Tag Archives: vegan sausages

Friday 3rd February 2017 – THAT WAS ANOTHER …

… nice tea tonight.

There were some potato croquettes and a couple of vegan sausages left over from last week, and a tin of baked beans was hanging around from a long time ago. And followed by my last soya dessert, it was all delicious. And it’s shopping day tomorrow so I can recharge the stocks of frozen croquettes.

Yes, I’ll eat that tea again!

And so last night was almost the same as the other recent nights, except that it was one of those nights where I sat bolt upright awake at about 05:30 for no good reason. I couldn’t go back to sleep either and wherever I was on my travels (and I was certainly somewhere) it evaporated immediately.

Nothing happened at all during the day. Going out for my baguette was one thing, and having a long chat with The One That Got Away was another. No free pop at the supermarket (and if you were wanting to know, it tastes … errr … different and not unpleasant. Not my favourite if I had to pay for it but it was free).

And then we had tea, where I took one of my housemates by surprise, and now it’s an early night with the internet radio. And that’s my lot!

But my researches are going apace. I’ve come across another book. It’s called The Voyages of the Northmen to America and it was written by a certain William Hovgaard in 1914. He was a Danish naval technician and he was mentioned in one of the other books that I’ve recently downloaded.

He uses his naval skill to comment on the Norse voyages and makes a few pertinent comments as to where the Norse settlements in North America might have been, based on his experience and studies in Norse navigation. He favours Sandwich Bay as being the site of the Norse settlements and as you know, I’m writing a pile of stuff on Sandwich Bay even as we speak.

Not only that, I’ve identified a beach that corresponds with what I know that resembles the Furdustrandir, the famous beach that the Norse voyagers mention, that is right at the mouth of Sandwich Bay. And of course, while I acknowledge the existence of the Norse remains at L’Anse aux Meadows, I’m far from convinced that it corresponds with what we know about the description of Vinland.

Whatever L’Anse aux Meadows might be, I’m not convinced that it’s Vinland, and Vinland may well be somewhere else.

So that’s your lot for tonight. I’ll see you all tomorrow.

Sunday 29th January 2017 – WHAT A NICE …

… afternoon!

Alison sent me a message – “I’m going to the English Shop. Do you need anything?”

My reply was simple and to the point. “Why don’t I come with you?”

And so Alison came to pick meup and we went off to the shop. I came back with vegan sausages, vegan pies, dandelion and burdock pop and some Bombay mix. So that’s me set up for the next few weeks, isn’t it? The pies out there are delicious and go down well with spuds and veg. But I also have more kidney bean stuff and a pizza to eat too, so I’m not short of food.

After that, we went for a coffee and then for a meal. We tried a new fritkot as the usual one is undergoing renovation and … shock! horror! the guy in there knows me from somewhere. Dunno where, but he greeted me like a long-lost friend, and that’s uncomfortable. And he made a reference to where we had met but he spoke so fast that I didn’t understand it.

Last night, I had a good sleep – for a change. I tried the usual tactic of watching a Bulldog Drummond film in bed. And that was me stark out. I’d been on my travels too, to visit a couple that I know on the Wirral. But they had moved house and were living on the ground floor in a terraced house. It seemed that they only had one room – I asked about upstairs and they said that this was a different flat, and as for the other room, this was lived in by a girl who had some kind of unusual attachment to the male person in this couple. In fact, all-in-all, I know someone – or two people in fact – who would be very uncomfortable with the significance of this dream.

The trouble with going to bed early and crashing stark out is that you wake up early. And I was awake long before 06:00 too. but I didn’t go up for breakfast until the usual 07:00. I was on my own up there too.

And to my dismay I found that I’d forgotten my loaf yesterday. I had to go out and buy a baguette and even at 08:30 they had sold out. I had to have bread rolls instead.

But this morning has been busy. Editing a pile of photos and a few blog entries, discussing a few things with friends on the internet and watching a football match on the internet from yesterday.

So now, let’s try another Bulldog Drummond film. See if this sends me off to sleep. After all, it’s hospital tomorrow!

Wednesday 25th January 2017 – PARKING …

… is a relentless subject on this blog – especially now that I’m in Belgium where the standard of parking, never mind driving, is totally abysmal.

And so here we are again – a small crowd of people and a police van with its blue lights flashing.

Of the men down there, a couple of them belong to that yellow van parked down there. They want to move off about their business but they can’t because the dark blue Volkswagen is blocking them in.

The police were called and eventually turned up, but they had no luck in resolving the issue.

But it managed to resolve itself because the two cars double-parked, one of which is the silver BMW, belong to the employees of a shop here. The driver of the BMW came down from the shop, backed his car out, the van could then manoeuvre itself out of the mess (and it took quite a while because it really was tight) and then the BMW driver put his car back.

But it’s really miserable, this Belgium parking. You ain’t seen nuffink like it.

I had a reasonable sleep last night. It took me ages to drop off thoroughly, but once I’d gone, I was gone until the workmen started to move about. I’d been on my travels too but once more, it all evaporated just as soon as I awoke and I don’t remember a thing.

There were bread and juice issues yet again this morning, but for some reason I wasn’t all that hungry and ended up pouring half of my breakfast away.

And then Hans came round to say goodbye. He’s hitting the road back to the UK for a fortnight or so.

He brought his travelling companion Selfie Ted around with him to say goodbye to Strawberry Moose, and then we went out for a coffee, a walk and another chat.

There’s so much to say when you have known someone for more than half a century. Almost 51 years since our first day at Nantwich Grammar School.

After lunch I crashed out for quite a while. I’m definitely feeling the strain and I’ve had a really busy few days just now. I can’t last the pace these days.

I was told on Monday that today would be the day that they would do my room. And so I’d done a little cleaning around but you know just as well as I do what was likely to happen. That’s right – no-one turned up. No big surprise, that, is it?

But I did manage a lengthy chat with Liz on the internet, and then I went for tea. Croquettes, vegan sausages and baked beans followed by pineapple rings and citron sorbet. It was all really delicious.

So let’s try for another early night again. I need as many as I can get and one day I’ll be able to fall straight asleep and not awaken until the alarm goes off.

But I’m not too optimistic about that.

Saturday 7th January 2017 – I HAD A NICE …

… afternoon out this afternoon. But before I tell you about that, let me tell you a little about the morning.

And it was a morning too because although I had an early night, I couldn’t drop off to sleep again. In the end I put on one of the films that I had downloaded from archive.org and as you might expect, that did the trick. In fact it did so well that I can’t now remember which film it was.

Nevertheless, I was awake before the alarm and although it took a good while to find the strength to leave the bed, I was up there quite early. And I wasn’t alone either because my housemate came up there. She left the house shortky afterwards and it seems that I am now on my own again.

After breakfast I had a peek out of the window and sure enough, we did have another fall of snow during the night and early morning. It’s not a lot but just about half an inch or so and it’s freezing cold.

Minus 3°C in fact and heavily overcast. I was planning on going to watch the football this evening at Brussels, OH Leuven against Union St Gilles, but it didn’t look as if it would be hopeful.

But I did have a nice surprise. A message from Alison. She’s in town and so did I fancy a coffee?

Accordingly I went and had a shave and shower, and changed my undies. After all, I have to look my best and smell nice. And having accomplished that, I went off uptown in the freezing sleet to do my shopping.

The town was empty and there were only a few stalls on the market. And that wasn’t a surprise as the weather was thoroughly dreadful. I did my shopping at the Delhaize and that was all that I could stand. Freezing cold, with freezing hands, I came back here.

Alison and I had a coffee (or two) and then adjourned across the road to the fritkot for lunch. A bag of chips each did us proud, and then Alison came forward with a proposition. She needs a new ski-suit for a trip she’s planning and did I fancy going with her to help her choose?

We hit the road and headed for Wavre and the huge Decathlon sports shop. It was crowded with people, mainly kids preparing for the classe de neige. Although there was a huge selection of clothes, there was some kind of issues about sizes. Either very small or very large and very little in between, which was a disappointment for her.

There’s another big sports shop, the Intersport, at Herent on the other side of Leuven and so we headed off there, calling at the English Shop on the way where I could buy some more Dandelion and Burdock, some more Linda McCartney pies and, at long last, some vegan sausages. We stashed the pies and sausages in the freezer in the kitchen with the left-over croquettes, and then headed out to Herent.

They had some beautiful clothes there but as you might expect, the stuff that I liked and that Alison liked was by far the most expensive, and the more affordable ski clothes were, well, of …shall we say … lesser quality. Entertainment was provided by a two-year-old boy trying on a ski-suit and trying out the toboggans.

We went for a coffee afterwards and then Alison brought me home. By now it was too late, and too cold to think about going out to the football. I warmed up instead and then went for tea.

I’d remembered to buy the pasta so I had a second lot of my kidney bean stuff and, as I predicted, it was even nicer tonight. And now I’m going to have an early night and take advantage of the fact that I’m on my own.

But it was a really nice afternoon out – all in favour of a “change of ideas” every now and again and it’s always nice to be with friends. If I had more friends, I’d do this more often.

Thursday 12th May 2016 – HA HA HA!

Who was it who said something about “an early night” last night then?

For not only having stayed awake to watch a Mr Moto film (starring Peter Lorre in the title role), I stayed awake and awake and awake, and I was still tossing and turning at 03:45 this morning. So much for my predictions.

But I did manage to drop off to sleep at some point, and I was back at my old school, with a pile of girls, climbing up (not down) a rope of sheets trying to get in through a window or onto a balcony. And as for why I might be doing this, I’m afraid that I don’t have the foggiest. It’s gone clean out of my mind.

For the first time in ages I slept right through until the alarm went off and, resisting the temptation to turn over and go back to sleep, I went off for breakfast. Mind you, I paid for it later on in the day, crashing out at about 17:00 for an hour or so.

After breakfast, I went off on a prowl with the intention of exploring this famous bio shop in the Tiensestraat in Bierbeek about which I had heard so much. I’d driven past it the other evening but I didn’t have time to stop.

It’s certainly good at what it does, that’s for sure, but for me it was a little disappointing because there was none of the vegan cheese that I like. There was some – a kind of spreading mozzarella substitute – so I bought a couple of packs to see how it goes

I also bought a beautiful seeded baguette for lunch (which tasted delicious) and a couple of raisin buns, but I’ll be passing on the Knacker diabolique vegan sausages though. No matter how nice they looked, I couldn’t cope with the name.

But here’s another example of me having to change my national stereotypes. This shop, the Bio Planet, is another establishment that offers free coffee to customers, and there are a few broken biscuits to sample too, so I’ve added it to my ever-increasing list.

Things are definitely looking up here in Belgium.

And that’s not all either.

Just across the road is a Krefel electrical appliance shop so I went over there for a butcher’s. And I was astonished – really astonished. When have you EVER seen a standard-size domestic fridge that has a rated annual consumption of just 64 kilowatts per year? That is amazing.

And if you think that the fridge next to it, the one with freezer compartment, is equally astonishing at 98 kilowatts per year, there was one further down the row that had a rated consumption of just 93 kilowatts per year

And if that isn’t enough, the best is yet to come. Here in the shop was a standard-size freezer with an annual consumption of 101 kilowatts per annum.

This figure, and the one of 64 kw/A for the fridge, are figures that I have never ever seen for these appliances and had I been in a better place in my life right now, the fridge and freeze would be coming back home with me.

The fridge actually uses much less energy than the little 12-volt fridge that I have, and the freezer would go nicely in the barn running off the solar panels and wind turbine in there. I’d be set up for life with this lot.

You may remember the other day that I was moaning that my vegan cheese had been “tidied away” from the fridge at Sint Pieters. I knew that I wouldn’t have time to go back to Brussels for more and how I’d be stuck for my next series of travels.

But no longer, because here in the Carrefour – a mainstream supermarket – they are now selling vegan cheese slices too, and at about two-thirds the price of anywhere else over here. I was equally as astonished by this.

Yes, things are definitely looking up in Belgium right now.

Back here, I’ve pushed on with updating the older bits of the blog. In a mad fit of enthusiasm I’ve done all of January 2011 and I’m stuck well into February. But I won’t be going much further than this for now because I’m leaving here tomorrow as you know. I’m going to have a check-up and then I’m hitting the road.

I did mention that I crashed out this afternoon, and I had a strange occurrence when I awoke. I had a dizzy spell and was staggering around in here for five minutes until I sat down and gathered my wits (it doesn’t take me very long these days).

And for tea, I had pasta and ratatouille followed by spicy loaf and soya cream for pudding. Now I’m off to bed and I shan’t say anything more because I don’t want to tempt fate.

Saturday 20th December 2014 – THE ONLY TIME …

… that I put my foot outside the house today was to go to take the stats. And I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that I’ve set foot outside my little attic.

I did have it in my mind that if the weather was reasonable, I’d go to Commentry to look at the new NOZ that has just opened there and to go for a swim. But one look outside at the hanging cloud that was covering my little mountain was enough to convince me.

Instead, I spent the morning working on another session of rock music programmes for Radio Anglais and the additional notes for the Radio Anglais programmes that are networked to Radio Arverne. This afternoon, I did a little desultory tidying up in here. And that was that.

Mind you, I had a lovely tea tonight. I still have some of these vegan meat substitute packets left, one of which was a packet of dehydrated Lincolnshire sausage. I made myself some Lincolnshire sausages, seasoned with black pepper and rosemary. I fried some of these with onions and garlic in some olive oil in the oven, and had some real potatoes and carrots with them. And it tasted beautiful.

Not only that, there are some sausages left over for tomorrow, and I’ll save my pizza for Monday.

I was on my travels again during the night too. I’d left my job in Brussels and I’d gone back to Nantwich where I re-enroilled at my old Grammar School to re-do my education in the 6th Form. The school building was under major repair so the school had moved into a new and unused wing of the Teachers’ Training College at Crewe Green. I was totally lost – I didn’t have a clue where to go to, so a girl from the 6th Form spent a good half-hour explaining everything to me before the classes started. I was quite impressed by her tact and patience that I invited her to lunch. I remember saying that she will have more of an idea where I’ll be at lunchtime that I will, so I’ll stay put and she’ll have to come and find me.

All in all, it was quite poignant.

However, I don’t know what is going on at the moment. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I took part in an experiment that looked into dreams so I’m quite used to remembering what I’ve done and where I’ve been during the night. But this last three or four nights thiese little voyages have been quite significant and are well-etched on my memory – much more so that the usual run of nocturnal adventures.

Clearly there’s something going on in this plateful of spaghetti that is inside my skull – I just wish that I knew what it was. But, as I have said before … "and you’ll say again" – ed … I just wish that my life during daylight hours was even half as exciting as whatever goes on in my head during the hours of darkness.

-1

Friday 23rd May 2014 – IT’S BEEN GETTING ON FOR 25 YEARS …

… since I cooked any sausages, but guess what I was frying tonight for tea?

And not just any ordinary sausages either but some vegan ones too.

I completely forgot that last year when Rosemary went to the UK she came back with about 20 packets of dehydrated vegan food from a British mainstream supermarket. Some I gave to Cecile but I completely forgot about the rest until I was talking to Rosemary once more this afternoon.

That got me thinking and I had to scratch round in the house until I found them. It wasn’t easy and it took a while but here we are. First packet that I put my hand on was the dried sausage mix (add 250ml of water and roll into shape) and there we were.

Surprisingly, they weren’t too bad either – much better than I was expecting, and there’s more for tomorrow night too. And I now know where that packet of dehydrated falafel mix that I had last weekend came from – I’m just curious as to why it wasn’t with the rest.

So after the usual morning’s performance I was outside doing a few odd jobs and so forth before starting on the bean frames. And I made one before lunch , sowed a pile of seeds into two rows and screwed the bean frame into position.

During lunch, the heavens opened and that was effextively that. In four hours we had 13mm of rain. I went out and did some tidying up in the barn and in the lean-to, sorting out some space and also finding some more wood for my bean frames. I did manage to make another frame and sow some more rows of beans during the odd break in the weather.

But this weather is getting me down. Every day this week it’s started off nicely and then degenerated into this depressing, miseerable weather that we’ve been having. It’s almost the end of May too and the weather forecast for all next week is the same – risque de pluie – a very good probability of rain.

It’s high time we had some summer.

-2

Friday 31st December 2010 – Happy New Year everyone.

And this year seems to have gone out with a whimper. I managed once more to sleep right through the alarm clocks – all of them – and so it was rather a late morning start. But once breakfast dissolved itself I set about chopping some more wood.

Not that I need it (I’m rather overflowing up here right now) but with needing some space in the lean-to and being depressed about the general overall quality of the stuff, I’ve stood some more outside and covered with some more of that clear plastic roofing stuff. The idea being that if ever the sun reappears, it might dry out the wood under the sheeting.

I also chopped up a huge bundle of kindling as there was plenty of that in the way too and it needs to be moved on.

Once that was done I connected up a couple of batteries to the Rutland WG901 wind turbine on the barn roof. We’ve had quite an amount of wind just recently and it seems to be a shame to waste whatever electricity is generated, especially when I have a few batteries loitering around and doing nothing. I’m planning to move the solar panels and the main batteries up that end in due course, but that’s not going to be for a while, until I get a huge load of 32mm saddle clamps.

Arno’s bed is now moved, and once we finished he invited me back home to look at his house. He asked me if he could give me something for my diesel, which was nice of him, and so we settled on a nice hot shower. I explained my difficulties about having a shower, to which he retorted “Yes – you aren’t a member of the OUSA Executive Committee any more” – keen reader of my blog is Arno. But a shower meant a lot to me just then. Nice and clean for New Year, and it saves me having to drive all the way to Neris and paying €3:00 for an entry. So that was fine by me.

I’ve also finally managed my Christmas dinner this evening – it was warm enough to stay down in the verandah for the one hour and 45 minutes it took to cook it. A slab of soya protein, with vegan sausages, roast potatoes, sprouts, chicory, carrots, broccoli and some thick gravy. Over a week I’ve been waiting for this, and it was well worth it.

What was even nicer was that it was followed by some Christmas pudding (I got to that today as well) and soya cream. And that was lovely too. It was just a pity that I’ve had to wait all this time to get to it.

And so that’s the year all done and dusted. And for 2011 I wish every one of you exactly the same as you wished on everyone else for 2010.

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EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality