £250 of strike deductions from the pay cheque this month.   He is going to investigate how many days they are billing him for.

joedenise

Thank you f0xh0les.  Unfortunately we don't have any Asian supermarkets where we live - lot's of Eastern European shops though!  Will have a look at the Linda McC's hoisin duck, assuming I can get that in Mr Ts or Morries!

f0xh0les

Yes it is in both @joedenise 

We are very lucky to have a fab tiny little (living room sized) Korean shop 5 mins walk away, but we were absolutely spoilt by the massive car park sized Wing Yip Chinese supermarkets in Manchester city centre.  Oh!   the shops I have loved and left behind! 

I have just found out that the bigger Land of Ice stores carry an Irish malt bread called Veda, which has blown my mind.  The Sunblest Veda is vegan, and I have not had Veda bread since I was about 15 - we were sent to Ireland for the 7 week holiday to work as unskilled labourers for the grandparents every year, well, we were sent to Ireland for every single holiday from the age of 4, back when BA had a nanny service so you could hand your 4 yr old over to a total stranger in London and they could hand them over to total strangers in Belfast (utter madness!) . Veda bread toast with orange marmalade and a cup of  tea  made with the teabags boiled in a steel tea pot on the hob  (the kettle did not boil hot enough, apparently),  was breakfast every day for the whole time until he died.    So the next time I see a big old Land of Ice, I am going on a Veda hunt.  Carpe Veda!

kerri_gt

The Veda bread sounds delicious, i will keep an eye out.
It's just made me think of Mothers Pride bread that you can only get in Scotland,  and randomly in the Tesco Metro when I used to be at uni at the Elephant and Castle. 🤷‍♀️ 
Its has also been chucking down felines and canines here today. 
And i must have angered the window gods, cleaned round one of our new windows and found a piece of edging has a crack in it, the toerags had covered it with a thin line of filler 🙄 so call to the boss man on Monday, hopefully   it can be sorted without major works. 

f0xh0les

I was always surprised the Mothers' Pride in Northern Ireland was a totally different animal to the Mothers' Pride loaf in England.

Today I got up, and scrumped apples with DS3 and DS4, and was back home by ten past nine. Watched politics with lovely coffee, did the normal boring loads of laundry and hassled kids to do their flippin' homework, baked some peanut shortbread, and coconut and cherry wholemeal scones, asked the kids about their homework etc..

The hoisin duck pancake meal with miso soup and dumplings went down ridiculously well.  They even forgot to argue while eating.  Monumental.   Everyone loved it and peace and harmony reigned for about 15 minutes.  Who knew that would be all it took?  Hassled them about their homework again.  Then watched football, made sausage sandwiches for tea - after the amount of food they put away at lunchtime, a sandwich and a scone is a fine offering at 6pm.    Watched more football and while I was watching, I saw someone had posted up on the local recycling page that their tv turns itself off when you turn it on and did anyone want it. Aha! methought,  the capacitors no doubt, so I am picking it up this week and hopefully it will be a sub £5 fix.  It might even be a £0 fix as we have some capacitors left over from the last time our tv started to turn off when we turned it on (it was a blown capacitor - did you guess?).  And then I thought, why don't you search for a double bed frame - and lo and behold there was one offered. So I am picking that up just after the tv. So by Tuesday night I could have DS2 in a bed that does not look like a ski slope, and another working tv so the smallest kids do not fight over who gets to use the tiny one with the ps4 or the Xbox.  Not a bad afternoon on the sofa eh? I am still hassling the kids to do their homework (so far I know one out of four is finished) at 8.15pm. 

Sometimes I feel I should just make a sign and walk around the house in hourly intervals and wave it in their doorways.  

The same with a 'Do your laundry or you will have to go to school naked (again) ! ' sign

Anyway, time for  more tea and another scone.   Rock n Roll on a Sunday night - sometimes I bore myself.......

in_need_of_direction

I love Veda and have to buy it in when overseas sister returns here.  It’s weird how when I was growing up, I was unaware of how NI specific so many breads were.  I have another 10 bread and potato free days to go but am completely craving two slices of plain bread slathered in real butter sandwiching a bag of tayto cheese and onion.

f0xh0les

The kids have fond memories of Tayto Park (a theme park in Ireland dedicated to Tayto Crisps - I kid you not!) and still sing that flippin' song when they want to be annoying.  Mr Tayto even ran for President (publicity stunt).

We leapt in the car yesterday after I took the kids to school, and went and picked up the tv - butchered it last night, it is not the capacitors so I ordered a new circuit board off ebay (2nd hand) for £5 and we will swap it out and see if it works now.  At the end of the day it is a  32" flat screen  that might work with a £5 spend.  Should arrive tomorrow.

The bed frame went up, and surprised DS2 when he came home from school.  He decided to get in to it and not speak to us for the rest of the night.  He was so flippin rude!  How he can be rude and silent at the same time is beyond me.  And the amount of filthy dirty clothes on his floor was awful!  Anyway, it was deep cleaned and hoovered, and he did not appreciate it in the slightest.  Kids eh?  Had to boil wash 2 weeks worth of white shirts to get the sweat stains out of them (gag!) 60 degrees for 2 and a half hours managed to do the job.  I do not understand why he thinks that him sitting in a smelly bedroom is getting back at me.  Not even sure what he is getting me back for either!  

So that is 1 more thing off the list, still need to find him a nice mattress, was in the hospice c/s and found what appeared to be a double sided (turnable/flipable) single mattress that does not even look used. So bought it for £20, really thick padding, spotless.   Totally forgot I had just given blood and was not supposed to be carrying anything heavy (it is really heavy!) and the rotters in the shop just let me struggle with it out to my car, not an offer of help or anything, but I was not going to pay £15 delivery on a 200m journey.   Then dropped one corner putting it in the back of the car with the seats down, and got dirt on it.   Grr, soapy water and a sponge time.

All in all, some things got done, DH looked through a bathroom catalogue (!!) I told him he would be surprised at what strong feelings he didn't know he had about bathrooms -he was highly sceptical - a bathroom is a bathroom - until he was about 20 pages in and started 'Oh NO! NO! NO!'- ing,  and 'That's horrible' -ing,  and 'Who has a stained glass window in the bathroom??' -ing all over the place. He ended up closing the catalogue, looking at me and saying, 'I never knew I could have such a strong reaction to bathroom fittings!'  I will have a look through it later and decide what we can agree on.  Probably nothing!

Now I am knackered and am going to go and have lunch with DH (only in the kitchen - not eaten out since DS2s birthday on the first weekend in February).  He should be saving a flippin fortune on lunch money spending and his posh coffee habit - not sure he is though.   

f0xh0les

OMG! Just had phone parents' evening chat with the teacher, she was very impressed with DS4s broad range of knowledge - in particular his written piece on Electricity, and  how solar power is good for growing cannabis (kill me now!).  He left out the pertinent information about the house next door being turned into a cannabis farm and he knows this because the police and electricity board came and disconnected the meter and asked lots of questions about who had been living there, etc etc etc,  no, none of that,  just about high electricity consumption and the environmental benefits of solar powered hydroponics.  I will never be able to look the woman in the face! First day in a new class and he writes  about that.  So we have had a chat about CONTEXT and now he knows - it is 2 n's and one b       I am all about the spelling.

  I am surprised we have not had social services round.  Except I know thel senior social  worker socially and she would have laughed her socks off at the idea of me being some kind of drug baron.   I must ask her the next time I see her.