A mess of pottage

Jun9

For Sunday lunch yesterday we had a roast chicken (most unusual for us to have a Sunday roast—that happens about twice a year), and in the evening I stripped the carcass and made a stock with the bones and skin and the onion that I had stuffed into the bird’s cavity.

Not a chicken: a house at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum.

Today I was looking in the fridge, thinking about what kind of leftovers supper I could make, and suddenly I had a brainwave—pottage! A few years ago Chap and I visited the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum, and in the Tudor kitchen there we watched a lady cooking pottage on an open fire, using just leeks, carrots, pearl barley and stock. She gave us some to try, and it was scrummy—a pleasant surprise as it looked none too appetising. This morning I realised we had the makings of the pottage we had tried: some nice leeks and some rather sad-looking carrots in the vegetable drawer, a packet of pearl barley, the chicken stock and a small jugful of leftover gravy from yesterday’s chicken. Hurrah!

I had a quick google around for pointers, and came across this video recipe—filmed in the very same kitchen at the Museum.

The video recipe has onions, leeks, parsnips, spinach, oats and herbs, and no carrots or pearl barley, but I gather that a pottage was a thick vegetabley stew using up whatever grain or pulse was to hand and whatever fresh produce was in season: no refrigerators or imported fresh foodstuffs in those days. Anything goes seemed to be the rule of the day.

So I winged it. Here’s how I made it:

Slice two leeks and four carrots, and sweat in a dollop of butter in a big saucepan over a medium heat. Season with salt and freshly-ground black pepper to taste, then add 100g (3.5 oz) of pearl barley. Stir around, then add the stock (I had about a litre of stock, I think, and I also added about 0.25 litre of leftover gravy (made with the chicken juices from the roasting pan, a tiny bit of cornflour, and water).

Pottage ingredients (from top to bottom): fresh homemade chicken stock, leftover homemade gravy, carrots, leeks, pearl barley.

Sweating the leeks and carrots in butter, with salt and freshly-ground black pepper.

Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for about an hour to an hour and a quarter (75 minutes), until the pearl barley is soft and has absorbed a lot of the liquid. Serve with crusty bread.

Supper, medieval stylee.

This recipe could easily be made into a vegetarian one by substituting vegetable stock for the chicken stock (and missing out the chicken gravy). As all the ingredients are pretty bland, flavour-wise, it stands or falls according to the quality (tastiness) of your stock.

Weald and Downland Open Air Museum website link.

Making space for nature: peregrine falcons at Salisbury Cathedral

Jun9

Here’s a story that warmed the cockles of my heart: peregrine falcons have successfully nested for the first time in 61 years at Salisbury Cathedral, in a nest box placed half way up the spire. The breeding pair have produced three chicks, and even better: there’s a webcam on which you can watch their progress.

Peregrine falcon and chicks on Salisbury Cathedral spire, 2014.

The 800-year-old Salisbury Cathedral is truly stunning. Its spire is the tallest in the UK, standing at 123 metres (404 feet) high. In 1995 I was very lucky to work on an archaeological project in the storerooms of Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum, opposite the magnificent west front of the Cathedral. At the time the west front and spire were being restored and I would watch the tiny ant-like stonemasons way up on the scaffolding, and admire their skill and nerve. It’s wonderful to think that peregrines are now flying around that same spire. Lovely news (perhaps not so lovely for the pigeons, mind …)

Salisbury Cathedral, showing the spire and the West front. Photo by Hugh Chevallier, June 2013.

I can heartily endorse the wise words of Gary Price, the clerk of works at the Cathedral: “I feel privileged to have played a small part in securing the peregrines’ presence here at Salisbury Cathedral for many years to come. It’s reassuring to know that a few small steps by various people can make all the difference to the local wildlife.”

This is such exciting news, and next time I go shopping in Salisbury I’m going to sit in the Cathedral Close until I see a peregrine. 🙂

Salisbury Cathedral website link.

She sells sea shells

Jun9

I love learning new things. I had a prospective customer contact me recently about an Art Deco abalone and mother of pearl brooch for sale in my Etsy shop. She mentioned it would pair nicely with her maireener necklaces in the same colours. I’d never come across the word maireener before, so scurried off to google for a quick search, and learned it is a type of sea shell found only in Australia, is also known as the rainbow kelp shell, and has been used by Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples in their jewellery for millennia. Aunty Dulcie Greeno is an Aboriginal woman living in Launceston in Tasmania, and she continues the tradition, making beautiful necklaces which she sells. She travels twice a year to the Furneaux Islands, where she was born, to collect the shells.

A maireener (rainbow kelp shell) necklace by Aunt Dulcie.

A maireener (rainbow kelp shell) necklace by Aunty Dulcie Greeno. Simply gorgeous!

I find shell jewellery so attractive, and I’m guessing other people do too as it accounts for a good proportion of my sales so far. I have already sold a stunning Arts and Crafts abalone brooch attributed to Scottish jeweller Mary Thew, and a small abalone and silver brooch with a triangular motif. I have a couple more still for sale—my favourite of all my pieces is an Art Nouveau abalone and silver brooch, and I also have the funky Art Deco brooch mentioned above, and a Mexican abalone and silver pendant and chain.

There’s something about the iridescent peacock colours of abalone I find absolutely irresistible—the opals of the sea! Or as my prospective customer so eloquently put it: ‘Excellent elegant mermaid wear’.

Arts and Crafts abalone and silver brooch, attributed to Scottish jeweller Mary Thew (NOW SOLD).

Detail of the abalone plaque

Silver and abalone brooch (NOW SOLD).

Stunning Art Nouveau abalone and silver brooch, for sale at Inglenookery. (NOW SOLD).

Art Deco abalone and mother of pearl brooch, for sale at Inglenookery. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage Mexican sterling silver and abalone pendant and chain, for sale at Inglenookery. (NOW SOLD).

Orange!

Jun8

In an earlier post I mentioned that orange is my favourite colour. I love colour—the brighter the better, and for me, orange is the best of all. It’s sunshine and happiness in a colour. It’s hard to be grumpy when there’s orange around.

Orange in my garden (and a couple of others):

Meconopsis cambrica (orange Welsh poppy) in our garden. It’s a lot more orangey and less yellowy in real life than this photo suggests – a sort of pale tangerine colour.

Lathyrus aureus, This one's my baby - I grew it from seed.

Lathyrus aureus, a low-growing perennial member of the pea family. This one’s my special baby – I grew it from seed.

Buddleja globosa in our garden. This flowers earlier than the common buddleja (B. davidii) and it’s so unusual: lovely globby, bobbly flowers.

Buddleja globosa. This flowers earlier than the common buddleja (B. davidii) and it's so unusual: lovely globby flowers. And they just had to go in an orange jug!

And they just had to go in an orange jug!

Clivia miniata. I put these out for the summer but they have to come inside for the winter before the first frosts. They need to be in a shady spot as the sun can burn their leaves badly. The seed pods are so pretty too, and clivias are easy to grow from seed.

Crocosmia × crocosmiiflora ‘Star of the East’ with a few orange Tropaeolum majus (nasturtiums) in a garden I designed in Berkshire.

Erysimum (wallflowers) and lily-flowered tulips (possibly Tulipa ‘Ballerina’) at Lytes Cary in Somerset, a wonderful National Trust property.

And recently I realised I’d been buying an awful lot of orange and reddy-orange things for my shop on Etsy:

Baltic amber and 800 silver ring by Wilhelm Becker of Pforzheim, Germany. (NOW SOLD).

Baltic amber and sterling silver ring, by Niels Erik From of Denmark. (NOW SOLD).

Art Nouveau style Baltic amber and silver ring. (NOW SOLD).

Art Deco carnelian and silver lavalier necklace. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage carnelian agate big bead necklace. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage Art Deco carnelian glass lavalier necklace. (NOW SOLD).

Art Deco glass necklace, probably Czech glass. (NOW SOLD).

Victorian banded agate brooch. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage faux amber and 830 silver flower brooch, possibly Danish. (NOW SOLD).

So then I had to go on a blues and greens and purples and pinks buying spree—such hardship!

Making space for nature: swallows

Jun6

Recently Chap and I were at the Dorchester Curiosity Centre, a favourite spot for rootling about among antiques and bric a brac, looking for treasures. It’s on an old industrial estate in a series of interlinking hangar-like rooms. One of the areas has high sliding doors to the outside and is used for furniture storage rather than display—and what drew us in there was the twittering of swallows. As we were admiring them as they flew in and out through the open doors, the owner (?) of the centre came by and chatted with us about how they come every year and nest in the eaves and holes in the gable end of the wall, and how he had hung up some protective sheets overhead to keep the droppings from landing on the furniture (and punters). He mentioned that some customers had said he should shoo them away and prevent them from nesting. We were so glad he chose to ignore those people—swallows are such a delight and their nesting spots are increasingly under threat. And they will certainly draw us back there!

Swallows (image from Richard Crossley - The Crossley ID Guide Britain and Ireland)

Swallows (image from The Crossley ID Guide Britain and Ireland, by Richard Crossley).

Our village church has a Swallow Mess Committee (I don’t think they call themselves that …) as swallows nest every year in the porch. The members of the SMC duly clear up after them. I think they might even have a rota for oomska duty.

Swallow chicks in their nest (and oomska). Photo by User:Wsiegmund on Wikimedia.

Another church I know has an umbrella hanging upside-down below the nest in the porch to catch the mess. We are so grateful that people go to this kind of trouble for our feathered friends: an English summer wouldn’t be the same without them. Chap and I keep a nature diary and every year we note the date of various spring ‘firsts’—first brimstone, first bat, first clump of frogspawn in our pond, first hedgehog poo on the lawn—but the first swallow is the one that means the most.

One of my favourite mugs, by Emma Bridgwater (Photo off eBay)

One of my favourite mugs is a swallow one by Emma Bridgwater. I was going to link to it in her shop but it looks like the company doesn’t make that design any more. I shall have to be doubly careful of mine, in that case. And of our great bustard one: that’s a special one and I’ll squeeze a blog post out of it at some point …

Sam Hart Ceramics

Jun6

My lovely and very talented friend Sam makes the most amazing pottery teapots and pots and other wonderful things out of slab clay. I am so in admiration of her skill (I speak as someone incapable of making even the most basic coil pots, let alone anything technical) and her artistry. Her teapots are fun and funky and always make me smile when I see them. They’re stylish and quirky, much like their maker! I love that she uses bright colours as well—her glazes include zingy yellows and lime greens and juicy oranges.

A few years ago she so kindly gave me this little beauty (she knows orange is my favourite colour): aDSCF2153

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and even the feet are fun:

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Sam’s industrial spaceage teapots are fab, with rivets and straps and bolts fashioned out of clay, and decorated with glazed lightning bolts and flames and stars.

Sam sells her pottery online, and her Etsy shop is well worth a visit. Her pots make the most fantastic and unique presents. I heart Sam Hart!

In the garden, late May

Jun2

I took these photos about a week ago, but have only just got round to looking at them. Our garden is a very small cottage garden. I don’t like seeing bare earth in the summer (it’s unavoidable in the winter when the herbaceous plants have died back) so the result is a jungly mess!

Path? What path?

Cirsium rivulare ‘Atropurpureum’. The bees love this thistle.

Angelica archangelica. This self-seeds like mad, given the chance.

Hesperis matronalis (Sweet rocket). Another self-seeder, and gloriously scented.

Iris ‘Holden Clough’.

Allium hollandicum. The prize self-seeder in the garden.

Nectaroscordum siculum, Iris sibirica 'Caesar' and Smyrnium olusatrum (Alexanders). Plus a load of weeds ...

Nectaroscordum siculum, Iris sibirica ‘Caesar’, Smyrnium olusatrum (Alexanders) and Asplenium scolopendrium (Hart’s tongue fern). Plus a load of weeds …

Astrantia ‘Hadspen Blood’.

Clematis ‘Niobe’.

I don’t think the colour reproduction of my camera is very good for photos taken in the garden, as the colours all seem a bit dull and the red and purple tones seem rather ‘off’ to me. But you get the general gist! I love late May in the garden—it’s at its best and everything is so gloriously rampant.

Pleased to meet you …

May29

Big animals in aquaria and small people looking at them …

Genny, a 4,000 pound hippopotamus, at the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, New Jersey, US.

A dugong and a little girl.

More to come once I’ve google searched – there must be a treasury of them out there!

Filming locations: Montacute House

May29

The news that the National Trust’s Montacute House and Barrington Court, both in Somerset, will be closed over the next month or so for the filming of a BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall has given me an idea for a series of posts here on my blog: local places that have been used as filming locations for movies and television programmes.

Montacute House, the east front.

Barrington Court.

Montacute House is a stunning Elizabethan house and estate near Yeovil in Somerset, not too far from us and always a favourite to visit. I remember going there a few years ago with Chap and a friend from Canada who was staying with us. We went in April, I think it was—the first day it was open for the season, after its winter closure. The stewards (all of whom seemed to be middle-aged ladies) were all of a tizzy: it turned out that The Libertine had only just finished filming there in the previous few days, and the highlight for the stewards, who were preparing the house for its opening alongside the filming, was seeing the film’s star Johnny Depp. And even better than that, said one, was seeing him wandering around in the nude. I think he made a lot of ladies there very happy!

While walking in the grounds on that visit we noticed a small sign next to the trunk of a large spreading tree. We went over to see what it said—the tree species, maybe?—and as it was so small we had to get right up to the sign to read it. And so, standing almost under the centre of the canopy, we were amused to read something along the lines of ‘Please do not stand under this tree as it may shed its branches suddenly’. Priceless!

Montacute House was also used in the 1995 film of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, standing in for Cleveland House, the country estate of Mr and Mrs Palmer. (I was lucky enough to witness some of the filming for Sense and Sensibility at Mompesson House in Salisbury – but that’s for another blog post!)

I’m looking forward to Wolf Hall very much – I thought the books on which it is based (Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies) were terrific, and it has a cracking cast, including Mark Rylance, Damian Lewis, Joanne Whalley, David Bradley, Jessica Raine, Mark Gatiss, Claire Foy, Jonathan Pryce, Anton Lesser and Saskia Reeves, among others.

If you were planning a visit, Montacute House is closed until 11 June and Barrington Court from 18 June – 2 July. More details on the National Trust website pages: Montacute Estate; Barrington Court.

A World War I graffito on a beech tree

May28

In the woods near our village is a large beech tree with an interesting graffito cut into the bark of the trunk. (Click on all photos to enlarge).

The graffito.

Underneath a noose hanging from a gallows is a man wearing a spiked helmet, wearing a uniform with a belt and buttons down the front. He might have a moustache (possibly upturning) on his face, but this is less clear. By the figure is written ‘THE KAISER.’, and underneath is written ‘YOU ARE A BUGER.’ ‘Buger’ seems likely to be a mis-spelling of ‘bugger’.

Detail of the figure with his spiked helmet, belt and buttons.

We assume this refers to Kaiser Wilhelm II and was carved into the beech tree sometime during World War I (1914-1918), perhaps by someone who had lost a family member who was serving in the Armed Forces during the war. It could be that ‘The Kaiser’ was the nickname of a local character from our village or the surrounding area and this was carved by someone who was disgruntled with him. I don’t suppose we will ever know for certain, but it is interesting to speculate.

Kaiser Wilhelm II

Spot the similarity? I think with the eye of faith I can even see an upturning moustache on it ...

Spot the similarity? I think with the eye of faith I can even see a moustache on him …

I have contacted Chantal Summerfield, whose PhD at Bristol University is on the graffiti carved into trees by soldiers during World Wars I and II, a lot of it on Salisbury Plain Training Area, and she has expressed an interest in our example, so I hope we might get a chance to show it to her at some point.

We were first shown it by a friend about 20 years ago. We have been keeping an eye on it since then, stripping the encroaching ivy off it at every visit. It is on the very edge of the wood (managed woodland for timber) and so we hope it won’t get chopped down—or that even if it is marked for felling, it might be spared because of the graffito. It used to have holly bushes growing near it and these have recently been cleared, making access easier (and less painful!)

The tree and graffito a few years ago (2009).

The tree in 2014.

Whatever the story behind it, it is a wonderfully evocative voice from the past.