I agree that Van der Valk was a lot "darker" than the 70s version; I think Amsterdam looks wonderful (I've never been there, but it's making me want to). The tune is Eye Level, but only just - it's been quite drastically rearranged!
I suppose it would be too much to expect a 2020s crime drama to feature a policeman who's happily married to a lovely wife (and doesn't sleep with the suspects) ...
I took Beloved Goddaughter for a day trip to Amsterdam two years ago, mainly to see Anne Frank's House, for which tickets have to be bought well in advance.
We caught the red-eye plane from Aberdeen, had a hot chocolate on arrival, then a short canal trip, Dam Square, lunch, Anne Frank's House, the flower market (more of a bulb market as it was February), and the Beginjhof. The day included travelling by plane, train, canal boat and tram. Everything was charming - the bikes, the canals, the discovery that there's a Primark in Amsterdam....
I spent half my time telling Beloved that, no, she couldn't buy cannabis cheese, nor cannabis cake, nor cannabis sweets, and especially not cannabis vodka. But she went from ebullient to silent and aghast in Anne Frank's House.
It was astonishing how much we fitted into one day. We had dinner at Schipol. Beloved was still full of energy at the end, but I was fast asleep on the plane before they did the safety announcements and had to be shaken awake at Aberdeen.
OK. Tried out the gram flour pancake thingie. Topped them with (cooked) onion and crumbled feta and gave them 10 mins in the oven (I know the recipe says grill, but it's difficult on my cooker to simultaneously use the hob and grill).
Despite adding a good pinch of chimichurri seasoning, I can't say the pancakes tasted of anything much. I don't know that they offer more than thinly sliced bread, buttered/oiled on both sides. Unless you have a particular need to use gram: in which case more seasoning/spices.
Mrs BF and I had to wait a while to get into Anne Frank's House, although there was no need to buy tickets well in advance in those far-off days. A couple of limousines parked outside gave a clue, along with the accompanying drivers.
A polite enquiry elicited the ready response that people were being asked to wait, because HM Queen Beatrix was touring the House privately with Mrs Lech Walesa (Mr Walesa having then recently become President of Poland, which dates this to about 1990).
Both ladies emerged, looking solemn, as one usually does when leaving this particular place...I suspect it must have been especially poignant for Danuta Walesa...
I would love to be able to revisit Amsterdam, though that's not really on the cards now (and not because of The Bl**dy Plague). Two other favourite cities are Lisbon, and Innsbruck - both of which, oddly enough, also have trams (though there were more in Lisbon in My Day than there are now...).
We have some sort of wild garlic (I think) which comes up in our church garden every year. It's not broad-leaved, though - rather the opposite, as it could be mistaken for grass, but it has a little bulby thing at the bottom, and nice white flowers at the top.
I have a tendency to think 'O if it's growing nicely there, let's leave it alone, as it's obviously happy!', whereas one or two others (FatherInCharge, to his shame) prefer to hoick stuff out, and make the place look like a municipal park.
O the trouble I've had! You wouldn't believe it! We have some neat little ground-hugging plants, which keep other stuff out (e.g. the rather invasive ground elder), but keep the nourishing moisture in.
No, no, The Murderers say, GET THEM OUT!! GET THEM OUT!! And do The Murderers come back week by week to hoe the ground? Not on your life!
BTW - we have some nice Borage (I think) growing in a sheltered, sunny spot. I know it has some medicinal value, but can it be used also in cooking?
I tried some wild garlic we had growing in our lawn and got a stomach ache. Mind you, I get stomach aches from eating apples, raw carrots, etc. so that proves very little...
If you fly to Schiphol and go to Amsterdam, practically the longest part of the journey is the plane taxiing from the Polderbaan runway to the terminal - well, it feels that way!
Two other favourite cities are Lisbon, and Innsbruck - both of which, oddly enough, also have trams (though there were more in Lisbon in My Day than there are now...).
Not easy to forget ascending 1 in 2 slope in something resembling an Edwardian bathing machine controlled (you hope) by nothing more than a large brass handle.
Any chance of a link? I've also got a very good recipe for gram flour shortbread flavoured with rose & cardamom (and pistachio crust if you're that way inclined...)
I'd love that recipe, some of my favourite flavours
Any chance of a link? I've also got a very good recipe for gram flour shortbread flavoured with rose & cardamom (and pistachio crust if you're that way inclined...)
I'd love that recipe, some of my favourite flavours
How is it fridge-clearer recipes often turn out better than stuff you actually plan?
Tonight was tomato sausages fried up with been-there-for-a-while pancetta, onion and shrivelling tomatoes. Pinch of sugar, ditto chilli flakes - over pasta - fine.
Hoping for similar alchemy with leftover chicken, veg and noodles tomorrow.
Number 1 son cooked this evening. Melon and prosciutto (both getting a bit tired), followed by Rigatoni with a chicken, mushroom and white wine sauce, finishing with raspberries and ice cream.
ION I suddenly realised that the unexpected guest has been with us for 9 week
Funnily enough I've just done a trug-emptying recipe. Quite what the Knotweed thought was in the trug she kept tripping over is beyond me, maybe I should have mentioned that it still had parsnips in it from about three weeks ago? Anyway, they are now parsnip and fennel soup.
In other news, I ask this here as I shall be looking in Britain rather than anywhere else in the world? Can anyone think of anything these days that is still packaged in transparent red plastic? I'm looking for something to replace the red window in a box camera with, and I'm blowed if I can think of anything that we ever buy that comes in such packaging.
Tonight's dinner:
A couple of small, miss-shaped red peppers, an onion and a few small soft tomatoes, sliced and sauteed together then put at the bottom of a casserole dish, topped with a layer of freshly cooked macaroni, blanched cauliflower florets and topped with a strong cheesy sauce. Baked until the top was nicely browned.
Tasty and filling
And back to the subject of Van Der Valk
- I've just discovered that it (presumably the original) has been running on the Talking Pictures channel on Friday evenings. Might take a look this week, although it is always possible that I will be greatly disappointed when, as is often the case with old TV favourites, it doesn't live up to my memory of it.
The Radio Times reviewer does not seem to be taken by the new version
Tea of lentil, cheese and spinach risotto, followed by raspberries, yoghurt and granola ...
Sounds good! We got some really good blueberries and Greek-style yoghurt the other day, and I've been having them for breakfast*.
Supper this evening was salmon, broccoli and pasta bake with a cream cheese sauce and slightly roasted tomatoes, and pronounced "very tasty" by my sister, followed by CHEESE, oatcakes and grapes.
* well, what passes for breakfast - as I seem to be sleeping ridiculously late (especially today after a not-very-good dream), it's really more like an early lunch.
Supper this evening was chicken strips (marinated in cumin, sumac, sesame oil and lime juice, flash-fried and finished with vermouth), salad and new potatoes, followed by mixed fruit crumble and Greek yoghurt.
What exciting culinary lives you all lead! My wife was going to concoct a left-overs stir-fry but then discovered that an online Zoom Welsh lesson was on offer at 6pm. So it was over to me and we had some quite nice steak pies from Asda which I had fortuitously bought in the morning, with Jersey Royal potatoes and a mixture of rather tired French beans and carrots, with some frozen peas added for good measure.
I watched the first minutes or so of Van der Valk, and then decided that I really didn't need another dark and nasty programme among the few I actually get to choose to watch.
Yesterday I had leftover sliced up cooked sausages, fried with tomato and stuck together with reconstituted dried egg for breakfast, which worked really well - the recently bought egg is clearly better than the OOD stuff I was finishing.
Dinner was some packaged rosti with bacon and emmental from Aldi, which I cooked too much of, because one sachet didn't look enough, until I got it in the frying pan. So that's for breakfast today.
I've started creating myself a staple meal of my own creation, which I guess is a kind of egg and cheese porridge, with nettles and wild garlic and other veg, and sometimes a dollop of hazelnut butter. It can be with rice or noodles instead of with oats, but I quite like it with oats. I will eat this every day until I decide I fancy something different.
I was working in the building that the Penicillin segment was fimed in at the time - I actually missed seeing the program at the time - and, although it wasn't alwasy easy or fun, I never lost the sense of awe at working somewhere where science had changed the world.
Yes, I’ve seen that programme before, it’s very good. I watch history and science programmes all the time on iPlayer and recommmend some of the health ones to my students; there’s a great one on neurosurgery called ‘Between life and death’ which I recommmend to my students on the death and dying module.
I nearly passed out when watching last week's episode (that's not a euphemism). This week's was much easier to stomach (the syphilis pustules included) even though I was eating dinner at the time.
But yes, such programmes can be helpful and educative. I watched a YouTube video of a meningioma resection (removal) before my own brain was operated upon, so I now know roughly how Big a Hole I have in my Head...
I still think these are incompatible activities. You eat dinner sitting in an upright chair at a table in a dining room. You watch TV from an armchair in - well, wherever you keep it; sitting room, drawing room, library, boudoir, servants quarters.
I eat dinner sitting on an armchair. Not watching TV, as I don't have one, but sometimes listening to music or watching a youtube video, or interacting with people online. It's quite nice to be social when one eats, and if you live alone, online interaction in a comfortable environment is a way to do it.
This, and leaning forward slightly, be it over a plate, or a writing pad, or a keyboard does something to my back, aggravating an old sacro-ileac injury and causing a sciatica like pain when I stand.
I cut up my food at the kitchen counter, and eat in an armchair, with just a fork and with my plate held up to chest height. Usually with a hot wheat bag behind my back, and generally watching the early evening news on the TV to get the local weather forecast.
Since I've been staying at my sister's, the habit has been eating supper in front of the TV, partly as her dining-room has been out of commission since she had a new kitchen put in. The reasons for this are a bit like a variant on There's a Hole in my Bucket:
* The dining-room is full of the contents of the family room (the bit behind the kitchen with a sofa and TV).
* Returning them is on hold until the back wall of the family room can be painted.
* It wasn't painted with the rest of the walls because the window in it was being replaced.
* The window has been replaced (just before the lockdown), but we can't get my nephew back to finish the painting because ... lockdown.
Whether we'll start eating in the dining-room once All This Is Over is doubtful - we've rather got used to the backdrop of House of Games and The Chase ...
For those of you still awake and feigning interest, tonight's supper was a sort of paella with cod, courgettes, roasted red peppers and peas, flavoured with paprika nd saffron. I rather liked it (though I think it would have been nicer with prawns - I'm not at all sure that I see the point of cod), but S. wasn't keen - she's not wild about paellas and risottos. This is most unfortunate, as I could eat them to a band playing.
I think you'll find lots of people do, especially those with a single reception room (lounge/diner) because the TV is in the room.
We used to have supper during the week in the kitchen but rarely with a TV or radio on. Since the builders arrived all meals apart from breakfast are in the dining room because the kitchen has either been in chaos or without a door between it and the building works. The dining room, of course, doesn't have a TV.
I hate eating and watching TV. As a deaf person I can only really comprehend one thing as a time and I like a bit of conversation over my meals. Mind you since lockdown, lunch has often been accompanied by World at One on the radio, but my husband knows to ask me if I mind first.
Comments
We caught the red-eye plane from Aberdeen, had a hot chocolate on arrival, then a short canal trip, Dam Square, lunch, Anne Frank's House, the flower market (more of a bulb market as it was February), and the Beginjhof. The day included travelling by plane, train, canal boat and tram. Everything was charming - the bikes, the canals, the discovery that there's a Primark in Amsterdam....
I spent half my time telling Beloved that, no, she couldn't buy cannabis cheese, nor cannabis cake, nor cannabis sweets, and especially not cannabis vodka. But she went from ebullient to silent and aghast in Anne Frank's House.
It was astonishing how much we fitted into one day. We had dinner at Schipol. Beloved was still full of energy at the end, but I was fast asleep on the plane before they did the safety announcements and had to be shaken awake at Aberdeen.
Despite adding a good pinch of chimichurri seasoning, I can't say the pancakes tasted of anything much. I don't know that they offer more than thinly sliced bread, buttered/oiled on both sides. Unless you have a particular need to use gram: in which case more seasoning/spices.
A polite enquiry elicited the ready response that people were being asked to wait, because HM Queen Beatrix was touring the House privately with Mrs Lech Walesa (Mr Walesa having then recently become President of Poland, which dates this to about 1990).
Both ladies emerged, looking solemn, as one usually does when leaving this particular place...I suspect it must have been especially poignant for Danuta Walesa...
I would love to be able to revisit Amsterdam, though that's not really on the cards now (and not because of The Bl**dy Plague). Two other favourite cities are Lisbon, and Innsbruck - both of which, oddly enough, also have trams (though there were more in Lisbon in My Day than there are now...).
It's still called that in French (ail des ours). We always get it when it's available because "normal" garlic disagrees with me.
I have a tendency to think 'O if it's growing nicely there, let's leave it alone, as it's obviously happy!', whereas one or two others (FatherInCharge, to his shame) prefer to hoick stuff out, and make the place look like a municipal park.
O the trouble I've had! You wouldn't believe it! We have some neat little ground-hugging plants, which keep other stuff out (e.g. the rather invasive ground elder), but keep the nourishing moisture in.
No, no, The Murderers say, GET THEM OUT!! GET THEM OUT!! And do The Murderers come back week by week to hoe the ground? Not on your life!
BTW - we have some nice Borage (I think) growing in a sheltered, sunny spot. I know it has some medicinal value, but can it be used also in cooking?
We don't grow plants in our church garden for eating/cooking, but it's helpful knowledge, anyway.
Not easy to forget ascending 1 in 2 slope in something resembling an Edwardian bathing machine controlled (you hope) by nothing more than a large brass handle.
Even worse than when I was last in Lisbon...
I'd love that recipe, some of my favourite flavours
recipe PM'ed
Tonight was tomato sausages fried up with been-there-for-a-while pancetta, onion and shrivelling tomatoes. Pinch of sugar, ditto chilli flakes - over pasta - fine.
Hoping for similar alchemy with leftover chicken, veg and noodles tomorrow.
ION I suddenly realised that the unexpected guest has been with us for 9 week
You poor soul - and living in France!!!
@Firenze - I totally agree about fridge-clearing "recipes" - especially ones involving sausages, tomatoes and pasta!
In other news, I ask this here as I shall be looking in Britain rather than anywhere else in the world? Can anyone think of anything these days that is still packaged in transparent red plastic? I'm looking for something to replace the red window in a box camera with, and I'm blowed if I can think of anything that we ever buy that comes in such packaging.
AG
Tea of lentil, cheese and spinach risotto, followed by raspberries, yoghurt and granola. Then I co-taught a tutorial til 9pm so I'm very tired now.
A couple of small, miss-shaped red peppers, an onion and a few small soft tomatoes, sliced and sauteed together then put at the bottom of a casserole dish, topped with a layer of freshly cooked macaroni, blanched cauliflower florets and topped with a strong cheesy sauce. Baked until the top was nicely browned.
Tasty and filling
- I've just discovered that it (presumably the original) has been running on the Talking Pictures channel on Friday evenings. Might take a look this week, although it is always possible that I will be greatly disappointed when, as is often the case with old TV favourites, it doesn't live up to my memory of it.
The Radio Times reviewer does not seem to be taken by the new version
Supper this evening was salmon, broccoli and pasta bake with a cream cheese sauce and slightly roasted tomatoes, and pronounced "very tasty" by my sister, followed by CHEESE, oatcakes and grapes.
* well, what passes for breakfast - as I seem to be sleeping ridiculously late (especially today after a not-very-good dream), it's really more like an early lunch.
Yesterday I had leftover sliced up cooked sausages, fried with tomato and stuck together with reconstituted dried egg for breakfast, which worked really well - the recently bought egg is clearly better than the OOD stuff I was finishing.
Dinner was some packaged rosti with bacon and emmental from Aldi, which I cooked too much of, because one sachet didn't look enough, until I got it in the frying pan. So that's for breakfast today.
I was working in the building that the Penicillin segment was fimed in at the time - I actually missed seeing the program at the time - and, although it wasn't alwasy easy or fun, I never lost the sense of awe at working somewhere where science had changed the world.
AG
But yes, such programmes can be helpful and educative. I watched a YouTube video of a meningioma resection (removal) before my own brain was operated upon, so I now know roughly how Big a Hole I have in my Head...
You watch television over dinner?
I cut up my food at the kitchen counter, and eat in an armchair, with just a fork and with my plate held up to chest height. Usually with a hot wheat bag behind my back, and generally watching the early evening news on the TV to get the local weather forecast.
* The dining-room is full of the contents of the family room (the bit behind the kitchen with a sofa and TV).
* Returning them is on hold until the back wall of the family room can be painted.
* It wasn't painted with the rest of the walls because the window in it was being replaced.
* The window has been replaced (just before the lockdown), but we can't get my nephew back to finish the painting because ... lockdown.
Whether we'll start eating in the dining-room once All This Is Over is doubtful - we've rather got used to the backdrop of House of Games and The Chase ...
For those of you still awake and feigning interest, tonight's supper was a sort of paella with cod, courgettes, roasted red peppers and peas, flavoured with paprika nd saffron. I rather liked it (though I think it would have been nicer with prawns - I'm not at all sure that I see the point of cod), but S. wasn't keen - she's not wild about paellas and risottos. This is most unfortunate, as I could eat them to a band playing.
We used to have supper during the week in the kitchen but rarely with a TV or radio on. Since the builders arrived all meals apart from breakfast are in the dining room because the kitchen has either been in chaos or without a door between it and the building works. The dining room, of course, doesn't have a TV.