An Alternative Baked Salmon With Parmesan And Parsley Crust
When I cook Mary Berry’s Baked Salmon With Parmesan And Parsley Crust, I inevitably end up with a big tub of cream cheese.
So I tried to cook the dish using a small pack of Saint Agur and a boned and skinned salmon fillet from Marks and Spencer.
The blue cheese gave it a different flavour which some wouldn’t like. But I did and feel that I’ll try the method again.
It certainly produced a nice lunch with some fried potatoes.
The salmon cost £2.90 and the cheese £0.47.
Searching For Gluten-Free Cocktail Sausages
I finally tracked down some of Marks and Spencers gluten-free cocktail sausages in their store at Eastfield.
They have also opened up a new gluten-free section for chilled goods, like fish cakes.
Who’d Be A Clothes Retailer?
According to the Daily Mail, winter clothes aren’t selling as it’s still warm. Here’s the first paragraph.
Indian summer hits M&S and Next clothes sales: Stores unable to shift winter boots and coats because of warm October temperatures.
It doesn’t bother me, as I wear almost the same clothes all year round. I’m always in a short-sleeved shirt, with or without a cashmere jumper from M & S. I do swap cords for chinos if it gets too hot, but I rarely wear shorts. And for nearly eight months now, I’ve worn the same lightweight bomber jacket, as it keeps me dry and has the right format of pockets.
If I’m going somewhere smart, I might wear a 25-year-old sports jacket, which is so unstylish that it gets admired all the time. I wore it at CERN.
I am finding that I’m spending less and less money on clothes. I did think that I might get some new expensive Daks cords for the winter, but when I went to try them on, I found that trendy designers had ruined the design. The fastenings were so complicated, if you had got taken short, you wouldn’t have been able to get your trousers down quick enough. So I decided to buy another pair from M & S.
Because of this inability to buy clothes, I now tend to be ruthless in taking unwanted ones to Oxfam and then buy a replacement in probably M & S.
The only thing I spend money on are belts and bags. I’m still searching for a perfect one of the latter. The trouble is they’re not designed by real people.
Not The Easiest Journey Home
I’d arranged to come home via Manchester, effectively retracing the steps I’d taken in the morning. There are just three trains from Blackpool which sensibly meet Virgin’s fast services from Glasgow; 17:03, 18:21 and 19:21. Last year, I’d tried to come home on the 18:21 route, but I missed my connection, so as Preston is a gluten-free desert, I went home via Carluccio’s in Manchester Piccadilly rather than wait for an hour in the rain on Preston station.
So I’d thought that I might as well get an Off Peak ticket back from Manchester and if I had time, I’d have supper in Carluccio’s.
But I hadn’t bargained for a long time on the bus getting to Blackpool North station because of the illuminations and then a slow train to Piccadilly, which meant all I had time to do there was pay a visit to the loo and buy some sandwiches in Marks and Spencer. I was surprised they still had some gluten-free sandwiches left and had actually reduced them.
At least the sandwiches tasted fine as I came back to London getting in just after 22:00.
I do hope after the electrification of the Blackpool line, that there is a convenient train direct from the town to London on a Saturday afternoon. Virgin are starting direct services soon and they’ll take a few minutes over three hours, whereas today I was on the train for four hours and twenty minutes.
When I got to Euston, 73 buses were thin on the ground, so I walked to Euston Square station to get a Metropolitan train to Whitechapel for the Overground. And they were rather rare too, so I ended up going to Moorgate for a bus. And guess what? I had to wait twenty minutes for a 76! Where were my preferred rides of a 21 or 141?
Eventually I got in just before 23:00.
Services between Blackpool and London must be improved.
My First Shop-Bought Fishcakes In A Dozen Years
I was in Marks and Spencer at Eastfield and looking for a piece of fish for my supper, when I saw some gluten-free fishcakes.
I probably haven’t had any since Waitrose in Newmarket stopped selling their locally-sourced ones in about 2000.
But I do like fishcakes and except for the odd meal in an expensive restaurant, I’ve hardly ever eaten any in the intervening years.
I actually bought one packet of the salmon and one of the cod, so tonight, I ate one of each and put the others in a sealing container for perhaps Sunday.
They didn’t disappoint, after I cooked them in the oven at 220°C for 16-18 minutes.
I think it’s true to say that these and other products in Marks and Spencer’s Made Without Wheat range, taste so good, that even the most fussy of eaters couldn’t tell the difference between these and the standard products.
The only problem with their gluten-free products is finding the new ones in the store.
I found these excellent fishcakes totally by accident.
The Best Cafe In Eastfield
Marks and Spencer’s cafes are probably best described as safe, with a boring selection of drinks and pastries, that wouldn’t annoy ladies who drink milky coffee.
But the one on the bridge at their Eastfield store is different.
It’s nice to go to a cafe with proper china and nearly all those in that area of the shopping centre use paper cups.
So it’s a no-brainer as to where I go!
It does mean that if I’m lucky, I have to put up with one of the best views in East London.
As Marks and Spencer now have an extensive range of gluten-free foods in the shop below the cafe, Stratford is an ideal place to break a journey with a pit stop for supplies
Is This The Ideal Bread For A Lone Coeliac?
Yesterday, in Marks and Spencer, they had sold out of my usual bread, so I bought a pack of Brown Bloomer Slices.
There are six or so slices in the pack, which costs £3.15, and it is pretty good either fresh or as toast, as the pictures show.
I hope you don’t get the impression that I live on toast and jam, but I am partial to a cup of tea and toast in the afternoon, if I’m at home.
These slices are ideal for me, as they are good untoasted and cut in half they fit my toaster. The toast isn’t bad either!
This loaf would be good, if you’re having a coeliac friend staying for a couple of nights or just coming round for a meal, as the way it’s packed it will keep for a day or two.
But for my purposes of a coeliac living alone, it does everything I need and as a loaf seems to last about three days, that means it probably costs me around a pound a day or fifty pence a slice. As my daily State Pension is around twenty pounds a day, I think I can afford it.
One problem is that as the bread has no crusts, which might cause friction in some families.
I wonder how many cafes and restaurants will start using this bread, as it seems to be in most Marks and Spencer’s stores, except possibly those in stations. The pack size would satisfy a couple of patrons on perhaps two days.
Marks and Spencer have either designed the product and pack size very carefully or they’ve just struck lucky.
I don’t care as the product is excellent.
The Tyranny Of Shopping
Today’s shopping showed how sometimes, it can be a complete pain. I went up to Islington and bought this today.
The Tyranny Of Shopping
My trouble in some ways is that I’m particular in what I like.
1. Bread has to be from Marks and Spencer. Waitrose’s especially is made from cardboard.
2. Only Sainsbury sell my preferred Black Farmer sausages, which go so well in a sausage casserole I’m making.
3. Marks and Spencer doesn’t sell cannelloni beans.
4. I prepay for The Times and getting rid of the voucher can be difficult in some supermarkets.
5. Etc. etc.
So in the end, I ended up going to all of Waitrose, Sainsbury and Marks and Spencer, buying a few items in each.
At least at the Angel, the three shops are close together. In Sainsbury, all I bought was the sausages.
Last week, I went to Waitrose at Canary Wharf to try to get everything in one visit, but they didn’t have the sausages, as they’d sold out and their own gluten-fre ones are tasteless.
Are These The Perfect Gluten-Free Dunking Biscuit?
Marks and Spencer have recently launched some gluten-free ginger snaps.
I don’t think I’ve found a better dunking biscuit.
I wonder if they’d pass C’s test of breaking them into pieces on her left elbow, with her right hand?
On the other hand, she wouldn’t approve of the picture on the right!
J And C Reunited In My Kitchen
I needed a few more mugs and just had to buy these when I saw them in Marks and Spencer.
J And C Reunited In My Kitchen
But I did have to buy them on-line, as they seem to be two of the rarer letters.
I’m reminded of a story from my past.
I was working for ICI at Runcorn and I’d designed and built an instrument to measure water in a particular chemical stream. It needed to be fitted and wired into the plant in their Rocksavage works. I was told to arrange the fitting with Charlie Akers, who was the senior electrician on the plant. I turned up one morning at the electrical workshop in the plant and Charlie gave me a tour, which showed me all the dangers and how to do basic things to avoid getting into trouble. To this day, when I’m climbing metal staircases and ladders, I still do it in the way that Charlie showed me, to avoid getting nasty chemicals or dirt on my hands.
Charlie then took me back to their workshop and then proceeded to pull a new white mug out of a box of about a couple of dozen and then with a small brush put my name on it. He then said that now, I’d had no excuse to not come here to have a cup of tea before going on the plant, as no-one wanted any accidents.
It was this attention to detail about Health and Safety that was the reason that Rocksavage Works had at the time, the best accident record in ICI.
A couple of years ago, when I went over SELCHP, one of the guides had noticed me climbing some metal stairs and asked if I’d ever worked in plants like that.
After all I’ve been through, Charlie’s lesson is still imprinted in my brain.
The Anonymous Widower 