Category Archives: Big Stone Gap

Try Turning it off and On?

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Jack gets there just on time again –

My recent experiences trying unsuccessfully to deal with technology –

  1. We were more or less gifted a twenty year old riding mower three years ago. We got it with a flat battery and flat tire but managed to deal with that. However this year time and age finally caught up. After a few weeks of ever increasing problems it’s time had come. I spent a couple of days rehearsing and honing my speech to Wendy justifying the purchase of a replacement. Finally I summoned the courage and said “ about the riding mower, dear’ and she said “yes, get us a new one”!
  2. My four year old laptop finally gave up the ghost after two keyboard replacements so I went on to the dreaded Amazon and ordered a new replacement. It arrived a week later and worked fine for the first few days. Then completely died as I was in the middle of something. I messaged the seller and got a helpful set of instructions which I’d already tried to no avail. Their second response was a link to HP’s warranty page and their return policy, which showed we’d get our money back less 20% and less a further 20% because we didn’t report the fault within three days. When we went to the HP site we discovered our new laptop was over a year old and out of warranty. Sigh!
  3. Wendy lets me out of the house during the current lock-down every two weeks to do the garbage run to the local re-cycling place. As there are usually a number of sacks, I take our SUV “Black Angus’ (a Dodge Journey). Today I went out, loaded the sacks, got in and turned the key – clunck! It seems that modern cars run stuff in the background even when parked and switched off. So not designed for lock-downs when they might not be run for a couple of weeks. Luckily we have a charger and a long cable!

I remember being quite enthused about new technology when I was younger – cars you could work on yourself that didn’t need a computer to be plugged in, cassette players, open reel tape recorders, LPs that had sleeves you could read, dial up internet with that crazy sound. But it began to suck us into an over dependency – – –

On technology!

Food, Food – – –

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Jack will still post as Wendy takes a break – –

I’m not sure when I got interested in cooking – maybe around when Wendy and I got married.

 

Growing up in a Northern European country meant food was just fuel to keep you going. So it wasn’t until I first traveled to Southern Europe with my band that I really discovered what a meal could be, the varieties of food to be savored and dinner as a social gathering.

 

I had already, though, discovered curries as Indian restaurants multiplied throughout Scotland.

 

All of that got me interested in discovering discovering new dishes and re-discovering old ones.

 

Some of the old ones –

 

  • Fish n’ Chips – The secret is to fry in lard and to fry the chips three times at ever increasing temperatures.
  • Steak pie – boil the steak for a long time and put Bisto in the gravy.
  • Steak bridie – same as the steak pie.
  • Sausage rolls – the secret is to make your own sausage filling and use real breadcrumbs.
  • Shepherd’s pie – try to get fresh peas.

 

Some of the new ones –

 

  • I discovered how Indian restaurants make a big batch of basic curry sauce and I do that all the time now.
  • Finding by trial and error the different roasting times for vegetables.
  • Baking fish in foil.
  • Experimenting with overnight marinades, particularly for chicken tikka.
  • Using an outdoors charcoal grill.

 

Wendy is the baker, and her specialties are cookies, breads and desserts.

 

Just some of the things we get up to during lock-down!