The third trial batch of a Christkindlemart hot drink seems to have gone down well. The Orangenpunsch involved orange juice, spices, sugar, a bottle of Reisling and glug of rum. This is the one I’ll scale up for the street event. Tomorrow will be another attempt at a glühwein which, I hope, will give me the working recipe for it too.
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I mentioned a couple of days ago about Christmas decorations appearing on the local shops. I noticed tonight–well, I could hardly not–that many houses around us already have decorations up. There were at least five Christmas trees but also, noticeably, a lot of external lights, some of them fairly extravagant given that we are still (just) in November. As I said, I can understand people wanting some brightness at the end of a rough year, but it still feels a bit early to me.
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The only writing I did today was to catch up with 1970 Music to get me to the end of November. There was a point in the middle of the year when I wondered if I’d get this far, partly because there were some really crappy albums released in the summer of 1970, but also because my motivation to do stuff flagged after the first couple of months of lockdown. In retrospect, writing this every night, even on the nights where I haven’t written much, and keeping the 1970 thing going was actually quite important to me to keeping going.
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Music: while I’m feeling vaguely curmudgeonly about early Christmas decorations, here’s the master at work. Tom Lehrer: A Christmas Carol.
I went along to the supermarket earlier; nothing special, just a quick in and out with fresh lemons, but the trip was pretty horrible. Back when this was all new in April and May, I wrote a few times about how much more enjoyable things were without traffic. I had a naive hope that maybe we could come out of lockdown with at least some improvement on the roads.
No such luck.
Scarcity Spice
I’m not sure if it was even busier than pre-lockdown or if it just felt that way, but the walk to and from the shop was distinctly unpleasant. Inside the supermarket was busy, but not so much that I couldn’t get in and out as I planned.
What was noticeable, and has been for a couple of weeks now, is the shortage of spices. I don’t know why this is and a quick search didn’t show anything UK-specific, but the general feel elsewhere seems to be that it is a function of increased demand as people eat in more and difficulties in supplying the demand.
In any event, little tags on the shelves indicated lead times of one to two weeks for some spices to be restocked. Given the usual hyper-efficiency of the supermarket chains, that indicates a problem somewhere in the system.
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No experiments with hot drinks today; we still had a little left over from the last two days to finish. My plan is to make two more experimental batches, but switch the ingredients slightly. I’ll use a cheap reisling in the orangenpunsch, and a cheap merlot in the glühwein. If those recipes work, as I rather think they will, then all that will be left to do will be to scale them up in a couple of weeks time.
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Music: because sometimes only I Ludicrous will do: Roger Dismal then Quite Extraordinary.
Today has been largely taken up with watching episodes of the old Star Wars : Rebels cartoon series. It’s meant for age six and upwards, so I guess I qualify. I hadn’t seen it previously, though I had seen some of the Star Wars : The Clone Wars that preceded it. I didn’t enjoy the Clone Wars as much as I’ve enjoyed Rebels. Enjoyment here is a relative term; maybe better to say it’s been an entertaining, and somewhat mindless, diversion.
It isn’t the only thing I’ve done. I made my first trial batch of Punsch this evening. It’s been well received, although I think it would be improved by using Merlot as a base rather than Cabernet Sauvignon, and cutting back on the cinnamon. It means my head is a bit befuddled at the moment though. Also, since I was fending for myself tonight, I walked to the supermarket earlier and picked up a mixture of fresh and smoked fish and casseroled them with parsley sauce, onions and potatoes. I rather enjoyed it, and there are leftovers for tomorrow too.
My original thought when I woke up was to go for another longish walk as it was a pleasant day. What decided me against it was the thought that the canal towpath would be busy with joggers and cyclists again. Fingers crossed the weather lasts a couple of days. Alternatively, I could walk over to Morningside early in the week and drop a couple of cameras in to have their sensors and screens cleaned. That would be an opportunity to trawl some charity shops. Decisions, decisions.
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Music: the DIre Straits original of this annoys me, largely because of the weedy (and reedy) organ sound. But substitute Cajun accordion for the organ and play it in the bars of Mamu, Louisiana, and you’ve got Charles Mann: The Walk Of Life. One to play with a bit of volume and a kick in your boots on a wooden floor.
After posting last night about feeling unwell (and thanks for the messages: appreciated) I noticed tell-tale signs of a mouse around the gap beneath the cooker, and had the pleasure of setting traps before going to bed.
I slept reasonably well, albeit with some vivid dreams that I can’t remember except that they were vivid, but got up early as no one else wanted to be the first into the kitchen to see if there was anything in the traps.
There was.
The Child
After disposing of the mouse and footling around for a bit, I watched the latest episode of The Mandalorian, which was ace. The makers continue to do simple things very well, and have caught the spirit of both the original film trilogy and the Clone Wars cartoon series (which was interesting, though I didn’t particularly like the way it was animated).
I enjoyed the first series of The Mandalorian, though it was somewhat episodic; the second series is really good, with a more coherent through-story while keeping with the ‘adventure of the week’ format.
Three more episodes to go.
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I got a response to a call for recipes for Austrian rum punch on Twitter last night and have picked out two to try. The first is what I was looking for, a spiced punsch based on red wine, orange juice and rum. The second is a white-wine-based glühwein, and I made a first attempt at that late this afternoon. It was very well received, I’m happy to say, and I think the only real tweak the recipe needs is to have a little more sugar, or possibly honey (I only used 1/3 of the amount of sugar the base recipe suggested).
I’ll have a go at the punsch tomorrow.
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After feeling out of it for the past couple of days, I felt pretty good today until this evening when things caught up with me. Fingers crossed that whatever it was will be gone completely by tomorrow. No writing today.
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Music: reading Austrian and German punsch and glühwein recipes put me in mind of this tune for some reason. I developed an earworm, and now it’s your turn; the Whoopee John Wilfhart Orchestra: In Heaven There Is No Beer (That’s Why We Drink It Here)
I haven’t been at 100% today. You know that feeling when you have flu and you ache all over? Like that, except it isn’t flu and it isn’t the other one. It isn’t a full-on thing, just enough to feel it. I’ve already had two naps today, and suspect an early night is in prospect. I don’t actually feel ill, just not right.
I’d meant to write two 1970 music posts today–Gentle Giant’s debut album, and George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. It was during the latter that I had the second (involuntary) nap 🙂 However I did write 500 words of fiction, so that’s progress. The w-i-p is kind of falling into shape although there’s vagueness around some of it. There are some characters who I know are out there but they haven’t introduced themselves to me, and some of those I have met haven’t yet revealed their backstories. Still, I’m at twenty-thousand words, which isn’t bad: if I sustain it that’s a quarter of a short-ish novel or a fifth of what I usually write.
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A WhatsApp group is coming together for our street. Not everyone will take part, and there’s no reason why they should, but enough will to keep communications open during what has the makings of a tough winter. The first order of business is, naturally enough, organising a socially-distanced street party before Christmas. I’ve kind of shied away from that sort of thing in the past, but we had something similar back in June that I thought was very good for connecting people.
Anyway, I was thinking about it and remembered a visit to Vienna just before Christmas 2008. The main reason for being there was to attend an EU conference, but the evening was for exploring. On my old Blog I wrote:
Vienna Is the kind of city where people still dress up to go shopping. It is also, to my great delight, a city in which the noble fedora has not yet abdicated its position as King of men’s headwear. The shops were mostly high end affairs which do not stoop to insult the casual browser by being so vulgar as to indicate the price of items on display. I very much liked that there were a great number of independent, traditional tradesmen with premises – notably tailors and shoemakers. Because of the conference I mostly saw Vienna by evening or night, and while I am generally something of a curmudgeon about Christmas decorations, I have to say that Vienna does them very well and the Christkindlemarkts were a pleasure – as, on a chilly winter’s evening, was the gluewein and (especially) a hot orange punch with rum which I enjoyed.
I’ve never forgotten that hot orange rum punch and, ahead of this proposed street thing, am on the lookout for authentic recipes.
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Music: Part of that journey to Vienna was on Austrian Airlines, and one of the things I liked about it was that, on boarding and deplaning, they didn’t play tinny pop music but Strauss Waltzes over the speakers. So here’s the Vienna Waltz.
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