jonab
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Posts posted by jonab
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One of the secrets of the "Guinness" looking coffees was that the coffee itself was loaded with sugar. The high density of this bottom layer enabled the less dense cream to float on the top. I remember the looks of despair on the faces of the staff when someone requested their coffee to be unsugared.
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Aren't all chain stores like that in the UK? Here it is the norm (and sometimes one item is given free) when they make a mistake like that. Competition is so fierce, stores have to do all they can to get - and maintain - business.
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With the temperatures you're getting in the UK you should be able to sun dry them.
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The weather here is fairly tolerable at the moment. The steep cliffs/mountainsides above and below Bar-S-L make for some interesting and highly efficient air currents so there is usually a breeze when everywhere else in the area is suffering from the static heat.
Another thing is that there are plenty of springs around and about issuing (almost) ice cold water (l'eau de source) from the higher Alps and the Massif Centrale (Mont Blanc). I am able to direct this water to my pool to keep it at a reasonable, relaxing temperature. The water is also wonderfully refreshing to drink (far nicer than commercial mineral waters) but not for doing the washing (full of minerals making it very hard).
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Fenella Fielding was a member of the Playhouse Rep. when I was in the Playhouse club (mentioned previously). She notably played Ranyevskaya in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard - as well as other, more characteristically Fielding-style roles in other productions.
I remember that she couldn't see very well - which could have contributed a lot to her "smouldering" persona.
She most certainly isn't a bloke!
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9 hours ago, DaveN said:
Do you know what day of the week you were born?
Just put the date into a search engine. For example, 25 December 1900 comes up on Goooooogle as a Tuesday. You get a lot of other info as well.
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40 minutes ago, Commo said:
Love it Jonab, such a beautiful place.
It certainly is. You can see why I could never contemplate returning to the UK, I'm sure
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I don't know. It's a couple of weeks now since the fly invasion and they disappeared as quickly as the arrived. The thing I found most odd was their attraction to mint plants.
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You might be interested in where I live as well http://www.beyond.fr/villages/barloup.html
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France very similar to Italy regarding the origin of food and, like Italy, by far the majority of it is local. A notable exception is the shellfish (fruits de mer) sold in the restaurants on the coast (Monte Carlo, Nice, Cannes, Antibes etc.) - most of the shellfish is imported from Scotland. None the worse for that, though. It is flown down daily and is probably as fresh, or fresher, than similar Scottish shellfish sold in England - of which there is a lot!
Regarding Pangasio (Pangasius in Fr.), I saw this once in a supermarket and did some investigation about it. Known as Basa or Vietnamese river cobbler in English. As you say, nonnaB, it does sound quite horrible and there is all sorts of Wiki advice not to eat it, considering its dubious origins (bottom feeding in murky, polluted rivers). Eat it? Never!
There isn’t much in the way of shops in Bar sur Loup but Grasse is just down the road with a whole range of traditional French food shops including a fishmonger (very near to the Med.) There are also supermarkets which I avoid as far as possible.
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Similar with me. I couldn't contemplate moving back to Nottingham, or even to England. Been away far too long.
I have some very fond memories of Nottingham (and not quite so much Hucknall) but things were becoming ominous, unpleasant and quite scary where I lived (Second Avenue, Sherwood Rise) and I somehow felt the approach of the Hyson Green riots even in 1978 when I left to live in Kent. I know the riots were some years later but there was a definite unease around the area a long time before that.
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I think you may have missed the point, Oz. Or have I missed it? I am reminded of the late, great Gerard Hoffnung addressing the Oxford Union regarding the Swiss hotelkeeper describing his hotel: "There is a French widow in every room offering delightful prospects."
More seriously, those PVC flaps are similar to the ones I have over my doors although for studio wall (fully open the to outside in the heat) I don't bother as it is effectively outdoors anyway. Any small creatures (insects or birds) come and go as they please without feeling trapped.
One thing with the PVC flaps, though, is that I had to have foil earthing strips placed near the bottom as I found that dogs were scared of going near the strips. I found out it was due to static electricity build-up as the dogs brushed through them and the dogs ended up having electric shocks.
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There was a sort of commemorative Midsomer Murders devoted to the ATA starring June Whitfield as the Mary character. Picked it up from satellite a few months ago.
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8 hours ago, loppylugs said:
Bug screens common on all widows everywhere I've lived over here. Canada and the US.
On which part of the widow do the screens fit? How are they attached?
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On 3/23/2016 at 1:02 PM, MelissaJKelly said:
Torville and Dean!
Don't know about a statue but there is a film to be made
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Looks like one of my agave plants will flower this year. This is both good and bad news. First, it is rare for them to flower here (being native to Mexico and not called century plants for nothing) but when they do flower the show they put on is quite spectacular - the flower grows on a spike which can easily reach six metres in height (the plant is about 2 metres tall and wide). The bad news is that they die after flowering and a new agave plant ain't cheap. Also, they are reputed to stink really disgustingly when dead and rotting so I will have to arrange disposal of the remains -which is not easy as they are covered with loads of very sharp spines which do not rot.
Oh well, c'est la vie (as they say in France).
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Jill,
Fresh juniper berries are a bit like blackcurrants (provided they're ripe) with a faint gin-like flavour. They're sweet and juicy, nothing like those nasty dried-up things that you get in supermarkets in the UK. Mixed with an equal weight of sugar and boiled they make a very tasty conserve which, as I say is very nice on buttered toast or with chèvre.
I entirely agree about juniper oil - even more so juniper wood oil (cheap version).
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Being picky, ticks are not insects but arachnids and thus related to spiders and mites.
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Ticks gorge on the victim's blood - so much so that they become almost spherical. It is then they are "poppable"
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I first became aware of ticks when I moved here and they seem to be becoming more and more common. I've heard they are fairly common in the south of England now and gradually moving northwards.
Horrible little creatures but they do make a satisfying "pop" when squashed. Problem there is that upon squashing, they splatter blood all over the place. You just have to hope it's not yours.
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There's a shop in Amsterdam wholly dedicated to Christmas all year round (ironically closed on Christmas Day).
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I pick ticks from my dogs almost daily in the summer months. I have a tick remover which looks like very fine tip tweezers. Reasonably effective provided you get right down to the head of the creature and pull it all off. A folk remedy here is to cut a juniper berry in half and apply that to the tick and it's supposed to drop off. Don't know whether that works but it is useful to apply a squashed juniper berry as an antiseptic when the tick has been removed.
Note: I think the reason for using juniper berries for this purpose is that it is known that juniper has antiseptic properties and it is very common growing wild around here. There is a local conserve of juniper made by mixing juniper berries with sugar. Very tasty on buttered toast.
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My folks were caught by an encyclopedia salesman when I was about 6 or 7.
It was the summer holiday time and I was away staying with my granny. The salesman somehow found out that I was not at home and also got to know some of my interests. This gave him the introduction. He began by saying he was from "The Education Department". I was (and still am) that they were taken in by this but they obviously thought the fella represented the Notts education authority.
Anyway, my parents spent a huge amount of money on a set of encyclopedias (which they continued to pay for several years and which they could ill afford) for a set of books which were useless. Nicely printed and bound but useless nevertheless.
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The Elbow? Don't forget The Empire Caff as well.
Berni Inns....
in General Chat about Nottingham
Posted
Something you might try, Oz, is to lightly whip some either whipping cream (if available over there) or double cream - just enough to thicken it and to incorporate some air and then carefully spoon that over the top of the coffee.
The cheats way is to use cream from a nitrous oxide cream whipper or from an aerosol can. Guaranteed to float then.