Povey Prattle

 Glory Be For Pork Pie. Description A pork pie is a traditional British meat pie, usually served at room temperature. It consists of a filling of roughly chopped pork and pork fat, surrounded by a layer of jellied pork stock in a hot water crust pastry. It is normally eaten as a snack or with a salad. ====================================================================== I am claiming Pork Pie as an English Ethnic Food. The description above ( Wikipedia)  hardly does them justice,  (and I would never think of them as snack food).  We Brits often  eat them as an early evening meal, alongside good tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber, spring onions, pickled red cabbage etc.,  and maybe even a hard boiled egg.  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A sight, or a smell, or a taste can easily trigger the memory.  I tasted Pork Pie in my memory the other day.  ...

I am on a bit of an ethnic food binge; getting ready for the next and inevitable "Brexit" economic depression, and collapse of  U.K. international trade. My first purchases have been from Scotland. 1.  Dundee Cake I had a taste memory a few months ago, which led me to buy some Dundee Cake from a Scottish Gourmet mail order company here in the U.S.A.  Sadly the Scottish Bakery which supplied the mail order co. has gone out of business. But I was able to buy some Dundee Cake (made in Hull, England) from my local "Scots Corner" retail store on 17th St. in Sarasota. Forget all the jokes about the fruit cake which is given as a gift at Christmas, and then re-gifted for donkeys' years. You'll never re-gift Dundee Cake ; it  is a rich and delicious fruit cake which you will want to hoard.  Rich and moist, it is topped with almonds.  Many people eat  a slice with a topping of Seville Orange Marmalade, or of fine Preserves. 2.  Ecc...

Homespun wisdom ----------------------------------------------------------------- Weird humour

There are two strains of old coot behavior:  the Grumpy and the Daffy.  I can be both. With that in mind,  perhaps I should not have mentioned in my blog yesterday of the possibility of being pulled over by the Police under suspicion of driving whilst being an old coot. For today I was clearly a daffy old coot.  Utterly daffy! I was at my barber shop -  the one I have used for thirteen years.    I opted to wait in for the owner (Patrick) even though his chair-rental barber was not busy. The chair-rental barber began to speak to me.  I responded as best I could,  given that his voice was very soft. In due course I asked him to speak up 'cause I could hardly hear what he was saying. At which point  Patrick and the man in his chair burst into laughter. "He's not talking to you"  Patrick said  -  "he is having a conversation with someone via his mobile 'phone". I was exposed as a "daffy old...

Terrace Building, Sarasota. In an off the cuff conversation last Friday some friends reminded me that I should always have my driving licence, insurance certificate, and registration certificate readily available should I be pulled over by the Police or Sheriffs whilst driving. It could happen to me, not on account of my driving, but on suspicion of being an old coot. I always have my driving licence and insurance card on hand, but what about the registration document? Back home I discovered that I had filed it so well that I had lost it. So off I went to the Sarasota County Collector of Taxes office (at the Terrace Building) bright eyed and hopeful soon after they opened on Tuesday  (Monday having been a holiday). The office has a parking lot which accommodates (maybe) sixty  vehicles.  All well and good except that I was not the only Sarasotan who wanted to conduct business that day. I circled the lot four times but could...

Hurrah for Trader Joe's which  (for the time being) is stocking and selling the most delicious Lemon Curd ever!

My neighbour Barbara and I walk with Zion on Sunday mornings and then decamp to Panera Bread (outside) for a mug of coffee. Our pattern is that Barbara gets her coffee whilst I walk Zion around the parking lot, and then Barbara holds Zion's leash as I get my coffee. As Z and I walked I saw a gentleman (?) walk into Panera with his dog. By the time I got back to the outdoor seating the man and his downtrodden dog Stock photo', not the actual dog, were close to Barbara.  She enticed the dog, but his owner said that he had been spooked and was not too friendly.  The man and dog wandered off. I went into Panera and encountered another  man who was fit to be tied. "Why" he said, is "that man beating the hell out of his dog?" Back outside, Barbara was in tears.  She had also seen the man beating his dog.   She assailed the man with the kind of language which would shame a sailor. The man and his dog disappeared into the side street...