Doing the Big Shop (Ham House style)

Yesterday was harvest day at Ham House. The day before, the kitchen staff had given the gardeners the shopping list and yesterday, bright and early, the shopping started to be delivered…

…fresh from the ground! Have I showed you all the Ham House kitchen garden? I can’t remember if I’ve talked about it much before. Anyway, here’s some photos of the ‘supermarket’ where we get our vegetables and herbs and fruit.

One of the most noticeable differences of working in a kitchen where the produce is fresh and  organic and homegrown, is the time it takes to get the food kitchen-ready.

The raspberries still have teeny tiny bugs wiggling around trying to eat a bit before they get washed off.

The sorrel takes f o r e v e r to get dry. Even after a pat-dry, a spin and an air dry, each leaf still needs dabbing with dry paper…

The green and purple beans have a kind of sticky furry layer on the outside that dirt refuses to come out of…

The red orache has a shiny veneer on the leaves that makes it hard to figure out whether it’s still wet or not and so requires a sort through and a feel of every single leaf…

The nasturtiums, on the other hand, are easy as pie. They arrive pretty clean anyway. Give em a rinse, spin em, they’re good to go.

It took a good few hours but eventually all the perishable green leafy salad stuff was in the kitchen fridge, all the big vegetables had been washed and the kitchen staff were steadily getting them sliced and chopped and ready for the weekend’s meals and all the more durable greens were in a box of water waiting for their chance to shine in a quiche.

From left to right, we have a huge marrow, some lovely out-of-shape carrots, round yellow cucumbers, long green cucumbers and a cauliflower. In the box of greenery we have lovage, chard, cavolo nero, sage and kale.

And that is how we do the Big Shop at Ham House.

An ode to the potwash boy

O, potwash boy, o, potwash boy,
How lovely are your teapots.
They are so sparkly and so white,
I wish that I could marry you.
O, potwash boy, o potwash boy,
How lovely are your teapots.
(To the tune of, ‘O, Christmas Tree.’)

Now, before you judge me, let me just ask you this. Haven’t you ever been overcome by the sheer sparkly whiteness of a well cleaned teapot? No? Well then, my dears, you have simply not lived.

A teapot is a difficult thing to get totally clean, due to the tea’s fondness for discolouring things. I love a good cup of tea. Love it. But sometimes the tea just makes everything brown and tea coloured – the teapots, the mugs, people’s teeth.

When the potwash boy came to work on Tuesday, I had decided that from this day forth, I would no longer stand dirty teapots. Poor potwash boy. As soon as he arrived, I was like, “Today, we must clean ALL of the teapots and they must not be tea coloured anymore!”

He said he could do it for me and I should leave him to it. I wandered off, keeping a sneaky eye on the teapot challenge, expecting them to be returned a little stained still but hopefully an improvement on the previous situation.

And my god, was I blown away! These teapots SPARKLED! They SHINED! They were like artwork. I fawned helplessly over them, like a lovesick teenager.

“They’re beautiful!” I gasped, looking at the potwash boy, with love in my eyes. “Thank you. Thank you.”

Every time I popped my head round to offer him a cup of tea (which he refused), he was scrubbing a wall down or taking apart bits of machinery to clean down.

I was left stunned, especially considering we’ve never taken that hot metal plate thingy apart before.

It was only shyness that stopped me from asking for his hand in marriage.

What if my teapots aren’t sparkly enough for him? I wondered. What if I don’t take my kitchen apart regularly enough to clean it? No, I’m not good enough for him. He’ll never marry me. He’d see my tea stained mugs at home and run a mile.

And so for now, I just dream. I dream about sparkly clean teapots and milk jugs with no dried milk crust around the edge, about soap and hot water and yellow washing up gloves.

And I am happy.

Fun with eggs

I can just imagine the search terms people will enter today and end up here. Things like, ‘how to bake a cake with eggs’ or ‘how many eggs should I use in a quiche’ or something. And do you know what they’ll get? They’ll get a silly story about my first year of living in halls at university.

There were five of us girls, all sitting around, day in, day out, being all free and away from home. Actually, we started as a six-peice but one of us, we’ll call her Smelly, opted for a life of not washing or being present. We’d find old unwashed pots and pans hidden in her wardrobe when we entered to find all our stuff she had borrowed and never returned. It was like entering a dungeon.

Anyway, I procrastinate, as usual. So we were a five-peice. We spent a lot of time dancematting. I think I have skated over this issue briefly. Now is the time to explain what was really going on. I would play dance mat every day. Every single day. For hours. Hours and hours and hours. I would shower two, sometimes three, times a day following yet another sweat-filled session jumping around in front of the tv. I often had a bit of a limp when I walked. I had blisters on my big toes and my calves were so tight, I couldn’t walk down stairs properly. I had to turn sideways and step gingerly down, both feet on one stair, before being able to move to the next one. As I lived on the first floor and my walk to work took an hour, this became quite a problem.

Another thing we did to pass the time was to play The Egg Game. I don’t know who came up with it. I think it was the product of one of those discussions about wierd facts that surely can’t be true. Do eggs really cook in the microwave, was the discussion at hand.

We took eggs from the fridge, as clearly, the theory must be tested. We each had one. We each drew a face on our egg. We each placed our egg on the glass plate inside the microwave. We closed the door. We set the time going. And we watched. And we sang. And we sang louder in excitement until the singing was screams. We watched. And we screamed.

And nothing happened.

We stopped screaming. We watched. We got bored.

BANG!!

The door of the microwave was thrown open violently and cooked egg nonsense hurled itself out at us all. We SCREAMED and ran as though under attack. Then we laughed nervously, pretending we hadn’t been scared.

Were you scared? No, I wasn’t! Haha! Were you? Was I? No, of course not. No. I wasn’t. Not me…. Definitely not me…. Noooo… Nope.

We approached the eggy microwave and peered in. Only one had gone. Another was squealing threateningly and another had leaked a little and the leakage had cooked white.

There was only one thing for it. We removed the suicide bomber, closed the door and continued the experiment, gripping each other, nervously. One after another, each went. Some barely making a noise. Some throwing their entire contents against the walls of the microwave.

A brief clean up and breather got our heart rates back to normal and now we knew. The next time we were bored, we had a game to play. The Egg Game.

One time, we found a egg which has become legendary in the history of our friendship. The Long Egg. As the name suggests, it was an egg which was longer than your average. I forget exactly how the egg went, but I’m sure that, during it’s time on the battlefields of The Egg Game, it fought valiantly and with great courage. It left a little of itself forever ingrained into the nooks and crannies on the ceiling of it’s fighting arena, the bits you can’t get to with the cleaning wipes, you know.

We salute you, Long Egg. You have a special place in our hearts. Love from the inhabitants of Flat D.

(P.S. We also tried testing another rumour, that if you put a carrot in the microwave for ages then take it out and snap it in half, flames shoot out! This one, sadly, did not work.)

A reflection on my week of swimming

I have noticed some things, both external and internal, about myself since I started swimming.

My body has had a reaction to the regular wetting and drying by giving me dry skin. I have reacted by always having on me moisturisers and nice face and body washes.

My shoulders, which were quite achy after introducing back stroke, have adapted quite well and no longer feel like they are going to drop off whenever I leave the pool. I am a bit worried about getting muscly shoulders and arms, though. We all saw what happened to Madonna’s arms when she became a yoga freak and I just don’t feel that it’s a good look.

Now, it’s nice to be presentable but most women, like me, will probably let their legs go a bit hairier than is socially acceptable before shaving unless there’s a chance they’ll be getting them out for some reason, to wear a dress, for example. Because I have been going swimming every day, there is no rest period for the legs, they must be presentable all the time. For someone who’s quite lazy, it’s a bit of a shock to the system.

My hair isn’t so sure about the whole getting-wet-every-day thing. I put a bit of conditioner on when I shower afterwards but because it’s getting wet every day, I forget which days it needs it’s proper wash on. It also has become more frizzy in general. I think I will get a swimming cap soon.

I’ve also noticed about myself, that I’m not very interactive when I exercise. When I used to cycle everywhere, I didn’t watch the Tour de France with bated breath or ask other friends who cycle to come on a ride with me. And it’s the same with swimming. I’m not that interested in chatting to my fellow swimmers in the shower about the heating in the outdoor pool or how great my session was. Nor will I be putting a Tom Daly (is that his name? The swimming boy?) poster on my wall. I just want to swim, thank you. Does this say something about me? That I’m more interested in myself than other people?

I also don’t know what the big deal about wearing a swimming costume was. I didn’t wear one for years because I was pretty horrified at the idea of being so undressed in public. But now I just throw it on and go.

I’m also very exact about how I do things. When I swim, I make sure I’m doing it properly, I watch other people who are doing it properly and copy them exactly. I’m constantly thinking about every bit of my body when I swim, my arms, where I’m looking, how I’m kicking my legs, how my body is sitting in the water. That’s why I can’t understand when other people don’t swim properly. Back stroke is the most misused stroke I’ve seen so far. People just flinging their arms backward in any old fashion and making an almighty riot about it. Even when I go shopping, I’m very precise about how I walk around the shop, I don’t just head to one place and grab stuff. I go up and down each aisle in the shop, starting at the veg section, missing out the freezer section, and finishing at the cleaning products. When I’m in work it’s the same, everything has a certain place and my equilibrium is all off if things are out of place.

Is there a secret child with OCD hiding inside me? I’m doubting my sanity after admitting how I shop.

So anyway, that’s what my week of swimming has done for me. It’s been great actually. I feel a lot fitter. And my bingo wings are a little less flab and a little more firm. I’m going to keep it up, I think. Not every day but maybe every other day.