Observations from a Hill

Two gratuitous food posts on the trot I'm afraid: tonight's repast of rolled breast of lamb marinated in garlic, lemon juice and olive oil; stuffed with dates, rosemary, flat-leaf parsley, cardamom and bay leaves; rolled and slow-roasted for a couple of hours and then zapped on high for half an hour. We just ate it with mash: the meat was finger-food and as fatty and garlicky as you can imagine. Interestingly, the stuffing contributed little: the overriding tastes being lamb and garlic. Room for future experiment, methinks. As a very cheap [used to be free in times past] cut of meat with oodles of flavour, I would recommend it to diehard lamb fiends, but not to anyone who's a bit picky about their food: dainty it ain't, and it requires a bit of dextrous chewing to get the best of it. My go-to for satisfying anyone with a taste for sheep, however, will always be shoulder: far superior to leg of lamb in every way. Make it hogget or mutton, and you've got some serious...

  This seemingly insignificant portion of  food was my supper tonight. And let me tell you, it was more than a sufficient amount of sustenance for your humble narrator. It was also delicious and totally ad hoc, having been improvised on the spot. I did my back in earlier today, and both Jane & I were generally jaded by this evening, with Jane opting for Brie and crackers. As we were watching Stanley Tucci's programme on Italy and food, I thought I might rustle up something simple but tasty for myself in a kind of Italian vein with whatever I could find in the kitchen cupboards. Pictured is the result: tagliatelle with olive oil, flavoured with tomato, garlic and chilli. And not half bad it was, too...

It's astonishing how the attitudes of 'free-marketeers' change when genuine competition rears it's threatening head; falling back to a default position of civil [and oft-times criminal] litigation in order to protect their slice of the market and bury the competition at all costs. The bigger the company, the harsher and usually more successful the action. Apple is currently getting in a lather over OpenAI's in-progress hardware stream of business via its acquisition of io, the Jony Ive co-founded design studio. Apple claims that io has been nicking trade secrets and their intellectual property via former employee's 'remembered' and documented knowledge of Apple's hardware development. None of which has currently been shown to have a great deal of substance, and would seem to be based on normal levels of pre-emptive commercial paranoia. This attitude of course is not without precedent, many, many times over in the history of corporate capitalism. I wa...

  Pictured, tonight's meal on the barbie, featuring my ad hoc construction of Black & Decker Workmate and various bits from one of our old storage heaters: the galvanised steel front plate and the bricks therefrom forming the hearth, and an old roasting tin forming the lid. Cooking utensils hang conveniently from the handles of the Workmate, my old welding gloves acting as PPE in handling the hot stuff, and various other bits and bobs serving to increase or moderate the heat. Cost? Bugger all. Result? Pretty much the same as any purchased BBQ. On the food front, the kebabs hiding and cooking under the roasting tin were purchased from the butcher in Llanfairfechan and were lamb & mint. We ate them with salad in pitta bread, and in my case with a good dollop of Encona Carolina Reaper hot sauce. Whilst not for the faint of heart or the inexperienced, this sauce is, I would hazard, not as fearsome as the reputation of the eponymous chilli itself portends, but perhaps I'm no...

  It's time to write my diary and it's time to write this post: measuring time by action and in so doing denying its passage in favour of the moment: this very Zen thought occurred to me as I was writing those [in themselves, locked in time] words, or maybe momentarily after. But now the sentence is writ and the moment gone and posted to the cloud. But I'm still here. In the moment. For now...

The old cliché about 'joined-up thinking' actually has much more substance to it than those that employ it for empty rhetorical effect could ever know [pictured, a graphic from Six Sigma (US) which I think demonstrates my point nicely with or without the spelling and grammatical errors]. The problem we have in so many areas of life and our economy and politics is fragmentation of intent through poor planning and outsourcing; through bad management, reactive thinking and lack of strategic coordination. The big irony at the heart of it all is that blind centralisation of resources is at the very heart of the issue: the very thing that was meant to streamline and make efficient all of the necessary services that drive our society has achieved its diametric opposite; replacing actually [organisationally and cost] efficient service structures, such as the NHS, tax, transport, urban infrastructure and repair; public transport, social services, public amenities, &etc. &etc: ...

  We've decided to try and keep track of the various creatures that inhabit/visit our garden, starting with the Lepidoptera. Pictured, the first entry in this informal catalogue, which got itself trapped in the dining room/study this morning: a Speckled Wood [northern race]:- Parage aegeria. As I've said before, we're pretty well blessed with a garden that teems with wildlife, although the very hot spell recently has quietened it down somewhat. I've seen but one Hummingbird Hawk Moth so far, and the butterflies, apart from the above pictured have been mostly whites of various types; Peacocks, Painted Lady's and Red Admirals. The bee population has reduced a tad of late, but we still have plenty of the precious little pollinators around in this neck of the woods, compared to a lot of places, so no immediate concern is required. One thing that strikes is both the number of blackberries we have and how ripe they already are. The birds have already harvested most of our...