No, not gentle, gentile. I’d made a complete mess of both ovens roasting a loin of pork in one and attempting to cook the skin separately in the other to get crackling. Cooking the skin separately is a technique I’d…

From a sadly missed and prominent atheist, the late, great Douglas Adams … … nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for…

After much of the day spent painting the lounge ceiling in a fresh coat of brilliant white matt emulsion, Midsomer Murders proved boring [ 😀 ] so I retired early to read. On the way, I put out the remnants…

Well, OK, it’s not really a rooster, it’s really Ramsay’s Roast Chicken but that would ruin my alliteration. These days we perform the same transformation on the classic French dish, Coq au Vin. As those remaining few of my fellow…

Foxcam went out again last night ‘cos we’d got a couple of duck leg bones to dispose of. Dutifully, in wandered our favourite [fox formerly known as] Limpy, who seems to be our most frequent visitor. He was in the…

We had yet another barbecued shoulder of lamb last night. Well, with Waitrose offering money off it would be rude not to. That meant we had another shoulder blade and knuckle to put out for our local foxes. As I…

Common/vernacular names of beasties can be problematic and can become contentious. We have a particularly fine example in the world of dragonflies. Aeshna isoceles is popularly known as the Norfolk Hawker because it was, in the UK anyway, originally confined…

… at least, I think. Francine and I had doubled up on Saturday food purchases with the result that I had two chickens to deal with. I dealt with the first chicken by using the breasts for Cajun blackened chicken…

On the two most recent occasions that I have put out some bait hoping to attract foxes, I have signally failed. [I just though I’d throw in a signally ‘cos it’s a funny word – well, I think so.] First…

Welcome February. February is very welcome after successfully suffering a dry January. I’m not sure what it has proved. It’s shown that I can go without a drink but it has also shown that I don’t particularly like doing so.…