Serial Cooking Teriyaki Beef And Noodles
This is another based on a recipe from Lindsey Bareham in The Times.
The main ingredients for meal for two, are a decent sirloin steak, an onion, 100 grams of green beans, a small cup of frozen peas, 50g of noodles and some teriyaka and soy sauces.
This recipe has various options and this is my method for two small portions.
It’s certainly more interesting that steak with chips and peas.
Cinty’s Fish Pie With Celia
Cinty’s fish pie is excellent and goes down well with a beer.
Cinty’s Fish Pie With Celia
I made two and the other kept in the fridge for a couple of days.
An Alternative Source Of Celias
It would appear that Waitrose are no longer stocking Celia gluten-free lager.
As I can’t live without them, I went to the Celia web site and searched for an alternative supplier near me.
I found Harvest E8, just up the road from Dalston Kingsland station.
It certainly is a well-stocked organic shop.
Serial Cooking – Chicken, Leek And Bacon Shepherd’s Pie
This recipe is another from Lindsey Bareham in The Times.
The main ingredients are a Waitrose pack of roast chicken thighs, 75g of bacon lardons, 500g potatoes and 200g trimmed leeks.
It was a very simple and good shepherd’s pie.
Breakfast By The Don
The Meadowhall Shoppin Centre in Shefield sums up what is right and wrong about shopping centres.
To like it has a big Marks and Spencer by the train station, so I can can get gluten-free snacks and sandwiches on my travels. It also has a Carluccio’s for something a bit bigger and like today, I can walk out by the River Don to have my breakfast.
As this is the site of the Tinsley Chord, which is supposed to be built by 2017, there didn’t seem much going on. This article on the BBC says everything is starting to run late.
Other than that there are no maps, so that once they get you inside the doors, you get lost and hopefully for them, you buy something you don’t need.
It just makes me angry and I hate the place with a vengeance.
But then the only reason, I go there is to get fed! Or change trains or between a tram and a train!
Back From The Hague
Before I left on Thursday, I wrote Off To The Hague Today and started the post like this.
Is there any other train journey between two capitals in the world, that is more difficult now than it was six or seven years ago?
It certainly doesn’t get any better.
Arriving in Brussels, the hourly train to Antwerp and The Hague left in half an hour, so I thought if I could get a ticket to The Hague, I might go direct.
So I tried a machine. But these only sell tickets to Belgium.
Ticket Office?
The queues were horrendous, so I got on the train to Antwerp as my Any Belgium Ticket would get me there!
At Antwerp, I took half an hour to buy a ticket and after a lunch of nuts and the worst coffee, I’ve ever had, I caught the next train to Den Haag HS, where I changed for Den Haag Laan van Nieuwe Oost Indie.
Express train it is not! On this main InterCity route, some of it has a speed limit of just 100 kph. Even London to Ipswich is a 160 kph line.
Coming back, there were a few delays and it took exactly four hours from the time I got on the InterCity train at Den Haag HS before I was on my on-time Eurostar leaving Brussels. Admittedly, forty-five minutes of so was checking-in and waiting for the Eurostar.
Incidentally, Den Haag to Brussels in 172.9 km. and can be driven in two hours.
London to Birmingham is actually slightly further and Virgin does it around 85 minutes.
If that isn’t a disgrace, I’m a Dutchman!
What wasn’t a disgrace was the food on Eurostar!
I’d forgot to ask for a gluten-free meal, but I was assured the main course was gluten-free. I’m pretty certain it was and it was also delicious.
So at least the last part of the journey went well and we arrived in St. Pancras on time!
Passenger services through the Channel Tunnel opened in 1994, with services to and from St. Pancras starting in November 2007.
The new Class 374 trains to start a service to Amsterdam and Cologne are now sitting in sidings, with services supposed to start at the end of 2016.
Judging by the history of the development of services to places other than London, Brussels and Paris, I suspect that date will slip to somewhere about 2026 or even 2036.
The biggest problem seems to be the multiplicity of different electrical systems between France, Germany and The Netherlands. At least we chose our 25kVAC overhead system is the same as the French and has been since at least the 1960s.
I despair, that I’ll ever take a High Speed train direct to Rotterdam and then take a local train to The Hague.
No wonder the EU is such a mess, if the UK, Belgium, France, Germany and The Netherlands can’t agree on something purely technical like a connecting railway.
Marks And Spencer’s Gluten Free Food In Stations
I regularly travel by train and visit stations, outside of my normal patch of London. Once away from the capital, often the only substantial food I can get as I pass through the station are Marks and Spencer’s gluten-free sandwiches, a drink and perhaps some fruit.
At some stations, you can rely on gluten-free sandwiches being available most of the time. In this group would be.
Birmingham New Street, Cambridge, Liverpool Lime Street, Manchester Piccadilly, Oxford and Reading
Then there are important interchange stations, where possibly unless you’re there before nine, there’s never any gluten-free sandwiches.
Cardiff, Edinburgh, Sheffield and Newcastle
The worst major station for gluten-free food is Nottingham. The food shop is a Morrison’s, which I’ve never used. To get any gluten-free food you need to go to the city centre, which is a long walk or a return on the tram.
Other stations to avoid if you’re a coeliac like me, are Blackpool, Derby, Doncaster, Huddersfield, Ipswich, Norwich, Middlesbrough and Preston.
The last two are places where it is very difficult to buy any gluten-free food at all.
Where Are The Honeycomb Crispies?
I found a honeycomb crispy in M & S in Liverpool Lime |Street station on Saturday.
It was delicious, but I haven’t managed to find any since. The picture was taken at one of the St. Pancras outlets.
Where Are The Honeycomb Crispies?
I can only assume that M & S haven’t matched supply to the demand.
I can’t even find any on the company’s web site.
Meandering Around Lancashire
Yesterday, I went to Ipswich Town’s disastrous match at Blackburn.
I went via Liverpool, as I had at one point intended to get a flight from Liverpool Airport to Poland on the Sunday to start one of my Home Runs.
But circumstances intervened and so I was left with only the first leg of my trip – A First Class ticket to Liverpool.
These pictures tell the story of my journey.
Note :-
- Norton Bridge Junction is The Two Hundred Million Pound Railway Project Of Which You’ve Probably Not Heard.
- Where were all the Class 319 trains in Liverpool? Only Northern Powerhouse was sitting forlornly in Platform 1! Normally, there’s half a dozen!
- The New Platform 7 at Liverpool Lime Street has been planned for years. And still nothing is happening.
- Blackburn station had no information on buses.
I’d actually taken six trains during the day.
- A Virgin Pendelino from Euston to Liverpool
- A Northern Rail Class 156 train from Liverpool to Wigan North Western
- A Virgin Pendelino from Wigan North Western to Preston
- A Northern Rail Class 156 train from Preston to Blackburn
- A Northern Rail Class 142 train from Blackburn to Preston
- A Virgin Pendelino from Preston to Euston
The trip up was by a roundabout route, but in some ways it illustrates the problems of trains in the area.
- Liverpool to Preston is fully electrified, but the service is run by diesels, although from Monday, it will be run by Class 319 electric trains on a half-hourly basis.
- As Preston to Blackpool is not electrified, usually the onward journey is a tired diesel.
- Preston to Blackburn and Burnley is not electrified and is generally run by antique Pacers and a few Class 156 trains.
- At the moment due to the Farnworth Tunnel problems, Manchester to Preston is not a journey for the faint-hearted.
Hopefully, it’ll all get better, when the Manchester to Preston via Bolton electrification is complete, but that won’t do anything from Preston to Blackpool, Blackburn and Burnley.
Whoever wins the new Northern Rail franchise is going to be mandated to buy 120 new carriages.
Surely, these should be Aventra IPEMUs and they should be used on these lines from or through Preston.
- Blackpool North to Hazel Grove
- Blackpool South To Colne
- Preston to Barrow
- Preston to Blackpool North
- Preston to Leeds via Blackburn, Bolton, Halifax and Bradford
- Preston to Manchester Victoria via Blackburn, Burnley and the Todmorden Curve.
- Preston To Ormskirk
- Preston to Windermere
They would probably be used on other lines in the area.
- Liverpool to Manchester via Warrington Central
- Manchester to Southport
These services might only need some platform lengthening, adjustments to track and signalling and a small amount of extra electrification.
The longest section that is not electrified is that between Preston and Bradford, which is probably less than sixty miles. If necessary the gap could be shortened by electrifying between Preston and say Rose Hill, where the Colne branch divides.
What surprises me, is that Bombardier haven’t created another demonstrator to prove the concept, just as they did at Manningtree.
The Curse Of The Coeliac Traveller
On Tuesday with my jaunt round the East Midlands, the weather played its part in that my intended pit-stop in Carluccio’s at Lincoln had to be cancelled because of the rain. This wasn’t too serious as I’d had a double-egg pot at Leon in Kings Cross before I left.
I could have got something in Nottingham before I went up the Robin Hood Line, but I decided to do the trip to Worksop first.
Unlike many other main stations like Birmingham, Cambridge, Manchester Piccadilly and Sheffield, there is no Marks and Spencer Simply Food, so there was nothing gluten-free to eat in Nottingham station. Except possibly salads and a banana, which I’ve eaten so much of on my travels, that aversion therapy has worked its evil magic.
After returning from Worksop, I had about forty minutes to get something to eat before catching the hourly train to Peterborough to get home. This was not enough time to have a meal in any number of places in Nottingham, so I decided to go to the city centre to get some sandwiches in Marks and Spencer. But they didn’t have any!
I was quite hungry by now, but luckily I found a Holland and Barrett, where I bought a couple of EatNakd bars to replace the two I’d brought from London and eaten en route.
After all I only needed to keep going for another couple of hours until London, where I could either eat at Kings Cross/St. Pancras or after a short bus ride to Islington.
I got to Peterborough with ease and then I sat for an hour in a train waiting for clearance to leave.
But it never did, as there had been someone killed by a train at Sandy.
So in the end hunger got the better of me and I left the train and walked in to Peterborough to get some supper in Carluccio’s.
I finally got home at eleven, which was about three hours later than planned.
I do wish that people wouldn’t practice assisted dying using trains!
It must be so much easier for non-coeliacs to travel, as they can pop-in to so many places to buy a sandwich or a burger.
The Anonymous Widower 