The Most Recent Vegetarian Taste Test

 I thought I'd tried enough various frozen vegetarian supermarket foods since October 2021 to put me right off for ever.  The last three tests were two things Lidl get in for Christmas, then a  fresh farm shop pie tried in February. 

Since then my veggie meals have been things I've made and frozen myself but the freezer was down to one Thai Fish Curry, one vegetable Korma curry, the salmon and broccoli bakes made last month, a couple of boxes of pizza toppings and my experimental two-cheese and vegetable pasties (and very good they are too but can't remember what I put in them!)

Because I usually go to Aldi on my way into town I rarely buy frozen things there but  a couple of weeks ago I was in town first and Aldi on the way home and I spotted these in the freezer at £1.69 for 4, and thought they were worth a try as they don't have any 'fake meat'  (quorn and soya protein) which I'm avoiding and aren't bean based either (can't eat chick peas etc.)

I added my home made tomato chutney, a smidge of mayo and some salad leaves and it made a very nice meal. Much nicer than the soya protein based Linda McCartney vegetarian mozzarella burgers (2 for £2.50) which I had tried in the past.

 I looked online to compare and spotted some Tesco burgers which seem to have the same ingredients but 2g less fat and are priced matched to Aldi (at the moment) so also £1.69 for 4.

Conveniently Aldi white and wholemeal baps are also in packs of 4  for 69p making a meal for  about 60p.

 I'll definitely be buying again and will eat with tomatoes and cucumber when I have my own.

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Sue

St Botolph's Chapel of Ease, Botesdale

To understand the  reason for this small church being dedicated to St Botolph and being a chapel of ease to the church at the nearby village of  Redgrave would take several paragraphs but Simon Knott has already done this on the Suffolk Churches website. So it's much easier for me to direct you there!

The website explains the history of this building from Catholic times to Protestant and it's use as a school .

Botesdale itself is an unusual village as it joins directly to the village of Rickinghall and the chapel is even more unusual as it is attached to a house.

It's thanks to the website that I know this inscription above the door was given by a wealthy person to ask for prayers during the Black Death, probably in the 1470's, although it has a later window cut through it.

 It says in Latin Pray for the souls of John Shrive and Juliana his wife. Pray for the soul of Margaret Wykys.

Stepping through the door into a room with wood panelling, notice boards and chairs - it feels like the school it was.

To match the size of the chapel the font is much smaller than those in bigger churches.

Inside is small and neat with pews and woodwork from other churches dating from C19 and earlier.

A kneeler at the altar

From the altar looking back you can see the unusual gallery - very like a Baptist or Methodist church would have. The organ is up there but the door is kept locked so the gallery can't be accessed.

I shall try to go to the 'mother' church at Redgrave sometime although it is now no longer in use and is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust and kept locked. The parish walked away from it when the upkeep was too much and hoped someone would look after it. People in Redgrave now have a 'modern' church in the village hall - all very controversial in the early 2000's.

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Sue

Saturday Just After the Middle of May

After a week of lovely fine and warm weather here it went back to a bit of  rain on Tuesday, Wednesday and poured all day Thursday - will the Sunday Boot sale be cancelled again? Met with my friend from Grammar School Days in a new coffee shop in Stowmarket. I think we now have more coffee shops than normal shops...........thank goodness they had cheese scones!

 I'm still battling the birds in the veg beds. Something got underneath one of the wire netting frames - which I'd balanced on flower pots over my two courgette plants - and managed to dig one plant out of the ground. It can't have been pigeons as they are too big - or the cat next door, so it must have been a blackbird or something similar. Luckily I'd sown six seeds and hung onto the other plants so had a replacement. Now they are covered by a netting tunnel and I also had replacement leek seedlings because of the same problem. The netting frames were only a couple of inches of the ground - thought that would put off birds/cats etc but seems not.

In the greenhouse, things are now in their big pots......less of everything than previous years when I've tended to squash too many plants in.  I gave two tomato and one pepper plant to BiL and put 2 more tomato plants and 2 aubergine plants out the front in a box saying 'Help Yourself' and they went- so that's good. As usual I bought half a dozen French marigold plants which are supposed to be good for helping  the tomato pollination. Other things in here are two more courgette plants into large pots that I'll probably abandon when the outside ones go mad, runner bean seeds just sown, yet another spare courgette, a cutting from the gooseberry bush where a branch had touched the ground and rooted, a small tray of calendula seeds and  the sweetcorn growing well in their peat pots- to go out at the end of the month.

A while back I looked at the long range weather forecast........difficult to make any sense of it ........ very variable I think!.

Signals during this period are extremely weak, and for the most part indistinguishable from climatology. Similar weather conditions to those of the preceding few days are most likely to characterise this period to the end of May; a mixture of unsettled periods with rain and showers and settled interludes in-between. By early June, the chances of above and below average rainfall are evenly balanced. There is a slightly higher likelihood of above average temperatures compared with below average temperatures, such that the chance of hot spells, although still very small, is slightly higher than normal too.

Swifts are back in the village, spotted them on Wednesday - very good to see, no Swallows yet - so no signs of summer  and we'll shall have to wait and see what the weather does.

Also back is the Great British Sewing Bee on TV for it's 10th series next week, it's one of the programmes that I watch to keep me company of an evening.

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Sue

Cheese From The Mountains

 We have a new shop among the units at our local (3 miles from me) hardware and DIY place - a butchers with extras. This is all quite exciting as there hasn't been a butchers locally since the 1980s.

For my first visit I bought some sausages and this cheese.

This isn't a new or unknown cheese and quite widely available and I've probably eaten it before, but not recently. It's really delicious, strong but in a smooth way rather then the Extra Mature Cheddars sold in supermarkets.

The Snowdonia Cheese Company is a family business started in 2001. They say they were inspired by the lush greenery of North Wales to make Red Leicester and Natural Cheddar that "married an extraordinary depth of flavour with extraordinary creaminess".

They produce at least 12 different truckles of waxed cheeses with various flavours - Rock Star, Red Storm, Truffle Trove etc etc . Website HERE if you want to see all the others.

This is what is says about 'Rock Star'

In 2020, our expert cheesemakers set about developing a Cheddar with the exceptional flavour that only cave-ageing can achieve. We discovered the perfect setting – a former slate mine, surrounded by the mountains of Snowdonia National Park and the protected Dark Sky Reserve. Its natural caverns, deep underground, provide an exciting opportunity for us to continue our pursuit of innovation close to Snowdonia Cheese Company’s home.

I won't be sending for any of their many hampers or collections - rather expensive - but a small piece from the new shop now and again will be good.

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Sue

Snowdonia Cheese Company is a family business, founded in North Wales in 2001

Tudor Re-enactment Fundraiser

 I popped along a nearby village where they were having a fundraiser for the church involving all things Tudor. 

 I didn't stay long as the weather had turned very sticky hot humid and looked like rain and I'd left the washing out. It had the same sort of things happening as they do on Tudor days at Kentwell Hall in SW Suffolk which I've been to a few times.

Just a few photos

Long Bows, every village had to have men who would  practice with these to be ready for war.

I was so tempted by the pottery on the stall of a lady making pots on a wheel. But I'm always tempted by studio  pottery pieces and there is a limit!

The jugs and vases with birds and hares were especially appealing. Her studio is now at a farm shop not too far away so I could always go and look again there if I think I've really missed a treat!

This below is a postcard picked up from a man who does stained glass . A piece he made featuring St Cedd for St Peter's Church in Wickham Bishops in Essex, the nave of which he uses as a studio.  An extremely old church with bits of it re-using Roman building materials.

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Sue

Must Make More This Year

 Just opening my last jar of Sweet and Sour Pickled Cucumber. I've been eking them out since last July as I only made 4 and a bit jars because it was a new to me recipe.

The recipe was Oxburgh's Sweet Cucumber Pickle,  and came from the National Trust book of Jams, Preserves and Edible Gifts and uses cucumbers plus onion, celery, salt, cider vinegar, mustard seeds, soft brown sugar with a little turmeric and ground cloves.

I'm planning to make more this year - even though I'm not a massive fan of vinegary pickles - but  because this has the bit of sweetness, it's not too sharp and it's good to eat with so many things. This year I'll  leave the cucumber and celery in slightly bigger pieces.

I've got 3 cucumber plants in the greenhouse, all about a foot tall so far. I'll be nipping the first flowers off two of the plants so they put on more growth and using the third plant as a 'sacrificial' - letting it grow cucumbers early until it wears itself out. 

This all reminded me that I'd planned to sow a couple more cucumber seeds later than my first sowing in the hope of having some to eat into later autumn. I've left the packet of seeds in the kitchen now to remind me to sow at the end of this month.

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Sue

Extra Library Books

 The library van isn't round 'til the end of the month (there will be several books, about 15 I reckon, to collect - all being well) and I've run out of library books so as I was taking a heap back to Stowmarket library to get them out of the way and back into circulation I had a quick peruse of the crime shelves.

Found three I knew I'd not read. Should keep me going for a bit longer then I'll revert to my own shelves.

Sometimes crime novels written by someone well known (Richard Osman for one!) are a bit of a let down but this below was a really good story. This was recommended by someone in Blogland -so thank you to whoever that was. 

Adam Green is a trainee Barrister, and his first big case is to assist in the defence of a man who, it's assumed, has murdered a popular hero policeman. The evidence is clear but maybe Jimmy Knight isn't the only person who could have poisoned Grant Clivedon right in the heart of the Old Bailey. 

This is a well written story set in the barristers chambers and in court which makes it different to most crime fiction.

The  second book about Adam Green is out next month, the library have it on order, but I can't reserve it yet as I'm up to my maximum number of reservations.

I've had to give up reading 'The Hidden Years' by Rachel Hore - it's a good story, with two timelines but made me cry far too much for my liking!

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Sue

St Bartholomew's Church, Finningham

 This is another village not far from home and as it was having a Flower Festival over the Bank Holiday weekend I knew it would be open. Only problem being that it was much busier than I thought so not good for photos. 

St Bartholomew's is a small church, very simple inside and outside

The Flower Festival Theme was 'Going To The Movies'

Winnie the Pooh on the window sill

Mary Poppins on the font - love the sweeps brush - a clever touch

Someone knitted lots of bees for  The Swarm

My Fair Lady

This memorial below has only been here a while - late recognition for an unsung hero of science, whose discovery of ancient stone flints and bones led him to believe that people had been around a long time, before the discovery of metal and before the current world . The idea was controversial and the Society Of Antiquities suppressed his paper which was only discovered in the 1860s by which time other people had put forward the same ideas.

A memorial window to another member of the Frere family

And a memorial with instructions for helping the poor.

I went back after the weekend, when the flower arrangers were clearing up, to pick up the prize mentioned last week and if my brain had been in operation I could have taken my camera for better photos!

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Sue

6 Years Ago

 Yes, it really is 6 years today since  Colin died - how is that possible?

Still missed so much every single day. The coping gets easier, the emptyness doesn't.

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Sue

Bees - All Sorts

 The Ceanothus on my header(known as Californian Lilac elsewhere) was completely buzzing on Sunday morning when I filled up the mealworm feeder for the robin Yet Again - the starlings can empty it in a few minutes when they all swoop in.

There were so many bees of all shapes and sizes and all had their pollen sacs full. I've forgotten how the macro thing works on my camera - if I ever knew - so the photos are poor and you'll have to take my word for how many bees were there all at once.

The robin was waiting as usual for me to fill the feeder and visits it even before I've walked away.

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Sue

Missed the Low Oil Price and All Sorts of Other Things

 I get emails from Boiler Juice - a company that compare heating oil prices and you can order via them too. Yesterdays email tells me that oil prices are at a nine month low - of course I haven't got room for 500L - the minimum order, because 730L were put in in February . It's all a guessing game when it comes to oil prices although the difference isn't hugely massive, just a bit annoying - £490 now against £543 then, and I'd rather fill up when the tank is just under half full than risk it getting really low waiting for a better price and who knows when the next war, pushing up prices, will happen! 

Got my usual pot of Basil to take cuttings and root them in water. Last year it didn't work very well so I'm hoping for better this year but once again the pots are forced so much that the shoots shoot up without any side leaves - which is where you have to snip to get roots growing.

Did anyone watch the first semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest on Tuesday night? There were some wild and wacky singers, songs and stage effects although I like Olly Alexanders song but not the weird performance. Hope he does well - anything has to be better than last year (25th out of 26!). Did you know that since the first Eurovision in 1956, 52 different countries have taken part and it's watched by a massive audience every year. Love it or hate it or couldn't care less? We always watched when I was little and have ever since although unlike my Mum I don't fall asleep before the end!

This below was a very good read. I wondered what the author would do with this series after the Queen died but she's solved this by going back to 1957. These are great fun to read and totally (almost) believable!

Old men playing snooker is the sport on TV to keep me company this week - Seniors from years gone by, although they're not That old, it's on 5 and 5Action. Surely I can't be the only blogger to like watching snooker, I'm not sure I've seen anyone else mention it. Excited about Tennis and Olympics  in the summer too.

Look what I won! It's a very unusual occurrence for me to win a prize in a draw, raffle or tombola but I still have a go as it's always a fund-raiser of some sort. This lovely box of goodies was won from a church flower festival event last weekend. (Church and flower photos next week). The theme of the flower festival was 'Going to the Movies'  and the prizes in this draw had been gathered by colour into boxes with each box being a film title with a colour in it.

 My Blue Hawaii box had chocolate biscuits, a mug, Cath Kidson tea-towels, hand lotion, wine, a tin of pretty notelet cards and a folding umbrella. I was so pleased even though I will be giving most of the things away!

Thank you to everyone for comments yesterday and apologies as comments keep going into spam without me realising until days later.

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Sue

READING THE SEASONS - Spring

My 6th book for Reading the Seasons was  Stone Spring by Stephen Baxter.

It's been a very long time since I read a book like this - with a story set way back into the depths of history - Stonehenge by Bernard Cornwell is one I remember but there were others. The library labels it as historical fiction but it's more fantasy or science fiction.

This story is set in the Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age period  between 8,800 - 4,500BC. Europe is still attached to Britain and the people who live on that fertile plain that is now gone were in the centre of civilisation, trading with other groups for the nodules of flint they had and fishing and hunting.

The author changes the history of that period so that the plain or Northland  (now known as Doggerland) wasn't covered by rising sea levels, and the people have become more settled and not the hunter-gatherers they once were.

This precis is from Wiki and is better than anything I could do...............

The focus of much of the novel is the community of Etxelur. Etxelur begins as a typical stone-age civilisation, remarkable only for its flint, which is prized throughout most of Northland. It is nominally ruled by a figure known as the "Giver", but as Kirike, the current Giver, is missing, leadership falls to Zesi, his eldest daughter. Every year, Etxelur and its neighbours, the brutish "Pretani" (located in modern-day England), hold a ceremony known as the Giving on Etxelur soil. Representing the Pretani leader are brothers Gall and Shade, who share the house with Zesi and her 14-year-old sister Ana. Gall, the eldest brother, has been promised Zesi as a bride by his father, but Zesi instead sleeps with the younger brother Shade, enraging Gall. To make matters worse, Gall kills a member of the neighbouring "Snailhead" tribe during a communal hunt.

Tensions come to a head during the giving, whereupon the Pretani leader (or "Root") arrives and demands that Shade and Gall resolve their dispute by a fight to the death, in which Gall is killed. Kirike also returns to Etxelur, along with outsiders Ice Dreamer (rescued from North America by Kirike during his travels) and Novu (a slave who killed his master and escaped, with a particular skill for making bricks). Kirike resumes leadership of Etxelur, much to Zesi's resentment. Zesi ultimately decides to leave with the Pretani to challenge them in a hunting contest on their own territory.

Meanwhile, back in Etxelur, rising sea levels result in a tsunami, known to the locals as the "Great Sea". Most of Etxelur is destroyed, and many of its inhabitants are wiped out, including Kirike. With Zesi absent, Ana becomes the de facto leader of Etxelur. During the tsunami, Ana witnessed seabed formations resembling Etxelur's religious symbols, and, believing them to hold spiritual significance, ultimately resolves to build a dyke to hold back the sea and enable the formations to be reached once again. Novu, who has the most experience, obsessively oversees the construction of the dyke, and Ana adopts increasingly Draconian measures to ensure construction continues.

When Zesi returns to Etxelur, she violently opposes Ana's work. She breaks one of the giant pools which holds water that is meant to flow back into the sea and kills a Snailhead child. This ultimately results in her being exiled and her child taken from her. Vowing revenge on Ana, Zesi ultimately returns to Pretani territory, where she convinces Shade (now the Root of the Pretani) to help her destroy Etxelur. Together, they plan to offer slave labour to Etxelur, with the intention of organising a slave uprising and then attacking Etxelur in the chaos. Before this can be done, however, Ana uncovers the plan and frees the slaves herself. The Pretani attack is beaten back, and Zesi is killed during the fight.

The novel ends some years later, where construction of the dykes is finally complete, and the undersea formations Ana sought to uncover have finally been reached.

What I didn't know when I looked for books with Spring in their title is that this book is the first of a trilogy and is followed by Bronze Summer and Iron Winter - how very useful for my Reading The Seasons challenge!

I enjoyed this book, it reminded me that I once read much more  widely....... not just crime fiction. 

Wiki also has a quick round up of the pre-historic stone age periods HERE

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Sue

Our Lady Of Grace Church, Aspall

Aspall is a tiny village (population approx 60) just north of Debenham and you may have heard of it because this huge collection of factory buildings is where Aspall Cider and vinegars are made. The company belonged to  the Chevallier family of Aspall Hall, but after 290 years it's now owned by the people that make Coors  Lager.

The church is on the other side of the main Debenham to Eye road down a small dead end lane and has always had a lot of input from the Chevallier family who as Lord of the Manor did much restoration here as well as providing the vicars for many years.

The porch has interesting timber frame and brick patterns

Down the nave to the altar, a very typical small Suffolk church.

But there are a couple of more unusual things, like this large memorial, a terracotta relief made in 1966 by Edwin Russell. It remembers Raulin Guild, son of a Chevellier daughter. He lived in North Rhodesia, contacting an illness and come back to die here, just 26 years old. 

Another plaque is to Lord Kitchener. One of the Chevallier women married into the Kitchener family  and her son became Lord Kitchener - secretary of state for war at the beginning of WWI and responsible for sending to war three of the young boys on the war memorial.

These memorials are all to members of the Chevallier family

There are some interesting bench end carvings

The font and cover are also carved and decorated.

Despite the few services held here and small population there were lots of flowers around the church

This is the sad sight of the lych gate - falling to pieces - hopefully to be repaired soon.

I found the leaflet about the church with lots more details is HERE

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Sue