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Friday 28 August 2015

The General Theory of Chutney

I am talking English chutney here.  Indian Chutney is normally either a spice paste or jam with vinegar in it.  In fact I made some great apricot chutney once by taking some apricot jam, adding vinegar, boiling and Jarring it up.
English chutney is the sort of thing you have with cheese or ham, not curry.  And it is made of three components.
1) Mucilage.  Things that turn into a paste when boiled,  This defaults to Bramley apple but can include swede, tomato, sweet potato etc.
2) Star ingredient. This is the headline taste.  Green tomato.  Runner bean. Courgette.  whatever.
3) Chunks and spices.  For flavour and bite.  Onion, mustard seed, coriander seed , cardamom pods...

Now How To..

First sterilise your clean jars and lids.  i normally rinse them and put in the oven at 120 C for 20 mins.
Then chop your mucilage material fine and add enough vinegar to just cover. I am using swede and apple.
Boil it until it softens, then smush up to a lumpy paste
Add your headline ingredients and chunks and spices.  Here you see runner bean, onion, mustard and coriander seeds.  Simmer until the chunks soften.  How soft depends on your taste but they will soften more in the jar.
Finally add sugar to taste.  When you add the sugar more liquid will magically appear and you will need to boil this off.  At this point you have to keep stirring because once the sugar is in it will burn on the bottom easily.  Once it has little to no liquid on the surface when boiling it is done.
Put it into jars using a jam funnel, wipe round the rim with clean kitchen paper being careful not to burn your hands, then PUT THE LIDS ON WHEN IT IS HOT.
Allow to cool and label it up.
That general procedure will chutney anything.
I prefer half pound (fuck off metric I cook in Imperial) jars for chutney as it is an easier size to use.

Monday 24 August 2015

they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar

More boredom I suppose.
well not all dull.  I am following the Hunter crash with sorrow and interest.  I understand the ban on vintage aerobatics but it saddens me.  Some of those planes are simply lovely, and the Hunter was arguably one of the most beautiful of the lot.  Only the Lightning came close.
Similarly this caught my eye.  One of my main things has always been a trick memory.  This is suffering now due to mental illness and meds, but it grabs hold of things and holds on.  Amongst these things was the fact that Romans would commit suicide or even execute people by going into a sealed room with a charcoal stove.  It was well known.  Not any more.
One salmon of doubt though is the cool to the touch thing.
I don't want to doubt the dude but the C-->CO reaction is very exothermic, in fact drives blast furnaces.  So it must still have been smouldering, though perhaps in the middle of the coals so invisibly.  Heres a tip guys, put water on it.
Now on to me.
I have been on the couch.
Not as in psychiatrist, I mean I have been on the couch since Saturday evening.  Fear of people. Fear of me. Depression. Substance abuse.  My libido has turned off.  For me that is unheard of.
The nights have been drugged sleep (yay zopiclone) and not very restful.
Foal has been off with mrsinky.  Until this afternoon I hadn't seen a human at all.
This afternoon I was supposed to get a 24 hr ecg fitted.  I went to the appointment.  It was hell.
I sat in the waiting room, which had people in it.  I was in a corner and the noise of the people kept getting louder and louder and closer and closer.  and harsher.  It was mush harsher.  Like the noise made by gannets.
I curled down into my seat.  Normally I would do origami to distract myself but my hands were shaking too much.  I couldnt read my knidle because my hands were shaking too much.  So I sat there, curled into a small fetal pose, in the corner crying.  for 40 minutes of waiting time until the ecg fitting nurse called me.
I know what I looked like because I could see myself in the mirror.  White as a sheet, black circles round eyes, tears and snot running down face, stumbling, eyes down.
Nurse didn't comment and just asked cheerily if I could verify my name and was it an ecg.
I stammered out that I didn't think it was worth it, because the state I was in they wouldn't get a normal baseline.  I said I was a MH patient and was having a crisis.  I broke down into hysterical weeping.
She said did I want it or not.
Then she sid should she ask my GP?
I sort of nodded.
She left for 10 mins, then came back.  Said the GP had said reschedule.  And thanks, and goodbye.
That was it.
So, still in crisis, weeping uncontrollably, I shuffled out to my car.
I sent a text to mrsinky expressing my love for her and foal, then worked out that the seatbelt on my car could be extended through the top of the door enough to get a loop around my neck.  a simple loop, then just sit down.  Easy.
I was still waiting for a quiet time in the car park with nobody around when mrsinky called me.  I cried a bit at her.  She told me to go home, get food and reminded me that Sheldon needed cat crunchies.
So unable to let a cat go hungry because of self immolation I went to the convenience shop.
Moral....IAMS saves lives.  Temporarily.

Saturday 22 August 2015

Just think something witty into this space.

I wish that I could write about more interesting things.
For instance a man died today in a Hawker Hunter, a plane my father flew, doing a stunt my dad used to do.  Tragically he also killed others in this appalling accident.  I wish I could write about that or how it made me feel.
I wish I could write of my pride in my friend Percy, who passed his CBT today.
I wish I could write of my indignation at Middle East conflict being held up as good for air pollution.
I wish I could write good interesting things like those.
But I cannot.  Because today has been a rollercoaster up and down.  But mainly down.  I am sitting here crying and wishing I would just die.  Literature is full of people who just pine away.  Why not me?
Mrsinky and foal are out tonight, at her boyfriends.  I shouldn't care.  Of course I do.
It has been rough going all day, but I have crashed spectacularly just recently.  I honestly do not know what to do with myself.

Thursday 20 August 2015

When I was younger so much younger than today

Tough one this.
I am in the town which was the closest to my house growing up. It is a tourist dive but it always was.  I am nursing a coffee and thinking.
My life here was an unmitigated nightmare. The sort of thing you write books about. I am still looking over my shoulder for the people who bullied me here.
But the place is familiar and is better than what awaits me at home.
I am depressed and anxious and really do not want to go back.
This holiday has exhausted me. Acting normal so much for so long is such a strain. I can cry in the shower but that's it.
Ah well. So it goes...

Thursday 13 August 2015

This space intentionally gloomy

I have not posted in a while because I have had a lot of distractions. It has been my time to take Foal on Holiday.  As ever this was a cobbled together thing from the start.  I have been too ill to contemplate booking something and so have ended up at my parents place in Somerset.
There are lots of things to do here.  We have visited Glastonbury, and Bath (the Roman baths), had a day on Lilstock beach and spent a night camping under the stars.


And indeed during this time I have had some lovely times with Foal. She has had her moments of grim, to be sure.  She is on the edge of adolescence and that's tricky for everyone.  But there have been some bits that are lovely.  So this impromptu holiday is working out ok.
So on the whole I should be relaxing and enjoying life.
But... you knew there was a but, right?
I have now been taking Bupropion for rather a longish time, nearly 4 weeks.  To be fair it hasn't had any noticeable side effects.  But it hasn't actually had any other effects either.  I have been depressed.
 Well that is a bit of an understatement.  Day 3 here was Lilstock.  Went with my brothers family, (SIL, Nephew, Niece, Nieces BF, brother), had beach BBQ.  Went exploring the old ruins at Lilstock.
Even sunbathed a bit. SIL being shocked at Oliver the Dragon Tattoo, and tactfully asking if it was a drunken bet. (means nothing by it.  raised by wolves)
My brother was there with his family.  His happy, normal family.  His complete, happy, normal family.
I wanted to die.
I am so convinced that this is the last time I will see foal in this way.  I am also not over the loss of my dream.  My dream was sitting by the fire in a family home, with my wife and children around me.  It was a small dream, but it was mine.  And it is dead.
And so am I.
Dead inside, just waiting for this to stop.
Day before yesterday my shoulder came out in a fairly decisive way.  I cannot support the weight of my arm on it for long.  I am walking around with a sling to rest it a bit. But of course this is putting  strain on my back.  The pain in various places is very strong.
Last night I slept in a tent with Foal, because she wanted to.  It was on her list for this holiday.  Of course that did my joints no good at all.  But actually it was the dreams.  I dreamt that I was losing my job.  I was in the bosses office pleading to keep it, arguing about what I did for him.  But then he sacked me.
It was a nightmare.  I woke drenched in sweat, panting.
But unlike most nightmares it didn't stop.  It was the truth of course.
Today I have been very depressed indeed.  Took Foal to Forbidden Planet, bought some comic books. All the way there I wanted to die.  Not kill myself just die.  The words "...and then he killed himself" kept coming into my head and they felt so welcome and right.  All day I have been walking around, and every time there was a pleasure trigger (muscly bloke, pert young lady, smiley barista) I got a mental voice telling me that no, I cannot have anything like that because I am going to die.
I am holding myself together with spit and sellotape to try and be normal for Foal and the parents.  Trying to get through to the end of this holiday.
Some of my friends have been trying to contact me, but I  cannot speak to them.  I feel hounded by them.  I have no strength to give them, and cannot accept strength from them.  I went for dinner at Cherie's place and that was nice, and chatty etc.  But that was Fake Inky.  I was playing my "I can socialise, look I am normal" role.  I am happy Cherie is in a stable relationship now.  I envy her bloke of course.  But I can see she gets a good deal there.  But in a way Cherie is a reminder of all the wrong turns I have taken in my life, to end up here.
I am planning  a backpacking trip.  Just me, what I can carry and the wilderness.  I will go into the desert.
Who knows, I may even come out.