Free Speech in the Coeliac Area
Someone, who lives outside of the UK, has said that their coeliac society has objected to criticism of the society, that they wrote in an Internet chat-room.
I’m all for free speech as you know, providing it’s not malicious and very much support the reform of the libel law in the UK. I’m a big supporter of Sense About Science, who are trying to stop commercial interests using the UK’s libel laws for their our ends.
The coeliac area has been pretty free of legal spats so far, but I suspect we will see quite a few in the next few years.
So many companies make a lot of money and they don’t like new entrants to the market and so many doctors have a nice simple living from coeliac disease, and probably wouldn’t like changes to diagnostic methods and then there’s the charity racket. Certainly in the UK, there are loads of retired great and good, who get on the charity bandwagon to have a nice lifestyle. I have no knowledge of the UK Coeliac society as I’m a Marxist of the Groucho tendency, who wouldn’t join any club, that would have me as a member. But as it’s fairly small according to the accounts, it probably hasn’t any places for freeloaders. But sadly there are many charities, that are virtually run for the benefit of their board, if you believe some of the accounts I’ve read in the newspapers.
The problem with the coeliac market is that any good cook, can create their own completely gluten-free meals. I would argue you don’t even have to be a good cook, as some of the recipes I use are very much enjoyed by my friends and family. Most have been stolen from the Internet or borrowed from friends.
Also on the coeliac front in the UK, there is a war out there, partly driven by the recession, in that quite a few intelligent and ethical food technologists see the coeliac market as a place of expansion. Every week I go to Waitrose or other supermarkets, there seems to be something new. Yesterday it was the Honest bread, but there has been Lazy Days biscuits from Scotland and now there may be Estrella Damm Laura beer from Spain. I’ve also seen some luxury foods, like soups, that have been made deliberately gluten-free so that their market is bigger. Established coeliac food companies and even mainstream ones are under threat, but they have nowhere to complain about companies who are being both ethical and commercial. Even the supermarkets can’t help, as I suspect that the new quality entrants can give them better sales and possibly better margins.
A Gluten-Free Lunch in Beautiful Surroundings
I had perhaps intended to have lunch in Carluccio’s in Smithfield, but on the way I walked behind St. Paul’s to take a photograph of the Temple Bar.
Temple Bar
Instead of passing through, as I intended, I spotted a sign saying restaurant and pointing to the crypt of the cathedral.
So I explored and found a restaurant with a full coeliac, not just gluten-free menu. It was more than I needed, so I approached the adjoining cafe and asked if the soup was gluten-free. The waitress said she was a coeliac too and said she’d check and also get me some gluten-free bread if I would like some. In the end I had some excellent parsnip soup and one of Fentiman‘s exotic soft drinks for about eight pounds.
So now, I can add a hole-filler to my walking routes around London.
Missing the Hole in my Chopping Board
In my previous kitchen, I had chopping board with a hole in it fixed to the work surface. The hole had a turned stopper and underneath was the rubbish bin for food waste and things like tea bags. Now I have to have two separate bins for recycling or not and they take up much needed floor space. I also drip tea all over the floor, when I remove the tea bag.
I’ve never seen another kitchen with a chopping board with a hole in it. Every home should have one!
Things I Have Never Done
Everybody has lists like these, which often include such things as making love in a hammock or aeroplane, which for most people are very unlikely. I won’t comment about the two I mention here, except to say that I did have my own plane for many years. But it didn’t feature a hammock!
Two things on my real list are learning to swim and having someone deliver a takeaway meal, which I then pay for at the door. As to the latter, I’ve never even had one delivered by the vendor. The learning to swim will stay forever, but as I have a branch of the Bombay Bicycle Club just round the corner, a takeaway will probably be delivered at some point in the near future.
Unusual things I have done include.
- Gone to Royal Ascot with someone else impersonating someone who had died many years before. The gateman said she looked well. She still did, when I saw her a couple of weeks ago.
- Crashed an aircraft and walked away from it. As did all my passengers! The plane was a right-off!
- Hunted three types of hare hounds; harriers, bassets and beagles in one day.
- Been extremely drunk on a Mersey Ferry.
- Seen the Beatles perform live.
- Piloted a light-aircraft all round Australia and even on to the Great Barrier Reef.
- Been present at the birth of all my three sons. For the first, my wife was three weeks late and she fooled the Middlesex Hospital into believing she was in labour. More…
- Won a National Championship at real tennis.
- Seen a Transit of Venus.
- Had dinner in Rick Stein’s restaurant with two widowed daughters of an heriditary peer. More…
- Came off best after a mugging in Naples. More…
- Hitched a Lift in the cab of a High Speed Train from Edinburgh to Inverness. More…
My late wife always said she married me because she knew life wouldn’t be boring. I intend to keep proving she was right. I must not let her down!
Gressingham Slow Cooked Duck
My son cooked this for me for Christmas yesterday and it was very nice. It was also gluten-free, in that none of the ingredients could by any means be made with gluten.
the strange thing was that their offices now are in Debach, a small village in East Suffolk, where we all lived for nearly twenty years. I was also nearly killed there, when the chimney went through my office in the Great Storm.
My New Kitchen is Different
This picture shows the view I get when I cook.
My New Kitchen
It has evetrything a man should want totally to hand.
- The TV for watching something more interesting like football than a pot, which never boils. The screen incidentally turns through about 240 degrees, when the guests turn up, so everyone can see it.
- Plenty of space for drinking while you work.
- The bread bin handily placed for toast. As I’m effectively one handed the toaster is to the right out of sight.
- Also out of sight to the right is Delia’s little chopper, as I won’t give publicity to anyone associated with Norwich City.
- The pots with essentials like tea, coffee, biscuits in front of the cook.
- The one-handed pepper and salt.
Anyway it works efficiently, despite the rather delapidated fridge and the manual-less cooker.
London Takes Charge of One of its Lost Sons
There are cities, mega-cities and then there is London, a unique blend of people, races, buildings, transport systems and history.
Today the city of my birth and most of ancestors took control and welcomed me back and protected me.
The first thing I did was go and get my copy of The Times and have a coffee in the local Deli. I’ve never been able to do this before at any time of my life. But the Deli was selling smoked salmon from the Butley Oysterage in Suffolk,so my adopted county was making its presence felt. If only the rest of the country had only half as much get up and go as London and Suffolk have we wouldn’t be having a recession.
Also in the morning I registered at my new doctor’s. No problems at all and very different to when registration last happened twenty years ago. I should say that there was one small problem in that I forgot to take the urine sample I’d provided in the morning. But even that was quickly solved by a two-hundred metre walk home from the surgery to collect it and a quick walk back. My short term memory may be suffering, but I’ll get it back, by practice.
I then took a bus to St. Paul’s and took a few pictures on the so-called Wobbly Bridge, which is one of my favourite structures.
I then walked through to Carluccio’s in Smithfield to have some lunch.
And then London sent me an angel in the form of a female oriental banker, who’d just arrived in the UK, who was exploring before starting work in the New Year. We chatted for a minute or so and then she asked if there was anything to see in this part of London on a very cold day. So I showed her the wife market description in the meat market, St. Bartholomew the Great, Bart’s Hospital and then the Museum of London. I can still see my sons performing in the Nativity play at the church and my mother-in-law in the hospital after having her heart valve replaced.
We then walked through the city to Leadenhall market before having a glass of mulled wine in a pub. She then went home from Bank and I walked through the city back to the Barbican and the Waitrose in Whitecross Street. When we lived in Cromwell Tower, there were no supermarkets in the area. But it was a pleasure to be in an area with so many happy memories. Luckily we were away for the weekend when the Moorgate tube crash, which killed nearly fifty, happened.
The Waitrose there though is in some ways more homely and much less crowded than those at the Angel or the Holloway Road, but it had everything I needed and it was only a short walk away from the bus home, which ran on a much less crowded route to a stop just a hundred metres from my home.
So thank you London! Thanks also go to my charming companion for a lovely couple of hours in the afternoon.
Giving Away My Gluten-Free Cookery Books
Over the years I’ve been given a lot of gluten-free cookery books, as people think that these are an easy present for a man who lives alone, who is a coeliac.
Most have gone into the cupboard and have never been used more than once. If I need a recipe it’s usually because I’ve got some ingredients and want to cook all of them together, so I just use Google. That’s how I found the recipe for Dundee lamb chops.
So now all those I’ve never used more than once are going down the Oxfam shop in Dalston.
One thing I am going to do is put a pad computer on the kitchen wall.
Ginger Chicken with Lemongrass
This recipe was published in The Times yesterday. It is one of Lindsay Bareham’s and I’ve used hers before, as they are simple, quick and delicious on the one hand and often gluten-free on the other.
The ingredients are as follows and the quantities serve two.
- 20g ginger
- 2 garlic cloves
- 2 onions, 145g in total
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
- 4 chicken thigh fillets
- 300g potatoes
- 2 tsp lemongrass paste or 1 large lemongrass
- 300 ml water
- 100g frozen petits pois
The method is as follows.
- Peel and thinly slice the ginger into scraps the size of shirt buttons.
- Slice the garlic into thin rounds.
- Finely slice the onions.
- Heat the oil in a lidded pan, stir in the onion, ginger and garlic.
- Cook, stirring often, over a medium-low heat, encouraging it to soften without browning.
- Slice the chicken into bite-sized pieces and stir into the semi-cooked onions.
- Peel and slice the potatoes into 50p-size pieces. Quickly rince and add to the pan.
- Stir in the lemongrass paste or buised lemongrass, then add the water.
- Bring to the boil, reduce the heat, semi-cover the pan and cook gently for 20 minutes until the potatoes are tender, the chicken cooked through and the liquid slightly reduced.
- Season to taste.
- Add the peas, bring to the boil, immediately reduce the heat and simmer for a few minutes until the peas are tender. Serve in bowls with crusty bread and butter.
I think I’ll give it a try this week.
The Anonymous Widower 