Chicken and vegetable soup - Great news if you have a cold

1 packet of Telma chicken noodle soup
1 large carrot, cleaned and diced
1 stick of celery, cleaned and diced
3 baby potatoes, cooked, peeled and diced
A few chunks of breast taken from a boiled chicken
Lemon to serve

Pour 1 litre of water in a large saucepan.  Bring to the boil and add the chicken noodle soup.  Stir gently with a whisk and simmer until the noodles start to cook.  Add the carrot, celery, chicken chunks and potatoes and continue to simmer for about 15 minutes to allow the celery and carrot to cook.

Serve with whatever bread you have to hand and with wedges of lemon.

Cats in films and books

Lots of cats appear in Aesop's Fables.
Lady MacBeth in MacBeth mentions The Cat in the Adage.
Si and Am are the two Siamese cats in Disney's Lady and the Tramp.
Raton was in La Fontaine's The Monkey and the Cat.
Jake was the cat in Outer Space.
Catwoman filmed an Egyptian Mau named Midnight.
Monty was the tabby cat in the Stuart Little films.
Sergeant Tibbs was a cat in One Hundred and One Dalmations.
The 1985 film Cat's Eye had a cat hero called General.
Thomasina in The Three Lives of Thomasina.
Escape to Witch Mountain had a black cat called Winky.
Lucifer was Cinderella's stepmother's cat in the film Cinderella.
Antonio Banderas was the voice of Puss in Boots in Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third.
Rufus was the cat in the film The Rescuers.
Midnight in Cat Woman was an Egyptian Mau.
Sassie (a Himalayan) was in Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey.

My version of Carluccio's Layered Panettone

Over the festive season, I didn't want to make many puddings as my husband is on a fat free diet awaiting the removal of his gallbladder.  So I bought a Christmas pudding which he was able to eat but without custard or cream.

I saw Carluccio making this pudding on television and was very tempted to try it.

Ingredients:

Serves 6

• 1kg ricotta
• 140g caster sugar
• 70g candied fruit, finely chopped
• 40g flaked almonds
• 50g plain chocolate shavings/chips
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder, plus extra for dusting
• 600g panettone, cut into
• 2 round discs and the rest lengthways into slices lengthways 2.5cm thick
• 175ml Vin Santo

Instructions:

Mix together half of the ricotta with half of the sugar in a medium-sized bowl until creamy. Then fold in half of the candied fruit, half of the almonds and half of the chocolate chips until well combined, and set aside. In another medium-sized bowl, mix the remaining ricotta and sugar with the cocoa powder until creamy. Stir in the remaining candied fruit, flaked almonds and chocolate chips and set aside. Line a 15cm diameter pudding basin or a deep bowl with clingfilm, leaving quite a bit of excess around the edges.
Line with the slices of panettone and, using a pastry brush, brush about three-quarters of the Vin Santo over the cake slices. Fill with the chocolate ricotta mixture, which should fill half the basin. Take one of the round panettone discs, place over the top and press, then drizzle over some of the Vin Santo. Fill with the white ricotta mixture and cover with the other panettone disc, then drizzle with the remaining Vin Santo. Bring up the overhang of clingfilm and place a weight on top (a plate with a bag of sugar on it, for example), and place in the fridge for at least 6 hours.
Remove from the fridge, take off the weight and the clingfilm over the top. Turn upside-down on a plate. Carefully remove the pudding basin and peel off the clingfilm. Dust with sifted cocoa powder and serve.

30/10/11 Desserts, Two Greedy Italians Recipes

I don't like almonds so changed those for chopped hazelnuts.  I think some glace cherries would be a nice addition and maybe some raisins. 

Lamb fillet in a soy sauce and honey glaze

Our whole family love lamb, so I decided to perk it up a little with a rich and sticky sauce.  A change from roasting it or making a curry!

Serves 4 to 6

8 pieces of fillet neck lamb

Bunch of spring onions, washed and finely chopped

Half a cucumber, washed and cut into large chunks

Olive oil

Baby tomatoes

Oregano....1 tablespoon

Kikkoman soy sauce......2 tablespoons  ( www.kikkoman.co.uk )

A splash of  good quality balsamic vinegar

A dessert spoon of  good quality honey

Salt and pepper to taste

To serve:  mashed potato with half of the spring onions, German mustard, cream and butter.......any dark green vegetable such as purple sprouting broccoli, asparagus, green beans.

In a large frying pan, heat some olive oil, just enough to seal the lamb.  Add the lamb and cook for about 2 minutes until the meat is sealed.  Remove with a slotted spoon on to a plate and set aside.  

Put half the spring onions in the oil and cook until translucent.  Add the cucumber, baby tomatoes, oregano, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, honey, salt and pepper to taste.  Continue to cook for about 2 minutes to amalgamate the ingredients.

Transfer the meat to an oven proof dish with lid and pour over the ingredients from the frying pan.  Lay half the green vegetables in the tray.  Cook in an oven preheated to 180C for 20 minutes (rare) or 25 minutes (medium).
 

 

Serve with the creamy mashed potatoes and the other half of the green vegetables, gently steamed with a little salt.

Filenes in Boston, Selfridges in London, Keddies in Southend

If I was a television scriptwriter, I would follows in the footsteps of Andrew Wynford Davies involved with the popular "Mr. Selfridge," first televised in 2013.

Department stores have always been popular and often considered "a bit of a treat" for people who lunch or enjoy afternoon tea.

Names to remember in the UK are many.  Most of them started as drapers and expanded.  H. Binns Son and Co. Ltd. was incoporated in 1897 and went on to produce stores in Sunderland, Darlington, West Hartlepool, Middlesborough, Newcastle upon Tyne, South Shields, Grimsby, Carlisle and Hull in England.  In Scotland, stores appeared in Dumfries and Edinburgh.  House of Fraser took over Binns in 1953.

There was Featherstones of Rochester, Keddies in Southend which opened in 1892 and went into liquidation in 1996.  Most large towns had the department centre at the core of its shopping areas.

Do you remember Marshall and Snelgrove?  It is now part of the Debenhams Group.

John Lewis is 150 years old this year.  John Lewis himself a draper, found a job in Oxford Circus with another draper, Peter Robinson.  In 1864 John set up his own shop in Oxford Street selling ribbons and bows.  Around 1905 John purchased Peter Jones in Sloane Square, Chelsea.

Charles Harrod, aged 25, set up his business in Southwark back in 1824.  He too listed the business as a draper and haberdasher.  Customers using the escalator in 1898 at Brompton Road were offered a brandy at the top, to help with their "ordeal."

France boasts Galeries LaFayette and Printemps.
Spain has Corte Ingles

Think of New York and Macy's, Bloomingdale's and Barneys come to mind.

Cats' Vocal Chords and Purring

Cats have 10 times as many vocal chords as dogs.  Dogs have 10 and cats have 100.

Cats can vibrate the muscles underneath their vocal folds, very slowly, producing a purr.  Domestic cats purr at a rate of about 26 cycles per second, similar to the frequency of a diesel engine as it idles.  Purring doesn't always mean the cat is happy.  It can also be a sign that a cat is in pain or some distress.

Cats rarely meow at each other, reserving this sound for their interactions with humans.

Jacobson's Organ in Cats....What it does

Humans only have about 5 to 20 million olfactory smells, where as cats have around 60 to 80 million.  The Jacobson's organ is located on the roof of a cat's mouth.  It detects and analyses pheromones (scents), especially the ones found in urine.  The scent is collected in the mouth and the cat uses its tongue to flick it up to the vomeronasal organ.  During this process, the cat will curl its upper lips in what appears to be a grimace and this is called the flehmen response, facilitating the transfer of pheromones into this vomeronasal organ.