food

PC 442 Wooden Spoons

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Don’t you just love a good wooden spoon?

(Note 1)

A wooden cooking spoon is versatile and can be used for stirring soups and sauces, stirring eggs when you want them scrambled. (Note 2) They are heat resistant and don’t melt or warp – although they can burn! They can be cracked – it doesn’t’ matter; they are great for your non-stick saucepan as they won’t scratch it. And we don’t seem to worry that a little bit might come off and be ingested!

My daughter has spent five months doing everything possible to make her late grandmother’s house habitable and moved in at the end of March. The renovations aren’t complete by any stretch of the imagination, but it is dry, with working kitchen, working bathroom and downstairs loo, rewired, replumbed, with a new roof and new windows. This is the third house she’s owned with her husband Sam, so I had to scratch my head as to what to give her for a Housewarming present. I imagined she would want something that will be useful, not a pointless knick-knack; she probably threw out lots of stuff when she was packing, ‘ours not to reason why’, so it could replace something old and tired that went. There’s a tradition of giving someone in her situation a wooden spoon ….. and you can’t have enough wooden spoons in your kitchen!

Spoons have been a symbol of love all over Europe for hundreds of years. In particular in Wales, ‘love spoons’, small and carved out of wood, a material which is considered to be capable of keeping away evil, were given by a man to his girl, hoping she would accept it as a token of their engagement.

And often, like everything else in life, there is another meaning seeming at odds with love! In C19th British slang, ‘spoon’ meant simpleton, a meaning that might have been influenced by the shallowness of spoons. To be given the wooden spoon doesn’t say much about your performance as it’s given to those who finish last. The custom began in 1811 at Cambridge University when there were three classes of honours degrees awarded; the First Class winners were called Wranglers, said to have been born with golden spoons in their mouths; Second Degree winners were called Senior Optimes, born with silver spoons and the third class went to Junior Optimes, referring to lead spoons. The unfortunate who was last was called the ‘wooden spoon’ and the university adopted the custom of presenting a wooden spoon to the individual placed lowest in the Mathematical Tripos. But it was still a pass!

I went online to find a large one ….. and ordered it. It arrived and had a crack in it. Without question I was given a refund with no need to return it.

Back to square one! I was still undecided when I saw two old scaffolding-type planks on the street, leaning up against the recycling bins. I can’t abide waste so thought I could use them somehow. That’s when the idea came to me. Perhaps I could fashion a large wooden spoon out of a plank, so large that it would have to be up on the kitchen wall. I have a modicum of DIY skill, supported by some very basic tools, but more importantly a strong belief that I can do anything. Whatever I do, I accept that the end result might not be the greatest example but ….. if someone showing the cheeks of their bum can do something, I am sure I can make a passable attempt. My regular readers may remember the little brick wall I built at the back of the patio of my basement flat off Clapham Common.

It probably took me about a week, evenings and the weekend, whereas a bricklayer would have taken a day. But there’s something very satisfying in achieving something way out of one’s comfort zone.

Back to the spoon. The first thing I had to do was to determine its size. The plank was 18cms wide by 1.8m long, so I cut 50cms off it. Mapping out the head of the spoon wasn’t an exact science but soon I had an outline that I could attack with tools that cut/sawed/planed/chiselled/sanded.

Eventually I had a sanded ‘spoon’ which then, after some staining and some polish, I liked so much we kept it!!

So the other plank was used to make Jade’s!!

The first spoon in front of the other plank

I have made four so far, one for Scarlet Anderson who founded a London-based production company called Spoon Studios. I had fashioned almost all of the spoon end of one when it cracked into one third/two thirds. I had a fit, swore a little, but then thought I could glue them back together using some dowels.

Wooden dowels

For those of you unfamiliar with woodworking – and here’s me suggesting I am (not) – these little wooden pegs are ideal for fixing pieces of wood together when you don’t want to use a metal screw. Just drill a hole in each side of the pieces of wood you want to join, apply some glue, place a dowel in one side and bring them together, clamping as necessary. Sounds so easy, except that the holes in each side need to be exactly lined up.

YouTube has some helpful videos. In short, you hammer a small nail into one side, cut off the top, and bring the two pieces together. The nail will make a mark on the other piece of wood. Drill!

I am not going to start a production line, but it’s been a fun experience!

Richard 6th June 2025

Hove

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk  

Note 1 You will notice amongst the spoons a wooden spaghetti quantity measurer and some other thing used for I know not! Looks nice!

Note 2 The trick to making good scrambled egg is to turn off the heat just before they’re ready. The eggs will go on cooking a little and then they’re perfect.

PC 437 Pulled back to the Hope Café

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Mo had sent me a WhatsApp asking if I was back. I am reminded of the difficulties of those who spend a long time in different parts of the world; no one is ever sure where you are, if you’re back. My mother-in-law tries to spend the European winters in Rio de Janeiro, her home city, and vica versa; her friends need to be briefed as to when she’s coming, or indeed when she’s going. I replied I could meet Mo in The Hope Café on Tuesday …. so we catch up over a coffee and a little pastry from Teresa’s Brazilian counter.

“How was Brazil? Read your postcards. (PCs 435 & 436) Sounds as though you had a great time.”

“Actually, very relaxed. Didn’t try to go to hot yoga in Copacabana; just walked along the beach before the sun got too hot, then caught up with friends and family. Two people particularly. Carl von Studnitz, in addition to his surfing and cinematography businesses, runs a charity that provided essential food and clothing to poor families in the municipality of Queimados, to the north of Barra. He lives in the suburb of Jardim Botânico.

A Lily pond within the botanical gardens

The other was Pricilla Goslin, the author of ‘How to be a Carioca’.”

“Sounds like you enjoyed yourself. Wasn’t the main reason of your visit to assist your mother-in-law on her return to Lisbon?”

“Yes. Then she and her partner Toni will come and visit in May. You may recall a couple of PCs I wrote last year after a similar visit. (PCs 388 and 389 Lymington)”

“But you are looking well – always good to have a little tan, makes one look healthy!”

“You should have seen me when I got back – ‘walking death’!”

“What do you mean? What happened?”

                “We had a late afternoon flight out of Rio, with an arrival time in Lisbon of 0500 on Monday 14th.

Looking south over Guanabara Bay with Pão de Açucar at its western entrance

I always love looking out of aeroplane windows, in the hope I’ll see something interesting. Look at the moon rising:

This was taken late on; we’d left Brazil and were heading to the West African coast.”

“Richard, I am in suspense. Why did you feel awful?”

“Chose the little ‘fish & rice’ starter and chicken ‘main’ for the inflight meal and settled down to watch Ridley Scott’s Napoleon. About two hours out of Lisbon was feeling decidedly funny. Managed to get off the plane and make my way to our connecting flight. I could still taste the meal! Slept on the Gatwick bound flight, although had a sick bag ready (they seemed ridiculously small!), got home by midday … had a couple of hours sleep …… got up and made myself vomit …… had a couple of hours sleep … got up and made myself vomit ….. repeated twice more. The Tuesday and Wednesday are a blur. Had a banana on the Wednesday and another on the Thursday. Haven’t had jelly for years but that was another option, that and dry toast ….. and Lucozade! What I hadn’t experienced before was the ache in my abdomen; sometimes it really was quite severe. Still, by Saturday of the Easter weekend was beginning to feel better, sort of 70%! The only good thing was I had no diarrhoea!”

“You know, Richard, everyone has their personal horror stories of food poisoning; dodgy curries, fish very definitely ‘off’, chicken contaminated with salmonella, funny mushrooms (Note 1). And as soon as someone tells you they have/have had food poisoning, they will tell you about their own experiences, in graphic detail, as if your own weren’t enough, but maybe theirs were worse!”

“Haven’t had any chocolate for ten days!! On the subject of food, I am often late to hear new labels and so it is with ‘Food Noise’; apparently it’s the nagging voice of craving which affects almost 60 % of the population, like ‘chocolate’ which I absolutely identify with. ‘Food Noise’ (Note 2) is the title of a new book by the son of the late Michael Mosley, author of The Fast Diet, whose engaging personality encouraged us to watch many of his television programmes about food and our bodies. Jack is following in his footsteps.

We have a friend who’s 7 months into a year-long trial using Ozempic to lose weight, so there’s a personal interest. Jack sounds several notes of warning about its use, the first about the type of weight that users tend to lose. According to its Danish manufacturer, users lost about 17% of their weight over a 70-week period, but 40% of this was lean body mass ie muscle. And that muscle loss is not regained; most put on fat when they come off the drug.”

“Wow! That’s very disturbing. Like you I have a couple of friends who are on it, but by the sound of it no one really knows its long-term effects on our organs. Incidentally had you left before Heathrow shut down on 20th March?”

“No, and fortunately we weren’t flying until the 26th, so we were unaffected.”

“Seems amazing that one failed component at an electricity sub-station near the airport could cause a fire that shut down the sub-station …… and Heathrow ….. completely. I imagine everyone is asking searching questions, about how can Heathrow, the second busiest airport in the world and important national infrastructure, be brought to a complete stop by the failure of one supply outlet. I suspect a great many organisations and companies are dusting off their Contingency Manuals, the ones which have Plan B and Plan C in the event of a failure of Plan A!” 

“Mo. Before I go, do you know when the bookshop is going to open?”

“Yes! By the beginning of June; a little later than Duncan planned. I will help out three days a week ….. and I need to get going too. Always good to chat, See you.”

Richard 2nd May 2025

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 Poisonous mushrooms are at the centre of a murder investigation in a court case in Australia.

Note 2 ‘Food Noise: How Weight Loss Medications and Smart Nutrition can silence your cravings’ by Dr Jack Mosley.

PC 431 Hope as Always

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Haven’t had a chance to see Mo in the last few weeks so, by text, we agreed to meet for a coffee in The Hope Café on Monday afternoon, as next week we fly to Rio de Janeiro. I’d arrived early and managed to chat to Libby for a couple of minutes. She’s recovering from her embarrassment of being the victim of a Romance Scam (See PC 427 Hope Conversations February 2025) and tells me talking about it really helped. (Note 1) She also added that the café still has a special offer of pancakes, a sort-of left over from Shrove Tuesday, as they were a big hit that day.

The tradition of having pancakes on the day before Lent in the Christian calendar is embedded in my DNA, as is the celebration of Carnival if you are like my wife, Celina, Brazilian. It seems the whole country stops for days to celebrate, and the parade of the Samba Schools is something to experience.

The parade on part of the 700m Sambodromo

We went to the Sambodromo to witness Rio de Janeiro’s carnival in February 2014; read PC 07 ‘Carnival’ to feel the beat!

The word carnival comes from the Latin for ‘farewell to meat’, ‘carne vale’. European countries celebrate carnival without the beat of Samba and the largest one in Northern Europe is in the Danish city of Aalborg on Jutland. The Nice carnival claims to be the oldest in the world, with its roots dating back to 1294 and it’s a well-celebrated event in many Germanic cities. Don’t forget that the words Mardi Gras, celebrated particularly in New Orleans in the United States, means Fat Tuesday in French! (Note 2)

I like the idea that the need to clear out all the eggs, before one’s 40 days and 40 nights of restricted eating, brought a plate stacked with pancakes, over which lemon juice would be sprinkled to give them a sharpness and granulated sugar sieved or Maple syrup dribbled to give them sweetness, to the dining table. I was getting stuck into such a pile when Mo arrived. Mumbling a sort-of ‘hello’, I finished my mouthful and said hello properly. Mo is already in catch-up mode:

“I wanted to get the train back to north London the weekend before last and I came up against our antiquated rail system.”

“Not sure I understand. Antiquated in what way?”

“We are lucky to have a reasonable network of railway lines and when the trains run on time it’s a very easy way to travel from A to B. But I find it amazing that, in 2025, our train services are affected by archaic employment contracts for the train drivers. Did you know that none of their contracts stipulates Sunday working – it’s voluntary and the operating companies rely on the drivers agreeing to ‘rest-day working arrangements’, for which they get paid some £600 a shift. So I had to do part of my journey on a frigging bus!”

“Ah! Yes! I think this is a clear case of the government shooting itself in the foot.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re right that the Train Operating Companies have always relied on drivers opting for overtime to cover the Sunday need. In comes the new government, more sympathetic to the ‘working man’, whatever that means (Note 3), and fed up with two years of industrial action on the railways, awards them the asked-for pay rise, without any changes to working practices. So come Christmas last year, drivers who would have traditionally needed the overtime but now flush with cash, just said: ‘No thanks I’m off to Lanzarote with the Mrs’.”

“This is ridiculous. It’s 2025 and we need both a modern transport system and modern working conditions. Reminds me that it wasn’t long ago that the German railway system got rid of a regulation that required every train to have a red flag to be waved in front of the engine! By the way, I read your PC about going into the cold chamber at CryoBright (PC 429 Beyond the Glass). Not something I want to try but I understand its potential benefits.”

“The owner of Cryobright, Rob, commented: “I’ve never really thought about our windows, but I quite like the idea they create a bit of intrigue. A better marketeer would probably blah blah blah about lost ‘awareness opportunity’ etc but we have had a lot of people saying we are a hidden gem – which is nice.”

“Not sure whether you are a cook Richard so ….”

“Oh! I love cooking although don’t do as much as I used to …”

“I found this recipe for a lemon cake which was so weird I had to try it!”

“What was weird about it?”

“Well, first up it uses mayonnaise …..”

“Excuse me! Sorry! Mayo in a cake?”

“Well, as the writers of ‘Bake It Easy’, Tom Oxford and Oliver Coysh, say, mayonnaise is made from emulsified fat and eggs, and that’s half the ingredients of a cake!”

“What was it like?”

“Lovely …. and who doesn’t like lemon cake! Oh! I must tell you, Richard, of a conversation I had the other day after my weekly Pilates class. I was talking to a new student, who said that she’d come back after having her second child, now six months old. And I asked her if she had a nanny. ‘No! Man.’ I obviously looked expectant, wanting a little more information, so she said ‘partner’. Thinking about it later, I thought of these labels we use nowadays.”

At that moment Sami and Lisa came into the Hope Café and I wanted to talk to them, so said goodbye to Mo and …..

(To be continued)

Richard 21st March 2025

Hove

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 I cannot emphasise enough how beneficial it can be to talk, talk about your problems, share your thoughts, listen to your own voice.

Note 2 Love ‘Fat Tuesday’! In England the Notting Hill Carnival, first held in London in 1966, takes place in August, and is a celebration of all things Caribbean.

Note 3 The ‘working man’ is, I understand, the product of the ‘working class’ ……. but we try not to mention ‘class’ anymore ….. as most individuals who work could claim to be working. Falling over themselves to be ‘correct’, our new Labour Government suggests that the ‘working man’ is someone who will rely on the State Pension and no other income when they retire, stop working.

PC 423 There Are Standards, Carruthers (PS)

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There are standards, there are passing fads and there are habits. But even the standards that you grew up with, understood them to be sacrosanct and embedded in your DNA, can and should be challenged sometimes. Take men’s shoes; I am using them as an example as to comment on women’s would be like me commenting on whether wedges are more comfortable than stilettos, and I am not qualified to do so!

I grew up in the days of leather, leather shoes and leather soles. I think I had a pair of suede shoes, not Hush puppies, but it was the leather polished ones which defined my upbringing. At Sandhurst we were taught how to polish one’s brown shoes, getting the wax into the welts, and one’s parade ground Drill Boots, with their steel quarters on the heels and the studs on the sole. We were even told that one should polish the instep of the shoes so that, when you were sitting down, if you crossed one leg over the other, exposing the instep, it looked cared for and polished. These habits became part of the collection of one’s standards. Like having a crease down the length of one’s trousers.

Then I got into suede boots and the number of shoes requiring polishing diminished. Back then trainers were what you wore if you were training, obviously; in the gym, on the running track, playing squash or going for a jog. They went with track suits, not an item of clothing for everyday wear, surely, Caruthers. Now I have more trainer-type footwear than leather shoes, the latter growing Mold at the back of the wardrobe. But if I do wear leather ones, they have to be polished beforehand.

Table manners are another ‘standards’ issue. In one of my PCs I mentioned I went to be interviewed by the C-in-C BAOR for a role. The first test would be over luncheon (Note 1), the unspoken ‘knife-and-fork test’; how did I hold my knife and fork, what did I do with them when I wasn’t eating, did I speak when I had food in my mouth and was still masticating etc. I was brought up to believe that these things mattered and still do. I try not to show how sad I am when others stab their food as if it will jump off the plate, hold their knife and fork vertically as if to indicate no one should try to take something off their plate or just speak with an open mouth showing the half-digested potato or sausage. Just so gross!

Writing about individuals eating with their mouth open reminded me that, many years ago, a new client sat down at my table in the Institute of Directors in Pall Mall, the start of some coaching sessions, expecting us to get straight into it. We did, after he had disappeared to the Men’s Room to remove his chewing gum. There are standards, Carruthers!

And if you are wondering, puddings should be eaten with a fork or a spoon and fork, not a spoon on its own!

Napkins or serviettes, call them what you will, are another essential when eating. Because I like ironing, I am happy we use proper napkins, linen or cotton and not some paper replica, unless it’s for a party, like these:

And if you use a napkin, it’s good to have your own napkin ring in which to put it. There are standards after all.

I am not sure when it started but it has for me become one of the most annoying habits to witness and it’s mainly actioned by, I think, under-thirties women. Although in this age of equality I wouldn’t want to exclude some members of the opposite sex and anyone in between. For any multitude of reasons, the individual is feeling anxious and that anxious emotion brings a certain wetness to their eyes. Whether in disbelief that they’re going to cry or pleased that they’re showing their feelings, they move their hands towards their cheeks, fingers extended, nails prominent …. and shake their fingers, brow creased ….. mumbling ‘I don’t want to cry’ or somesuch. Someone could choreograph a little ballet with each finger having its own independent part to play. Any tears are carefully wiped away with the finger-print part of the finger; otherwise, their fashionable nails would stab them in the eye. (Note 2) I know we’re encouraging everyone to show their feelings more, especially young men, but this is absolutely ridiculous. And it goes on and on and no one says: “Oh! For God’s sake, Emma, get a f**king grip!” because that would breech their human rights.  

I have written before about ‘Loo Paper’ (PC 47 Aug 2015) and ‘The Loo’ (PC 54 November 2015). After using the loo, I think it’s important to close the lid, but I hadn’t factored in the latest advice. Close the lid then flush and not the other way around:

And finally, if you go to someone’s house and use a knife & fork, ie having something to eat, you should write a Thank You letter. With the cost of postage sky high, I write mine in cursive script with a fountain pen, take a photo then send it via WhatsApp. A rather modern take on old-fashioned standards; Carruthers would smile.

Richard 24th January 2025

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS Carruthers is an old Scottish surname which reeks of upper-class aloofness. Inter alia, the main protagonist of Erskine Childers’ novel ‘The Riddle of The Sands’.

Note 1 Another word that defines a class and an age …. and an indefinable ‘meat’! Actually ‘fine-particle meat products enriched with pork fat and flavouring additives.’ Sounds very healthy.

Note 2 Nail extensions have become longer and longer, so much so that some should be registered as dangerous weapons and the owners of others will have problems in the future as in order to use a keyboard today, they have to hold their fingers in a convex manner.

PC 416 Catch up in The Hope

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I use my Notes function in my iPhone to write down thoughts that occur to me, reminders to do this or that, or email myself if I need to take quicker action. The result is that some of these thoughts end up in my ‘More Thoughts for Postcards’ dump file. Always amused by coincidences, earlier this year I was reading Jo Nesbo’s latest novel, ‘Killing Moon’, some weeks after the removal of a haemorrhoid in January (see PC 373 Anally Focused February 2024). Nesbo wrote that ‘the Custody Officer at the local nick had a temper …. due to the presence of haemorrhoids.’, and this issue rarely makes it to the pages of a novel. Enough said!

I popped into The Hope Café on Tuesday and found Sami, head down in some new thriller, as is his wont. He looked up, smiled and suggested I join him. After getting a double espresso from Libby, I pulled up a chair and sat down. The chit-chat began soon enough.

“You remember Sami that, after reading Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwen and his reference to the awkward rhyme of Hove and Love, I had sat on the beach in Rio and sketched out an intertwining of the two words.”

“Yes, and you created some wooden piece.”

“Well remembered! It’s up on a wall in our living room. The other Sunday there was a short interview in the newspaper with Peter James, our local author who’s made a name for himself with his Detective Roy Grace series, based in Brighton.”

“Probably, like you Richard, I think I have read every one of them, including the one about Grace’s wife, who had been declared dead. Was the interview interesting?”

“Actually it was, if not a little predictable. But it was the headline that caught my attention:

I thought, here we go again. Just add a little line between the ‘I’ and ‘Love’ and we have ‘Hove’!”

“Think you need to get out more, Richard; becoming too introverted! Seriously, what else have you got in those notes for future PCs?”

“You will know from my last PC that I am an avid Times reader. The other day there was a caption for an Italian church in the town of Rimini: “Rimini’s Duomo cathedral.” Rather like saying “Nimes’ eglise church”; bit sloppy!”

“What’s that good descriptive word: – ‘pedant’? ‘A person who is excessively concerned with minor details and words.’”

“That’s me! And a fully paid-up member of the Apostrophe Protection Society. Like when I shouted at a past Masterchef Professionals episode when it stated that one of the finalists, an Australian called Kasae, was working in Gloucestershire. A minute earlier it said she was currently working in the Roman city of Bath, which is in the county of Somerset.” 

“Ah! MasterChef! Which brings us on to Greg Wallace and the allegations of sexual harassing behaviour. (Note 1) Sad to say, he’s a wonderful example of ‘give a man a spade and he’ll dig a deeper hole’.

Marcus Wareing, Monica Galetti and Greg Wallace, co-presenters of the MasterChef series in the UK

“You mean his retort that those making the allegations were mainly middle-class and women of a certain age? One of his accusers said he seemed to be claiming to be a victim of classism. Deborah Ross, writing a spoof story about him in The Times, suggested he would have said: “I’m an old-school geezer just having a laugh: what’s the harm in that?”

“I read that Ulrika Jonsson felt his response showed the arrogance of a man who has zero introspection or self-awareness.”

“I wrote to The Times …”

“Of course you did! What did you say?

“Let me have a look in my Sent box of emails; here it is:

‘Sir. I suspect the recent allegations about Greg Wallace and his sexist behaviour are the tip of an iceberg that’s based on traditional male banter, now outdated and unacceptable. I wonder, for example, how long The Great British Bake-Off will continue, given the sexual innuendo so often woven into its script.’

I feel there’s a wider issue here. Most of society has moved on from male banter although it’s still heard in the pub or in a sports’ hall locker room. But I cringe at some of the scripted or unscripted exchanges during each episode of The Great British Bake Off (Note 1).”

“Not a fan, Richard! The issue becomes one of judgement, whether a comment is amusing or risqué, endearing or crass; that fine line between what’s acceptable and what’s not. The trouble is that the line has moved for society as a whole but some, like Wallace, haven’t realised it. What happens on The Great British Bake Off?”

“There’s lots of sniggering when someone for example talks suggestively about ‘cream’ or the word ‘bun’ and one has to assume that everyone is either happy with it or won’t complain. Sometimes it’s so obvious it’s childish; maybe that’s the progamme maker’s intent and of course traditionally the public has liked ‘saucy’ stuff. Changing ways and what’s acceptable in society takes years.”

Suddenly we both realise we’d been chatting for over an hour and need to get on with the day. As Sami gets up, Mo puts her head around the door and I almost have a change of plan, as I like talking to her. Then the ‘To Do List’ interposes in my mind:

“Hi! Mo! Look, love to see you but I need to go. You coming to the pre-Christmas mulled wine and mince pies early evening do here on that Friday, 20th December? Can we catch up then?”

“Of course! Bye Sami, bye Richard.”

So until the Friday before Christmas …….   

Richard 6th December 2024

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1. MasterChef, MasterChef Celebrity and MasterChef The Professionals have now been running for over twenty years and its format sold around the globe. The current series of MasterChef The Professionals is co-hosted by Monica Galetti, Marcus Wareing and Greg Wallace.    

Note 2 Another television series, this hosted by Channel Four, where twelve amateur bakers compete to be crowned Finalist of the Great British Bake Off.