ROSEMARY ROASTIES.. NEVER LET IT BE SAID WE DON'T GIVE YOU THINGS..

For here, at long last, is the Rosemary Roastie Recipe.. slurpy, veryvery slurpy!

You will need:

1 kg of small potatoes.
Vegetable oil with a spray.
Lots of sprigs of fresh rosemary.
Sea salt.

Preheat your oven to 200C / Fan 180 / Gas mark 6.

How to do it:

Cut small slices into each potato at regular intervals.. but not all the way through.
Put the potatoes onto a baking tray and spray lightly with the vegetable oil.
Tuck rosemary sprigs into some of the cuts.
Sprinkle with sea salt.
Cook for about 10 minutes.
Then turn the potatoes and cook for a further 30 - 40 minutes or until they are cooked through.

This dish is a wow with lamb! And the quantity of potatoes 'should' feed four.. but some folk are greedier than most, she remembers Bill eating several peoples portions of these potatoes!

Her suitcase is out of the cupboard and my travelling cage is down from its' perch on top of the big cupboard. This made me happy as it shows that I am going too, wherever she is going! If I see a case but my little cage I know that I am going to the aviary but no, it looks as if we are both off on a jaunt somewhere.

She is mighty pleased with her regime. She wears a particular brand of jeans and today, she slipped, with ease, into a size 10! The size 8 was good but for rushing about and gardening you don't want jeans too tight.

And her Black Seed Oil is down in price by £1.00! There was no IshPol to be had at Bartek, she was too late, she should remember to telephone ahead and ask Kasia to save her three or four pots but she did like and buy a new sausage that her friend, the butcher, recommended to her. Lubbly-jubbly! Spicy and very tasty. She's taken a note of the name, it is all to easy to forget names and sausage all look alike!

Rain and sunshine and chilly and a fraction warmer was the weather today, they say it is going to be a bit colder for a bit longer.. boring.. it is only 3 degrees here now, that's cold enough considering that tomorrow is the beginning of May, one more month and we'll be at the start of Summer and nothing is planted yet, too cold and too wet! It is a case of both brrr & grrr.

Now you know how to make rosemary roasties and it is way past my bed time.. PipPip.

GeeGee Parrot.
April 30th, 2016.

"That was a noisy train" she said.. "it wasn't a train, it was thunder, look at the rain" said Joe.

And there was an April shower washing the streets of London! Such rain too, for you could hardly see the other side of the street. And, then oh boy, it got so cold, she took her jacket on and put the Ellie's Dairy apron on when Joe went for a walk-about and to get water for the kettle. And put it on again very smartly when he returned!

But earlier on, she wasn't 'with it' at all because she had got seriously muddled up! Her day started with an appointment with Doctor Katherine. After leaving the surgery, she took the prescription down to her chemists, then crossed Sloane Street to catch a 19 bus to Green Park.

She got on the bus, changed at Oxford Circus and it was only when she reached Tottenham Court Road, that she realised her brain and feet had taken her in completely the wrong direction, she was heading to Moorfield.. duh.

Getting off, she walked down Berwick Street and wiggled through into Chinatown. When she was buying vegetables.. BANG.. there was a big crash of thunder! Huh.. now what shall I do, shall I go home, go to Borough or go to Balham?

She decided to do Borough Market first, that's when she heard the second crash which was right over head and which had sounded like a train leaving London Bridge Station.

She also went walk-about and snaffled a tiny morsel of Blau Herni from Jumi Cheese.. oh, it is an exceedingly delicious cheese. Then having handed over the Kai-Lan and a couple of other things to Joe for Goaty mum, she and WW left for the station.

Underground to Westminster, change to Circle, off at Victoria, overland to Balham, purchased a gift, up Balham High Street to a different Polish shop for pure Beetroot juice.. note to self.. I should / must remember to keep a few boxes of this in stock at home as it is magical stuff when you cannot find any really fresh beets in the market.

Home via Lidl, where she saw and bought a small packet of funny looking small dog biscuits for me and when she got home, she offered one to me! "Grrr.. never seen it before.. take it away.. it might be a monster.. grrr", (I'm a 'bit' of a wimp when introduced to something new).

Bright sunny day today, that strange thing was in my dish this morning, it will take me about a week to realise that they're fun and crunchy and good to munch upon, until then, I'll throw them on the foor, luckily we don't - touch wood - appear to have mice in residence at the moment.

And that's you up to date with our news, she has to collect her eye medicines from our lubbly-jubbly chemists, Andrews' in Sloane Street, and then go to find something up in Streatham.

I am long overdue giving you that recipe for roasties with rosemary, I'll do that this evening but until then, dodge those naughty showers and remember.. hiphip hooray.. tomorrow IS the First of May!

GeeGee Parrot.
April 30th, 2016.

WELL, THERE'S NO LOLLING ABOUT OUTSIDE, THAT'S FOR SURE!

Not when the temperature is only 5 degrees. It was that at the beginning of February, it's now the end of April. There'll be no asparagus for us for at least a couple of weeks, if then. Pity that, we both love our asparagus.. she eats it hot with a bit of good olive oil and a few chilli flakes or proper hollandaise.

But neither of us turn our nose or beak up at cold asparagus.. when we can get hold of it.. but it isn't even in sight yet.

She had lunch with Ann today, her lovely daughter-in-law came to have lunch with Roy bringing his youngest grand-daughter, Roy had a stroke on Easter Monday followed by another mini one about two weeks later. Today was the first time that Ann had left him, the lovely d-i-l said "Go and get your hair cut, have lunch with your friend, we'll give Roy lunch and stay until you come back". Very nice.

Ann also has an asparagus bed and said that theirs' was only showing a few spears but that it was very late and she grows a much earlier variety than ours.

She walked with Ann through the older bit of Pimlico, it hasn't changed much, not like the back of Victoria Station where everything old has gone, all it is now is just a faceless glass and metal bunch of buildings.

And called into see an friend who works in a charity shop in Wilton Row, coming out with a brand new Chico linen blouse, she likes this brand and likes it even more as she only had to pay £6.00! She knows their sizing and knew that it would fit, she didn't even have to try it on. Perfect.

And came home to find a wonderful email from the local dept of Environmental Health! Oh yes, very happy days! The officer wrote that she has found exactly what she was looking (praying) for and that she can go to the office and collect copies of everything that she wants at the beginning of the week after next. Ahha.. HeeHee..

Not much else to report, she has to go to see Doctor Katherine tomorrow morning for prescriptions, and onto Balham, why? Who knows? Then onto Borough Market for goaty supplies, we're almost out of Kefir as she forgot to get goats milk when she had lunch wih Debbie last Friday and the state of curd pot is pretty dire, you can see the bottom of the tub!

I'm still being naughty and nibbling my feathers but so far, haven't pulled any of my tumtums' new feather shafts out, I suppose you might day that I am over preening, not a good look. Ah well, at least I know I was beautiful.. once upon a time..

GeeGee Parrot.
April 28th, 2016.

SNOW IN OUR CITY & ELSEWHERE TOO!

I know you think all I do is prattle on about our weather but oh, my tumtum feathers are most surely missed, it was 'quite' cold sitting on front pole today when she went out, whose fault is that? No one except my own.. but it is kinda sad to have to admit that I am not perfect.

My beautifully white lacey edged cravat is no more.. sigh. Once upon a time I was a very beautiful bird, I know 'cos there are pictures of me, looking cute with a full compliment of clothes on and a stout tumtum, it is an exceedingly good thing that she loves me whatever I look like, is it not?

I have a few, read veryvery few, new big top feathers coming through on and I am hoping (as is she) that I won't yank them out. But the nibblenibble job that I have done on my shoulders over the past few days is not a good look, only marginally better than yanking them out or biting the feathers off at the shaft, I suppose.

She received a card today from a dear friend who has invited her to stay in Somerset, I won't be going as there's a fierce cat in residence and as they will be out all day, it isn't fair on me or the cat to be left by ourselves, me in my small travel cage and poor cat thinking it could eat me.. dream on cat!

I tell no porky-pies.. aka lies! It was snowing in the early afternoon when she went to collect her post and there are photos of it in some of the late afternoon on-line papers. It, the temperature, hasn't risen above single figures all day and they say we're due this 'cold spell' as they so politely call it for at least another week.

Tell it like it is! It's Winter! Spring sprang backwards!

We have had supper, she's eaten three meals today. Eggs in the morning, a small bowl of beetroot soup and pasta with chilli and greens in the middle of the day and we have just eaten a duck breast with greens. If it sounds a lot, it is, it is much more than she would normally eat but it is what Pat has suggested to try doing for a week, Pat thinks she doesn't eat enough.. with the exception of those naughty food escapades in Romford or at Borough Market!

So here we are, I'm on her head, I have had my fill of walnuts (such a treat), the curtains are drawn against extremely cold night air, she has sprayed but did not soak me all through and we going to have an early night.

Because Dan, the locksmith, has called to say that he has made the keys for the four little 2-lever Victorian locks and so she is meeting him at Chelsea Green at some hideously early hour to collect them before he goes into work. Then she is going on down into Fulham to have Anita cut her hair.

So PipPip and if you are chilly-billy, take a tip from us and slip a spare duvet, aka quilt, underneath your mattress cover, it makes your bed just that bit warmer, very Chirpful making.

GeeGee Parrot.
April 26th, 2016.

HAS A 'MAXWELL' BEEN DONE ON THE BHS PENSION FUND?

Grrr.. on the English High Street for over 80 years and, at one time, before it was gobbled up by people who mangled it, BHS, aka British Home Stores, a good department store. If you wanted a proper lamp of any description you went to BHS. Their buyers were amazing and they knew their market but it's been down graded beyond recognition and is now a mere shadow of its' former self.

Sir Philip Green sold it within the past few years for the enormous and princely sum of £1.00. No, I kid you not. It is now in the hands of receivers and going into bankruptcy, the present owners having failed to run successfully.

There is a GREAT deal about it in the newspapers today, with much more detail than we are putting here BUT.. There remains of course, the Pension Fund.. ahha.. you see, the plot thickens. For in 2012, it was running at a staggering £571,000,000 deficit.. gulp

Because now you see why we wrote the title. For Robert Maxwell plundered his various companies' pension funds of £440,000,000. Yes, four hundred and forty MILLION pounds and there are over 30,000 BHS employees whose jobs and pensions are at risk here.

This brings to another piece of interesting news. Which has nothing to do with the BHS story but is mighty interesting to us. The Indian Government has issued an arrest warrant for Vijay Mallya and his passport has been revoked. He is the son of Vittal Mallya (deceased).

Her grandfather F. E. Hooper was the last Chairman of Mc.Dowell & Company, it was started by Dr. Angus McDowell in Madras in 1825, he was her and BUBs' 4th gt. grandfather. The family company was 'asset' stripped by the Indian staff who were supposed to be running and taking care of business and the company.

Because as they sold off and closed down huge successful sections of the business that McDowells traded in, after F.E's death in 1944, Vittal Mallya was able to buy it for a pittance in 1951. Their grandmother was left penniless as too was her mother-in-law, F. E's mother, who died just after Vittal Mallya got control of the company.

Skulduggery.. it will be interesting to see what emerges in the next period of time with the BHS story but I would think that the long term employees are more than 'slightly anxious' at the present time. But where is Mr. Vijay Mallya and where he intends to go.. with no valid passport?

GeeGee Parrot.
April 26th, 2016.
PostScript: Mallya is reportedly here in England.

THAT'll TEACH HER TO CALL ME STINKER..

She stripped down and got on the scales thinking to herself well, probably a loss of 1lb. or maybe one and a half but instead, she saw to ber horror that a gain of 2lbs was registering on the scales. Pauline, who does the weigh-in bit said "oh, what happened?"

She got dressed and slunk off back to her seat by Pat, who took one look at her face and said"oh dear, how much." She grumbled and said "2 lbs and I can't think why.." and then had a thought or two and continued by saying "oh yes, I can.. a full English in Romford on Wednesday, which consisted of 2 slices of fried bread, bacon, eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms, sausages and chips, tea with milk and Malaysian noodles and dumplings at Borough Market on Friday".

Pat just shook her head.. and grimaced.. as you do when a friend has shot themselves in the foot.

Out of group and onto a 211 bus to Victoria Station to buy a Senior Railcard and our train tickets to Wiltshire. Then a 73 bus to Oxford Street, she had go to Ainsworths, the Homeopathic Chemists, to return a box, which unfortunately, didn't take bottles of essential oils.. boring.

Then onto Moorfields, whoosh! The West End was suddenly awash with rain! She went underground to the eye hospital and saw a new specialist who checked her pressure and who was very pleased to see that both her eyes were registering the same low degree.. ten!

And so now she has been moved onto a four monthly appointment instead of bi-monthly! No more lovely Miss Ali, as both her eyes are now stable and she will be going to the evening Monday night clinic. How about that? The new doctor said "I'm so sorry we can't do anything about the damage to your optic nerve but at least we've stopped the glaucoma getting worse and I am so glad that Ali found the right combination of medicine for you".

And with that she was free to go but coming home it was rush hour and as she had WWwith her, she got as far as the top of the escalators at Old Street station and though 'nah, I'm not dealing with these crowds, I'll catch a 55 to Oxford Circus, then a 137 down Sloane Street".

Walking home from the bus stop it was still pouring with rain and bitterly cold, luckily she made a big batch of soup yesterday which was easy to heat up, for guess what the temperature had dropped to? Two.. yes, 2 degrees.. it is like Winter again.

But at least I got away with only two soakings today and as I didn't force-feed her that lubbly-jubbly fried food in Romford, it is not my fault she's fatter, is it? Talk about revenge.. heehee!

Poor old fat bat.

GeeGee Parrot.
April 25th, 2016.

BLIMY VERY SHINY.. WHERE ARE MY SHADES! ALL THE BETTER TO SEE SPINACH, SAGE &'POTATO SOUP.

I spent the afternoon a'dozing on front door pole, as you know she aka the witch had taken it upon herself to spray me so that all my feathers and bare bits were soaked.. ugh. So I wasn't privy to what she was doing in YumYum HQ.

There were sounds of water and doors shutting, white washing cupboard.. aka dishwasher.. was on and making happy noises. Then fierce Mr.Bissell, the vacuum, came out of his house, the old boiler room, and he disappeared in there as well.

Then there were chopping noises and a smell of beetroots being cooked.. 'ah, she making our most favourite soup' I thought and flew onto the door and clambered down and hopped onto Goosie head. Everything had been washed and given a rub.. so it looked veryvery shiny indeed!

She had cooked me another egg as I has slurped every morsel of the first one, there was a teaspoonful of the pureed beetroots, an extra generous dollop of hummus and a few steamed french beans.. all very delish!

And toast as well! Got to have a crust or two of rye bread with good soup, she eats hers without butter, in fact, I know she hasn't used butter since the day she started this slimming lark. What she has instead is, of course, that pure white heavely goaty curd but only one or two small slices per day.

She plans to make ricotta when we come back from Pewsey, yes, we are off on a jaunt to Wiltshire to help Michele celebrate her birthday in May and the very next day, it is Poppys' birthday, Poppy being Micheles' first grandchild, she will be ten.

Now, don't let me wander off. I promised you another soup recipe and here it is. It's very green.. green and slurpy!

Spinach, Sage and Potato Soup.

You will need:

Vegetable oil.
2 red onions peeled, finely sliced and chopped.
3 cloves of garlic crushed and chopped.
15g of FRESH sage leaves.
500g of large potatoes, peeled and diced.
250g of baby leaf spinach plus a few for garnish.
1.5 litres of vegetable stock.
Salt and freshly ground pepper.
Water.

How to do it:

Pour a little vegetable oil into a large saucepan and heat gently.
Add the onions and cook for 3 minutes.
Stir in the sage, garlic and 4 tbsp of water and cook for 3 minutes.
OR the water has evaporated.

Add potatoes and stock.
Bring to the boil, cover, then simmer gently for 15 minutes.
Make sure the potatoes are soft.
Stir in the spinach and cook for 4-5 minutes or until it has wilted.
Puree with a handheld blender and season to taste.

Serve garnished with a few spinach leaves and a scattering of black pepper.

She does this recipe using baby sorrel leaves! That, Dear Readers, is a spectacular soup for the colour is amazing!

When she next goes to the allotments, she'll bring home some rosemary, it is at its' very best at this time of year. It's in flower and the new growth means the leaves are soft and smell and taste quite divine. The night she brings it back, we will make rosemary rosties, they're delicious.

You can serve them as a dish by itself with a selection of other vegetables but we'll probably eat it with calves liver.

Now we have papers to read, I have had my second soaking and surprise surprise, I didn't moan and whinge as much as usual, I can't be getting used to it, can I?

GeeGee Parrot.
April 24th, 2016.

THE WITCH CALLS ME 'STINKER'!

Huh, I think that's really unfair, for it isn't me that does 'stinky' things like spraying people with that homoeopathically enhanced water or taking away yesterdays' food saucer, is it?

And whilst I am in the mood to have a groan about something, how much does that Met Office get paid to do their long term weather forecasts? Today was supposed to be dire, with rain, hail and or even snow!

What we've had so far: a light rain shower at about 05.30am, followed by sunshine and a patchy but mostly blue sky. If it hadn't been forecasted with rain, hail and chilly-billy weather, she would have slipped under the ground to Hammersmith, caught the little 190 bus to the allotments and I wouldn't be sitting here in a rather morose soggy state.

I would have been sitting on front pole squeaking at passers-by, whistling a happy tune or just having a quiet doze with no interfering person giving me a wet time.

She overdid it at the allotments yesterday.. grrr.. she forgot to use the body strap that takes the weight of the grass trimmer, which being a petrol one, is a heavy beast. Her right wrist is swollen and last night was extremely sore.

Why she didn't immediately go to Valeries' book 'The Fragrant Pharmacy' is beyond me, so she slept badly with it giving her a great dal of gyp throughout the night. It was only this morning that she had the sense to look in it for 'Wrist Sprain' (page 137) and to go and mix the appropriate amount of the following oils, Ginger, Nutmeg and Clove into vegetable oil to use after applying an icepack. Lo and behold, the pain has lessened considerbly already.

I know we owe you the roastie recipe, others too. She has to finish cleaning and then we will give you the potato recipe and another soup recipe. She is making our favourite later on for tonight and tomorrows' lunch at weigh-in.. the better than borsch beetroot soup!

Which reminds us, has Karen finished her trip in Japan? There was a CNN report this last week about how the aftershocks were still happening, this is a considerable time after those two earthquakes, ugh. And Ecuador.. those poor poor people.

On a much happier note, we have a short video that we wish to bring to your attention. It was sent to us by one of our very own Dear Readers, these are people whom we actually know. It is a selection of short video clips by several people of their parrots and was produced by the New York Times.

Several are wonderful, there is a little Amazon who sings 'I left my heart in San Francisco (or some of it), a Cockatoo who trots about on the kitchen floor giving his dog a Beakful, another Amazon who clearly LOVES being sprayed with water and a Macaw who plays in and with a large paper carrier! Always knew those South Americans' were a trifle strange.. and more!

So please go immediately.. if not sooner to: http://nyti.ms/26akTdV

The article is in Science: Parrots: The Highlight Reel for it's lubbly-jubbly stuff to make you laugh!

She's got to finish cleaning YumYum HQ, I'm still soggy. I'll have to think of something ultra-sneaky to do, all suggestions gratefully received, write them in my comments box at the end of this post.

GeeGeebParrot.
April 24th, 2016

IT WAS VERY COLD HERE IN DEEPEST KNIGHTSBRIDGE BUT THE ALLOTMENTS ARE MORE EXPOSED.. SO SHE HAD ON..

Bra, underpants, cotton camisole, cotton tights, thermal vest, thermal leggings, cotton socks, jeans, cashmere sleveless top, merino cardigan, skinny woolen scarf around her neck, Norwegian parka with hood and her very battered oil proof jacket which has a furry lining and leather work boots. How, Dear Readers, she was even able to walk, I have no idea.

It was very chilly with a brisk wind when she arrived at the plots, I am reallyreally glad she didn't drag me out on this gardening jaunt, for I, with my bald stomach and chest, would have hated it!

She finished doing the garlic beds, of which there are two. We eat a lot of garlic in this house and people love it, who doesn't like to be given properly grown fresh garlic, not stuff that grew in a poly-tunnel? Ours is planted in October and harvested in the Summer, it grows slowly with no chemicals for nine / ten months.

She had a brainwave whilst she was there.. a real 'Eureka' moment! That poor asparagus bed has still not been weeded and whilst she was standing there thinking about starting it.. she thought 'If I strim the weeds really close to the ground, I can then see exactly how much weed there is', so she did and yippee, actually, there wasn't that much! They had just become so tall and straggly that it looked far worse than it really was.

A rake scratched across brought the bed back to a manageable state, she'll easily be able to get rid of weeds and in time for the asparagus spears to come through, probably in late May, it's too cold for it at the moment and this gives her time to properly finish the bed and get four bags of good compost onto it plus some seaweed.

Now, if those thieving bastards don't raid us again, we're in for a bumper crop of pears this year. The two oldest trees are covered in blossom, as are the plum trees. The two yellow cherry trees are the same, she pruned them very hard the year before last, for even dwarf cherry trees can grow to be quite tall and she sees NO point in having fruit out of reach!

Plus she throws very fine nylon fabric sheets over them when they're about to ripen, to the dismay of the avian folk who love cherries! Interestingly enough, the sweet red Stella and the sour Morello cherry trees are not yet in bloom but the sour Montmorency is! It is now four years old and beginning to behave like a fruit tree should.. ie.. give us a decent amount of fruit! Last year there was only a handful.. not enough for a pie!

Much to do, with there being just a bit more heat in the sun.. when it appears.. she's ready to plant lots of seeds. Some we'll start at home and they'll go out when they're tiny plants, the 'sun tunnels' that she bought so many years ago (is it twelve or thirteen years) a couple are cracked and a bit battered but they still do their job very well.

She found the packets of tent pegs, perfect for keeping fleece or tunnels in place, seed labels and pencils and plus seeds. All she has to buy are variegated Chard and perpetual Sorrel seeds, lovely stuff Sorrel.

Monday is weigh-in day at 1pm and at 5.00pm, she has her bi-monthly appointment with her eye specialist at Moorfields Hospital.

So there'll be no gardening on Monday and supposedly tomorrow the weather isn't going to be great, so she'll stay home with me and we'll do house work, or rather, she'll do the work and I'll cheer her on from on top of a door or a pole depending where the work is being done.

Out on the terrace at the allotments, there were two glorious signs that Spring is here! The Lovage is up! And so were a few shoots of self seeded Mizuna! Oh, what bliss to have Lovage again, together with Golden Oregano, which has spread amongst the paving stones as has the Marjoram and the Lemon Balm.

So she's had her first Spring salad of herbs with Dandylion leaves and a few baby Chive stalks with a salmon fillet for supper. I ate some salmon.. slurpy stuff fish.

Salads like these make all those aching muscles and boring bus journeys worth while. And one day soon, when it's sunny, she'll go down there early and 'muck' out the shed, Mr. Rat spends the winter in it and she always has to clean and sterilise everything that isn't firmly locked away in a cupboard. The floor and the work surfaces have to washed and scrubbed.

We aren't going to have a holiday this year as she wants to buy a small generator, so the plots have got to be ready for us to have fun out there, THAT means little shed has to be clean and tidy so she can cook in it or on a grill just outside.

There isn't anything better than having a pan of water boiling, going to pick a few asparagus spears, putting them into the water and eating them.. all within ten minutes! Likewise with the first fava / broad beans of the season.. bliss.

What is also bliss is having my fill of walnuts.. my tumtum is happy and it is bed time. "Goodnight" to you all.

GeeGee Parrot.
April 23rd, 2016.

SOGGY.. MORNING NOON & NIGHT..

We awoke to briliant sunlight! Yippee! That make a change to what we've experienced for the past few days. Yesterday she had to meet Dan, the locksmith, really early so threw herself out of the house at some ungodly hour.

It was cold and very grey.. brrr.. she hurry-scurried very fast along to Chelsea Manor Street where they agreed to meet. However, there was no Dan in sight, so she called him just as she was crossing a side road and said "Where are you Dan?" and he responded "Just about to run you over!" His was the car that had stopped to let her cross the road!

Phew.. at what a pace she had walked. She ambled back thinking 'well, that must have given my body a shock to have walked that far at so fast a pace!'

Back home for boiled eggs, toast and tea.. for both of us. Slurpy food, how delicious. Then she slid her hand round and whilst I was happily perched on her knee, the witch got hold of my feet and holding on to them with one hand, she spray-soaked me with water.. ugh.. it has this new anti-pluck stuff in it and she says it is helping.. huh.

She redressed in warmer clothes or rather, put on more layers, whistled up WW and at noon they left for Borough Market to meet Debbie for Malaysian dumplings and noodles. Upon arrival, they greeted each other and she saw the charming picture of a goaty person on the front of the latest Borough Market newspaper.. issue 25.

There are a few photos with the article, the most charming being of Joe and Vivienne, she is snuggled up to him with her head tucked into the back of his. Inside was an article about how Debbie and David started their herd of goats. At the end of the article was a list of questions and answers from Debbie.

Number 5: Guilty pleasure? "Fermented Polish Salad. Stand in the kitchen and eat it with a large spoon, straight from the tub. Dorsn't even make it onto a plate". You know it by its' other name.. IshPol.That made my mama laugh and happy that her gifts of IshPol are appreciated but not surprised as it is truly, the most remarkably, addictive stuff.

Joe and Rosie suddenly appeared! Him looking like a dog with ten tails just let out of a kennel and her looking a bit stunned, as well you might if your beloved suddenly gets taken a 'bit' unwell!

Selina, of Malaysian dumpling fame, is away! Huh.. in Malaysia attending a huge family wedding, her husband showed her a photo of her in KL.. Kuala Lumpur.. having a happy time with her family. Lucky Selina, like lucky Michele, both of them are missing this grotty cold snap.

It may be bright and sunny this morning but it ain't half parky mum.. even I didn't object when she turned the heating back on all day yesterday and 'they'.. aka the weather people.. say that heavy rain is due in later today and tomorrow.. great.. just what we need.. for London has a busy day tomorrow. And they say, there's even a possibility of snow!

Anyway, the dumpling and noodles were delicious, with chicken for her and vegetarian for Debbie. She came home in rain.. chilly-billy cold rain and she was so cold and tired, that she fed me, ate a raw beetroot with a cup of LapySand and we clambered into bed at an early hour.

She read various papers and emails, I dozed on her head, then the 'witch' appeared and she soaked me again with water and put me into my night house, so we were both in bed with the light out at nine o'clock, to be woken up by bright sunnylight and her remembering 'Blast and double drat GeeGee, I forgot to put my drops in last night'.

'Must not do that, I must remember to put them both in, no matter how late I do it' she said as she put this mornings drops in.

Pardon me folks, I've got to go as first YumYum of the day has just appeared on a saucer, so I'd better hop off and do it justice. She has to return a big box to Ainsworths and get eggs and vegetables. It'll be a bit up the spout tomorrow traffic wise with diversions as Westminster Bridge and several roads will be closed.. yes, folks.. for tomorrow is the London Marathon Day!

So.. please pray it doesn't snow!

GeeGee Parrot.
April 23rd, 2016.

WE ARE A BIT OUT OF SYNC!

Goodness me! We had another contractor here at 09.30am today, they were more detailed about the works that are being scheduled for our flat and they also involve the wall in the hall just behind the front door.

She spoke with a member of Environmental Health.. aka EH.. at the Town Hall and they're giving her access to all the files they hold on the flat.

This will help to identify which team of builders chopped off the pipe in the outer wall as the letters and emails about this will give the date of the work and with that, the EH dept will be able to go to the freeholders and ask them "which team of builders did you employ to do this work".. which has led to the building being so badly damaged damaged as the level of workmanship was so dreadful!

Then we heard that Roy, husband of Ann, our two lovely friends in Streatham has had a stroke! Oh, how scary for poor Roy and poor Ann. What a thing, she'll be calling them tomorrow.

Victoria Wood died yesterday.. oi vey.. aged 62. A wonderful star of the entertainment world, actress, writer, a brilliant comedienne and Prince died today.. another oi vey.. aged 57.

She dragged the three large trunks out from underneath the bed frame and pulled them into the back room, she doesn't want them to go into storage and when we move out to.. we don't know where.. she will take some clothes with her and the rest will be taken out of the cupboards and put into the back room.

The door will be locked and the door sealed with masking tape.. you don't want clothes covered in dirty old plaster and brick dust, I can assure you. Likewise with her walk-in cupboard. "At least a month" this contractor said "but we will probably take five including the redecoration and doing the reinstallation of the cupboard, bookshelves and electrics, radiator etc".

She sent an email to the freeholder asking them to let her know where she will be living during this length of time.. they haven't replied yet.. but they will when they get a letter from the EH dept of our borough which is Kensington & Chelsea, that's for sure! They're not the swiftest folk to do serious and important repairs, so the EH dept have fought and won many a battle for her, they know the freeholders well and hold a 'pretty' low opinion of them.

So we're just a tad discombobulated and I am in disgrace 'cos I've nibbled feathers on top of my shoulder blades. They were glossy feathers but now they look strange, to put it politely. But we'll be back to our normal cheerful selves soon and I'll post you scrummy ways of cooking tatties.

GeeGee Parrot.
April 21st, 2016.
PostScript: Evil witch has sprayed me, I bet you wouldn't like going to bed soggy?

All was revealed! It's her Achilles tendon that's causing the trouble.

She's home from her session with Valerie Worwood and feeling a bit like as if a truck ran over her! She, Valerie, always gets it right on the button with my mum, she's been treating her now for a couple of years and picks up immediately on what needs to be worked on.

The pain in her right foot is due to her Achilles tendon being inflamed, this causes her to change her stride and affects how she treads on her foot, who knew and it's an inflamation in her lower left calf which is causing the congestion in her calf area, hence it being sore and the lumpy bits.

Her facial area around her eyes, her spleen, lungs, pancreas and liver are also congested. She's been given small specific exercises to do and advised to get out to the allotment as much as possible or to walk in Hyde Park on dull wet days.

She realised, when she was on the tube going to Liverpool Street, that if she stayed on the Central Line out to Stratford, she could stay on the same platform and catch an overland train to Romford, how easy was this! No escalators, up and down passages or changing stations at Liverpool Street.. just straight through with one change at Holborn.

And coming home she went via MailBox and there were two packages waiting for her, a package of Magnesium and nine old fashioned drawer locks that she found on the web for NO, or rather very little, money! Complete with two locks to each lock! Bingo!

She had a very late lunch, we are having a little doze. Then she has to do some work.

Oh.. how about this for cheekiness! The managing agents, remember them, those nasty folk who made her give away the plants and get rid of her beloved citrus trees? Well, the rubbish area door needs work doing to it and she received an email from the freeholder asking her to take a photo of the door and to send it to the managing agents to save them the bother of coming out to see what was needed themselves.

Excuse me? Her response was "I suggest that they send a carpenter with three large exterior quality hinges and weatherproof screws".. and she thought a few choice rude descriptive words, the like of which I am not going to write on a public blog but I bet you could guess a few of them.

Doze time.. snore.. poor old trout.. what an emotionally tiring two days.

GeeGee Parrot.
April 20th, 2016.
PostScript: We will give you the recipe roasties with rosemary tomorrow evening.

PLUM TUCKERED OUT & OVER EMOTIONAL WITH GREAT NEWS!

I know there wasn't a post yesterday and this one will be short but I'l be posting when she gets back from Romford.

Yesterday, as you Dear Readers who are up to date with my blog will know, was the day she was seeing her Gastroenterologists at the hospital. What I hadn't told you was he was a Surgeon.. not just a clinical specialist.

She arrived on time, there was a delay. Due to the proposed strike next week by the junior doctors, they had asked people to come in this week so they would be seen. She went in, the surgeon and she chatted, she told him lots of things, they discussed lots of things, he smiled, he asked her lots more things, he smiled again and reaching forward for a piece of paper, he said.

"What a turnaround, you know we are incredibly grateful for putting us onto the Swedish Bitters, and although I am a surgeon, I much prefer it when a patient heals without surgery and I am so pleased to hear your news. If anything starts up again, you know you can come straight to us but I am delighted to say that I am discharging you back to your GP".

After a bit more chat, she left his office and handed her discharge paper to the booking clerk on the way out, he looked at it, smiled at her and said "Bravo. good luck" and she walked out of the hospital into a glorious summers' day.

For the sun was shining and sky was dark blue with not a cloud to be seen. A perfect day. She sat at the bus stop and fat tears of relief rolled down her cheeks.. oh Dear Readers.. cross your fingers.. it has been ten years since her problem started in 2006.. ten very long years.

Now she's going to Romford with a treatment with Valerie Worwood of 'Fragrant Pharmacy' fame.. more later.. and it's another blue sky day.

GeeGee Parrot.
April 20th, 2016.

OH.. CHIPS WITH A CURRY SAUCE.. YUBBA-DUBBA-DOO!

Oh Ho Ho.. she's lost the plot completely! For she skipped back home, truthfully 'trundled' would be a more accurate word, carrying 12 oranges, 2 fennel bulbs and 10 kiwi fruits in her woven basket.

Why was she 'skipping'? Because, despite having eaten all manner of things like a large helping of ravioli limone and panna cotta at lunch with Patrick and two slices of toast every day last week plus other goodly things that slipped down her gullet on a daily basis, she lost another lb last week!

HeeHee, she's now down to 9 stone 11lbs aka 137lbs. Her gastroenterologist and his team will be struck dumb! She hasn't seen them since last October, or thereabouts, and she's shrunk a 'bit' since then.

And so, because she's feeling generous.. here is an amazingly delicious recipe for potato chips, fat ones, not those awful skinny things, with a divine sauce (which you can make as hot or not as you please) to dip them into.. drool on Dear Readers.. for it's delicious.

You'll need:

Your oven preheated to 200c / Fan 180c / Gas mark 6.

1kg of floury potatoes, King Edwards or Maris Pipers. Peeled, cut into thick chips.
Vegetable oil.
Sea Salt.
Baking tray.
A basket or bowl lined with paper to keep the chips hot.

For the curry sauce.
1 large onion roughly chopped.
2 cloves of garlic crushed.
2cm of ginger root, peeled and grated.
1 tspful of curry powder.. which heat of curry powder depends on your taste buds!
400g chopped tomatoes.
4 tbsp of vegetable stock.
2 tbsp of caster sugar.
Small handful of both fresh coriander and mint.
3 tbsp of fat free fromage frais.

How to do it:

CHIPS:
Cook the chips in lightly salted boiling water over a high heat for 5 minutes.
Drain well and return to the pan and shake to roughen up,the edges.
Spray a baking tray with a small amount of vegetable oil.
Tip the chips into the pan and spray the chips with vegetable oil.
Cook in the oven for 20-25 minutes, turning occasionally.

SAUCE:
Into a saucepan put a little vegetable oil over a medium heat.
Add the onion and garlic and cook until soft but not brown.
Add the ginger and cook for a further 2 minutes.
Then add curry powder, again cook for a further 1or 2 minutes.
Add the tomatoes, stock and sugar, bring to the boil.
Then reduce the heat and simmer for about 15 minutes.
Turn off the heat and allow to cool for a while.
Add the fresh herbs and puree with a hand held liquidiser.
Put it back onto a GENTLE heat, add the fromage frais and stir for 2 minutes.

SERVE:
Sprinkle the chips with sea salt and serve with the curry sauce.

Now.. if your looking for another way to serve 'Roasties'.. heehee, you're in the right place! For in tomorrows' post, so you had better come back, we're giving you a delicious way with potatoes and fresh rosemary, which she grows at the allotment.

The bushes were only 9" high when she bought and planted them in 2003 / 4, they're herbal monsters now! And, they're all in flower at this precise moment! She saw a busy bee the last time she was there, it was having a lovely time a'supping on rosemary nectar.

Now I have important things to do.. chasing walnuts. Fare thee well Dear Readers.. Farewell.

GeeGee Parrot.
April 18th, 2016.

WE'VE A SEVERE FROST WARNING.. OUR SPRING SPRANG BACKWARDS!

Blimey! We thought it was a bit parky aka chilly-billy last night and it was! There was a frost last night but not half as bad as what we are due for tonight, for the Met Office has issued a severe frost warning and of zero degrees for tonight. It is a very good thing she went food shopping yesterday and didn't go planting out our lettuce seedlings at the allotment, isn't it?

Meanwhile the world has been rocked, literally, by earthquakes. Japan had a coupleof horrifying ones this week with losses of life this week and the coastal region of Ecuador has been devastated by a big one with a loss of over two hundred lives and with the shock waves being felt three hundred miles away in Columbia.

Scary things which cause terrifying amounts of damage in the space of a nano-second. We feel sorrow for those countries that have these faults running through them.. there has been a lot of activity ot these plate faults recently and are praying that a 'monster' isn't just about to occur.

We are also praying for the health of a friend.. young Joe.. to differentiate him from old Joe who is another friend of ours.. one of his lungs collapsed last week, he is back home, being watched 24 x 7 by his family and not allowed to do anything.. very dreary stuff not being allowed to do anything.. you get sick of listening to the radio and even the written word becomes boring after a while.

We're already in bed! Or rather, she's in bed with a hot pad as it is a miserably cold evening and she sees no point in pretending to be a 'grown-up' and sitting in state in the sitting room. And I'm being fed walnuts, I love walnuts and gobble them as fast as I can, the first half she gives me I take to the bottom of the bed and eat there, the rest I munch happily whilst perching on a knee.

Walnuts bits go everywhere.. huh.. hum.. but she scrapes them up, puts them back into a dish and they get scattered on my yumyum dish in my night house. We waste not in our house.

Weigh-in day tomorrow, no naughty cakes have been consumed, no Lebanese yumyums have slipped down her throat, the pasta and panna cotta that she ate last Tuesday must, surely, have wiggled its' way through her system by now and she hasn't eaten illegal amounts of toast and marmite.. much as she's wanted to!

For on cold dreary days, Marmite on toast is what we love, especially if we have even a minute scrapping of goaty curd to put on top as well. We feel sorry for those of you who have never eaten Ellies' goaty curd, for it is truly a delicious thing.

She'll be getting a supply on Friday when she lunches with Debbie Goaty Mum at Borough Market, Malaysian Selina is there with both her dumplings AND noodlie-doodles! Those are guaranteed to keep your throat warm and your sinuses open!

Weigh-in tomorrow, Gastro-Enterologist specialist on Tuesday, aromatherapy with Valerie Worwood on Wednesday, building contractor here at 09.30am on Thursday, with hopefully being able to go to the allotments afterwards if it isn't either freezing or chucking it down with rain and then lunch at Borough Market on Friday.. that's her week.

Me? I'm staying here being sprayed twice a day with this homeopathic stuff. Such is life. I hope your week is more like hers? I supposed I could go and sit on Joes' head, he's not allowed to do anything so I could just doze all day long but how could I get there, for it would be a bit chilly-billy flying down to his house near to Folkestone with no clothes on.

Ah well, whoops, time for bed, enjoy your week Dear Readers whatever you have got planned.

GeeGee Parrot.
April 17th, 2016.

SHE THOUGHT SHE WAS IMAGINING IT BUT NO, THERE WAS SNOW IN STREATHAM!

It was 18 degrees earlier this week.. but it wasn't anywhere like that temperature today. She dropped books off at the library, climbed aboard a 319 bus and trundled off to Streatham High Street. For our sauerkraut pot was almost empty and there was no IshPol to be seen.

Sensibly, she had taken a scarf with her and when she got off the bus.. oooh.. it went over her head and around her neck very swiftly for it was chilly-billy up there on the hill. She bought two lock-tight boxes and went off to Bartek. She filled one with sauerkraut and went to the check-out, they weighed the empty one and then the one with the sauerkraut, "£2.60 worth of sauerkraut" said Kasia.

Perfect.. this will now go into the post to Lorraine in Somerset who is having a problem with her digestion, all manner of things fermented help and sauerkraut helps reallyreally well! We have just telephoned her and a very small voice answered.. oh dear, she's in bed with a beastly sinus infection.. poor love.

Luckily her tiny cottage is warm and she has nice neighbours, mama will send her cloves and organic sesame oil on Monday, organic sesame oil is the only oil you should put up your nose, it is extremely good at helping impacted sinuses and cloves and ginger and garlic are a great tea to drink as they have strong anti-viral properties but her tumtum cannot take garlic, however, she has lots of ginger, so we'll send her the oil and a bag of cloves. This will save anyone having to go out to get them.

The old campaign desk that she inherited from Constance has no keys, she's tried all the ones she was given by her mother but this one's obviously missing.. presumed lost. On her way to the library, she called in at the cleaners who used to be next door to Flury the locksmiths in Chelsea Manor Street.

"They went a few years ago, but I've got Dans' telephone number if you would like it" said the nice woman.. yippee.. Dan WAS the lockmaker, he has looked at a photo of the little lock that she sent him this afternoon and quoted £20.00! Brilliant.

She's off to drop two pots of IshPol to goaty mum tomorrow at Parsons' Green Farmers' Market and will give her a pot of soup as well. With kids not sticking to a birthing daytime schedule of 09.00 - 17.00 hours, this kidding lark is tiring and a day in the life of goaty mum can be 24 hours long, so having something nutrious you can heat up in a minute has to be a good thing.

IshPol? IshPol is eaten straight out of the pot with the largest spoon possible by IshPol addicts!

We have just read about snow in the UK, so she wasn't imagining that snow up in Streatham! Good thing she had stuff to do and didn't go to the allotment.. for it was raining hard when she got back to the Kings Road at 16.30pm.. it would have been far colder out there being so close to the river.. Brass Monkeys!

We wonder how BUBs' Murder Mystery supper is going? Frncesca, his sister-in-law, has organised it for tonight with family and friends to celebrate his birthday which was last week. Hope they let us know.. we like a good mystery.

We also like a good novel and she'll tell you about a good twisty tale that she's reading today, a non gardening book by her favourite gardener.. Mr. Alan Titchmarsh.. more tomorrow about his book set up in Scotland but for now, it's ByeBye from us as it is fast approaching my bewitching hour.

And we are desperately hoping that people are safe in Japan (because of the earthquakes), namely our dear Dear Reader Karen who is there on a two week train-trip and dear Dear Reader Rosamunds' daughter, who lives there.

GeeGee Parrot.
April 16th, 2016.

EXCITOTOXINS & RIDING THE NY SUBWAY FOR FREE!

Good morning Dear Readers and I trust you are all happy and healthy?

Well, here I am, the bearer of horrific news about stuff that is capable of making you veryvery sick indeed. Excitotoxins are added to food in order to make it taste better, sweeter or richer, I could go on and on but you've got it by now, haven't you?

Two major excitotoxins are MSG and Aspartate - a component of NutraSweet. Excitotoxins also come in the form of Sucralose (Splenda) cysteine, hydrolysed protein and aspartic acid. Plus and we find this very shocking, MSG is called by at least 30 different names on food labels including the word 'spices' which is accepted by the Federal Drug Association.. ugh.

Please enter the word into your favourite Search Engine - yes, there are others apart from Google! Have a good look at the information there and the medical facts about what these drugs do to your body AND your brain. Scary stuff.

Let's move onto the second subject of this post.. Travelling for 'Free' on the NYC subway.

When she was sorting out the right hand section of the huge cupboard, you know she found several items of treasure: laquerware, cartoon, stained glass African Grey parrot. But that wasn't all. For she came across a box full of samples and some stock from the days when she did 'Trunk Shows'.

She had several friends who were agents for small pretty things, amongst many:  Porcelain de Paris, Imperial Clocks and Silverware and a very special friend, introduced to her by Bill, called Mrs. Chang, who was a dealer in precious, semi-precious stones and pearls. Both cultured and real.

She had samples of lots of things including unstrung strings of pearls and there they were! The items practically 'blinked' at the daylight when she opened the box, for the last trunk show she did was in Texas in 1997!

"Wow GeeGee.. look, I had completely forgotten about these.. what lovely things to give away". She went on-line and squealed with delight at how much the items are now selling for! One item, which had been one of her best sellers, was now selling for £65.00!

Into another cardboard bank box, no, I have no idea why they're called this but they are. And found all manner of thrilling things.. like Constances' little bronze cat that had always been on her dressing table, a pair of antique silver and ivory salad servers that she'd bought in Spain over forty years ago that need repair work.

Bill gave her lovely things as you know and there were presents that he gave her one year.. 1977.. for Easter, birthday and Christmas. The Easter present was a square leather Cartier coin purse.. more on this in a minute.. for her birthday it was a Cartier Travel Wallet (containing probably her last return ticket to San Francisco via Chicago) and for Christmas, he gave her a Cartier Address book. The actual book comes as a separate section for which you can buy refills.

She sat on the edge of her bed and looked at the names and addresses.. whoosh.. talk about going down old memory lanes!

The coin purse had things in it, she pulled out a little plastic bag full of foreign paper currency! Wow.. Swiss Francs.. Caribbean Dollars.. Polish ?.. (I wonder if they're still worth something?) Spanish Pesetas.. then she looked at the coins.

But they weren't 'coins', they were NYC subway tokens! Lots and lots of them.. so you see, she's got to get over there, where she hasn't been for nine years, so she can ride the subway for 'free'! Treasure, Dear Readers, comes in many different disguises..

This morning she.. aka The Witch.. dosed me orally with 15ml of this new homeopathic anti-plucking stuff and sprayed (read soaked) me with it as well but at least she gave me a decent sized piece of poached wild salmon in the form of an apology together with my softish boiled egg.

So I cannot grumble too much.. it seems to have taken away my compulsion to pluck.. long may it continue for I don't like being bald and as it's too cold for me to go gardening with no clothes on! I wouldn't be able to hang in my cage on the Jenners' fence, that's for sure!

It is a cold dull day here in deepest Knightsbridge. We think Michele (lives in Pewsey with Peter, Ginger and Panda) had a look at the long-range weather forecast and has done a 'William', what's a William? It's escaping to Kenya for a bit of sunshine.. bring some back Michca.. bring lots of rays back so we can sit in the sunshine on your birthday!

She's off to the library first where she'll check all the books back in, then go to Bartek for sauerkraut and IshPol and she'll pick up new books from the library on her way home.

I'm staying in the bedroom, where there's a saucer full of tasty yumyum and a pole on which I'll doze. PipPip Dear Readers.. please don't forget to go and check out these dreadful Excitotoxins.

GeeGee Parrot.
April 16th, 2016.

A 'DOWN' DAY.. WITH THE ZUNI CAFE COOKBOOK.. WHAT BLISS.

Oh no, we're not sad, we're having a lazy day.

A very lazy day, for we're in bed or rather, she's in bed and I'm perched on top of her head. We got up at a reasonable hour, ate delicious things but she was tired, I think it's from all that emotion of finding those treasures yesterday and as the weather forecast was grim (and has proved to be correct), she made aother mug of LapySang and we climbed back up into bed.

Blissfully happy knowing that, having taken a fish tail and a pair of duck breasts out of the frosty larder for todays' and tomorrows' supper, together with having leeks, carrots and beetroots in the vegetable basket, a new pot of no-fat yogurt in chilly larder together with loaf of scrummy seeded bread, there's no reason to 'hit the road Jack' to go food shopping, she might raid the library later and on her way back, will stop to collect her mail from MailBox.

She also has an extremely good reason for staying quietly at home.. for she has received the most beautiful gift. She had, for many years, a client in San Francisco, she worked on their home and also on several of their clients' homes.

Apparently, one of these clients was asking about her recently and when told that she no longer flew to California on a regular basis, she said "well, we'll have to send San Francisco to her, remember that wonderful meal we had when she started working on my house in 2005, let's send her the cookbook".

If you're a native of San Francisco, you'll probably know 'which' cookbook she was referring to but for those of you who are not familiar with this towns' eateries.. it's the 'The Zuni Cafe Cookbook'.*

A seriously wonderfulwonderful book full of great recipes, I recommend you look for it either first or second hand..

The work she does have to start on is to make the back room liveable-in. She must have tidied up the right side of the cupboard at some point as there was very little that went into a rubbish bag, there will be a little more when she sorts through those old files but she was surprised not to find more 'junk'.

It's the left hand side of this cupboard that might have / be full of junky stuff!  Even she admits it does look higgledy-piggledy when you open the doors. But she cannot do this side until she tidies up the back room. Otherwise, she'll go crazy and she's already half way there, as you all well know!

So here we are.. sadly not 'sitting in the sun' but 'lying in the bed and getting no days' work done at all' .. with apologies to Johnny Mercer & Hoagy Carmichael.. reading up on how to brine duck.. for two Barberry Duck breasts are sitting quietly defrosting in YumYum HQ.

It is very pleasant to be quiet like this, her head is still as she's either tapping iPad or reading on-line newspapers, so I am able to doze peacefully knowing she's under my toes and not up to no good.. you know mothers.. they can get up to all sorts of sneaky tricks if you don't watch them.. like a parrot.

GeeGee Parrot.
April 15, 2016.
PostScript: Judy Rodgers of Zuni Cafe died in 2013.

A TALE OF THREE GREY PARROTS.

Huh! Yes, I know.. it's a strange title is it not. Let me explain. Are you sitting comfortably, then I'll begin.. at the beginning or rather at the beginning of THIS tale!

You know she has these dear friends, Michele and Peter who live in Pewsey, it is Peters' head upon which I like to sit and I was mighty happy to see them both again this year when they called into see us on Easter Monday.

For Christmas last year they gave us a stained glass African Grey parrot, I did tell you all about it but you might have forgotten. When she unwrapped it, she thought to herself " I've got one of these.. or am I bonkers.. if I have one, where is it?"

"Don't look at me, I have never seen anything like that before in my life", I said and got on with doing what I was doing. She hung it on the wall next to Goosie Head, my perch in YumYum HQ.

Today she started going through one side of the huge cupboard in our bedroom. It was full to the brim of stuff, starting one shelf at a time she went through it and found real treasures! Like the rest of the oriental laquer that Constance gave her in the late 80's and some very old French cartoons that Hugo gave her about forty five years ago. That was just the top shelf!

Next one down.. computer stuff, camera equipment.. all carefully packed in boxes and she moved all of that into our sitting room as it should not be sent to storage.

Third shelf.. "hum GeeGee, what's in this old bank box I wonder? She pulled it out and put it down onto the floor. Oh, goodness me.. all of Bills' letters. Then a very fat A4 file.. "oh lordy, mama's financial stuff!", sadly nothing in writing by evil bastard brother in Paris.. a tiny envelope sellotaped shut with her scrawly writing on it saying 'Boucheron keyring'.. this was a present from Bill in the early 80's. It needs to be repaired by Boucheron, she'd put it in the box for safe keeping.

Fourth shelf.. I did tell you this is a huge cupboard!

A bank box full of old files, most of which, maybe all of which can be tossed but she'll check them tomorrow. A plastic unit of three drawers. The top drawer had boxes of her business cards in it and a card file with other peoples' cards in it. The second drawer had something wrapped up in bubble wrap and tissue paper. It was stiff and quite long. She opened it and I swear that her jaw dropped.

For there, in her hands, was another stained glass African Grey parrot. And looking at him, she remembered exactly who had given it to her and when.

Dagga Parrot came into her life in the month of May 1988. In around '89 or '90, Madge (mother of Peter) came back from Kenya, where the family lived, to stay in England for a while, she fell in love with Dagga and he fell with her. The next time she came back to stay in England, she brought a stained glass African Grey parrot with her.

He lived in the YumYum HQ in exactly the same place as the new one has been hanging since Christmas. Then in 2001, the whole of the tiny room was renovated and she wrapped him up most carefully in tissue paper and bubble wrap and put him safely away.. too safely.. because she forgot to take him out again!

She washed them carefully and polished the glass until it shone, the two parrots are now hanging on the wall and a cupboard door in YumYum HQ looking at each other. Darling Dagga was a bigger parrot than I am and the one that Madge gave her (because of Dagga) is slightly the bigger of the two.

So you see, she does have three African Grey Parrots but only one that flies. What treasures she has found and she hasn't even finished this side and there's the entire other side of this cupboard to go through, who knows what she'll find in there!

And it rained whilst she was doing this and the forecast is for more rain tomorrow, at this rate, she'll have both sides of the cupboard sorted out, the valuable stuff will stay with us and the rest can go into storage whilst the renovation work is being done.

She's got a smile on her face and we're going to say "Goodnight" and go to sleep for it's very late.

GeeGee Parrot.
April 14th, 2016.
PostScript: Still BUBs' birthday..

OLD GRUMPY'S MOVING OUT!

And the sun came out!

Oh, yippeeee and "Yesssss" as Tereza, the person who has suffered most from old grumpy, who lives directly below her, put it when she sent us this extremely happy making news early this morning!

Fancy that.. our prayers have been answered.. oh, happy days are here again, if you have never experienced someone who is absoltely vile living in close proximity to you, then you are extremely fortunate.

He has thrown away mail, destroyed presents, removed rods on the stair carpet (!!), been abusive, both in letters and verbally, our local police station call him "a potentially violent man" and the local town hall consider him a huge pest. He interferes in other peoples' lives and three flats in our house, including ours, no longer have any important mail sent here as he destroys it.

In other words.. he is a nutter but soon.. hopefully veryvery soon. he'll be someone elses' nutter!

Did I tell you that she no longer covers me up at night, nor draw my curtain? She does lower the blind and draws the curtains at the window but light creeps in on sunny mornings, so I now wake up naturally with the light, I prefer it, I potter about more in my cage which is quite large and it means that when I go to bed, she puts her light out as well, this equals more 'good quality' sleep for the two of us.

She has a friend, Simon Playle, a seller of wonderful fabrics and human father of a couple of avian folk and he told her about an extremely good homeopathic anti-plucking formula. She had a look at it yesterday on line and read the list of ingredients.. wow.. all good stuff! So she's ordered two bottles and it will be with us tomorrow.

We'll keep you updated on it when I have been taking it for a while. The four or five weeks in the aviary will be the test though.. luckily I have known them all my life, so it's not as if I will be amongst strangers. Let's hope Growly, another African Grey visitor, will be there too. Her parents (human) go away a lot and Growly is often there when I go in and we are always put together so we can chat.

If they start the work in June and don't go over schedule, then I'll be out in late July or August and as long as we have a good summer, I'll spend most days out at the allotment, for that's a very busy time in the vegetable gardening season.

Note to her.. remember to put a proper mortice lock on the back room and walk-in cupboard doors.

Much to do.. the contents of the huge cupboard in our bedroom will have to be put into storage, she is going to go through it, shelf by shelf and see what she actually needs or wants to keep. I'm sure many of you are the same, if you've lived for a long time in the same place, you have 'stuff' that you may no longer even realise you have. We certainly do and the perfect time to sort it out! (Rather her than me).

So I am off.. singing my favourite song as I go.. you know the words.. sing-along with me now..

"Farewell, adieu, auf wiedersein, goodbye.."

GeeGee Parrot.
April 14th, 2016.
PostScript: BUBs' birthday.. aka Big Uncle Bruce!

RESTRAINT OF TONGUE & PEN WASN'T BEING PRACTISED AROUND HERE LAST NIGHT!

She was just about to turn our light out when she exploded! Zap.. kapow! Lordy.. what is the matter I thought and peered through the dark at her face. Who, I wondered, was going to get the bullet?

It was her brother in Paris. He maybe be going a bit senile, no excuse, she realised that for all of last month and this, he has wittered on about these photographs and where she 'has' to send them but not once has he uttered the words "thank you", two little words.

This is despite having sent him something last week that she KNOWS he has never seen before and that is a picture of his parents leaving the church in Madras just after were married. For she knows his step-mother would never have allowed his father to have kept this photo.

But there has been no acknowledgement or thanks and so she let him have both barrels last night and she cares not one jot what he thinks. "I consider your rudeness unacceptable" was the last line, so you see, there wasn't any restraint of tongue and pen being practised around here last night!

Sometimes you do have to say what you do have to say and she did have to say it.

GeeGee Parrot.
April 13th, 2016.

UNGARO GOT TO GO..

No, I'm not going to explain myself.. you should be keeping up to date on my blog, stay awake at the back there, where do you think you are, daddy's yacht?

So off she went to lunch on time and properly dressed in pretty female clothes, a change from her gardening kit in which you can't tell which sex she is.. big waxed jacket.. skinny black jeans.. leather work boots.. shorter hair than most men. she could be a young boy!

Patrick was there ahead of time.. with his new French passport in his pocket, they're a little 'speedier' at renewing their citizens passports than their British counterparts.. who take ages.

Talk talk talk.. how did they manage to eat any food at all? But they did, she had ravioli limone as a main course and a small but delicious panna cotta with coffee. Yum.

There was just one sadness.. halfway through her ravioli, her right eye, the weakest, started to give her gyp.. pain.. and she developed the most cracking headache.. not so much fun.. and sadly it shows in her face in a snap that Patrick took of her at the lunch table but she's getting used to this happening and you can't stay home all the time, can you?

They parted at a reasonable hour just before 2.30pm, she came home and did a huge amount of sorting out etc. Did several loads of washing, of bed linens, sweaters, etc, etc.

This morning the plumber and one of the contractors came to look at the inside of the room.. our bedroom.. where this serious work has to be done, like hacking back plaster to the brickwork up to a height of five feet, the emptying of books cases, the storage of these books, the emptying of her enormous office cupboard, the storage of all its' contents and the removal of both the book cases and the cupboard, rather them than me as it is a fitted cupboard!

Replacing the floor boards directly underneath the window, taking off all the woodwork of the window, removing the electrical and telephone sockets.. oi vey.. huge amount of work. It is going to take three to four weeks minimum, so I will be in the aviary for one week longer to allow the smell of all the chemicals and paint to dispearse.. I'll be bald when I come out.. she won't be happy at all.

ALL because a contractor did shoddy exterior work ten years ago.. he didn't repair the window sill, put the damp course in completely the wrong place and removed a little drain on the steps which used to stop the rain water splashing onto the front wall. oi vey.

Too late now to go to the garden, she's staying here and doing more house work. Me.. I'm off to sit on front pole and to have a dozy time.

OK, I'll give you a clue, just one. In the post before last, I spoke about four jackets, now figure out the title of this post.

GeeGee Parrot.
April 13th, 2016.

Too late to post..

Sorry folks, we don't know what happened to this evening.. one minute it was five o'clock and then whoosh.. it is now past ten o'clock and we're both in bed with the lights going out in less than two minutes!

We'll write tomorrow morning about her luncheon with Patrick and tell you which jacket got to go.. there's a clue in there.. somewhere.. Goodnight.

GeeGee Parrot.
April 12th, 2016.

PEA & MINT.. TOGETHER IN A SOUP.

Now here's a culinary marriage we all love! Oh yes, very slurpy-durpy indeed are those little round balls aka peas with fresh mint and this recipe for soup might just be the slurpiest of them all?

Are you ready? Then get some paper and a pen and write it down for it very quick and easy to make.

You will need:.

1 onion, peeled and finely chopped.
3 celery stalks, finely chopped, we also put the leaves in if they are looking good!
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped.
600g of frozen peas.
1.2 litres of vegetable stock.
6 tbs of chopped fresh mint.Fat free natural yoghurt.
Freshly ground black pepper.

How to make it:

Place the stock, onion, celery and peas in a large pan and bring to the boil.
Then turn down the heat and simmer for 15 - 20 minutes.

Allow to cool slightly, then put in the chopped mint leaves.
Using a hand held liquidiser, puree the soup until very smooth.
Remove from heat and serve immediately with the yoghurt and black pepper.

We are having it for supper one night this week as she checked to see if we had any peas before she went off to weigh-in today.

Lost.. 1/2 a lb. That will teach her to gobble up curried chicken and rice last night for supper! I must admit, I also found the curried rice most appetising so I am not surprised at her squeak of joy when she found the packet hiding in frosty cupboard.. aka the freezer.

Such a strange thing, someone had done all the hard work, all she had to do was heat it up! I have never seen a ready-cooked meal before, the only meals she eats that she hasn't cooked are when we go to friends' houses or she goes to a restaurant, to which, sadly, I am not allowed to go.. sigh.

Yes.. she only lost a measly half a pound in weight this week.. and now weighs 9stone 12lbs.. I do blame that food in the packet (heaven only knows what was in it) but when you've gardened hard for several hours, the last thing you want to do is cook a meal and she wanted something more substantial than soup.

She's really changed shape in the last couple of weeks, a few of them remarked upon it at group today and she had a big shock when she went into her 'serious' clothes cupboard to choose something pretty to wear for lunch tomorrow.. for four of her very old small sized couture jackets are a bit loose!

Why was she looking for something pretty to wear at a lunch? Well, you don't go to have lunch with a heavenly Frenchman (even if you have known him for 56 years) wearing things you'd wear to the allotment, do you?

Anyway, she pulled out these four jackets, they are all now classified as being vintage, yes, she does keep her clothes a long time. They were a Christian Lacroix, an Ungaro, a Yves St.Laurent and a glorious scarlet boiled wool jacket which has a mad beautifully crazy scarf that she bought eleven years ago in Ojai.. (lovely town in California).

Depending on what the dreaded weather is doing tomorrow, she'll wear a skirt or the skinniest black trousers she has.. even they are starting to be a bit loose around the bum.

I say the 'dreaded weather' for our morning today was glorious.. bright and sunny, but we spoke with Faith in Wiltshire and she said it had been raining there ALL day.. whoops.. as we get our weather from the south west, she made a note to wear a weather proof jacket and to grab a Beanie.

Sure enough.. on the dot of 2pm, the skies over Fulham opened and a downpour commenced.. ugh. We hope it won't be doing it tomoorow at midday when she meeting Patrick.

Anyway, it's now way past nine of the evening clock and I have to go to bed.. I'll tell you about their lunch tomorrow evening.. yawn.

GeeGee Parrot.
April 11th, 2016.

ARE YOU HAVING ROAST CHICKEN FOR SUNDAY LUNCH? IF SO.. READ ON 'COS HERE'S A WONDERFUL RECIPE FOR LEFT-OVER COLD CHICKEN.

CHICKEN & MUSHROOM SOUP CHINESE STYLE

Unless you and your family are gannets, there's usually a bit of meat left on a chicken carcass and here is an easy and delicious way to slurp it all up! It'll only take you 25 minutes, far less time than roasting another bird.. of the edible variety.

You will need:

About 350g of cooked, boneless chicken shredded into fine pieces.
A bunch of spring onions trimmed and chopped.
2cms of fresh ginger root peeled and grated.
110g button mushrooms or shiitake if you can find them.. go a'hunting in Asian supermarkets.
2 tbsp of dark soy sauce.
2 tbsp of dry sherry.. put the bottle back! Stop taking those cooks' nips.
2 level tsp light brown sugar.
1.2 litres of vegetable stock.
2 large carrots, scraped and finely sliced.
200g of baby sweetcorn.

How to do it:

Put the chicken meat into a bowl and stir in the spring onions.. keep a few back for garnish.
Add the ginger, sherry and sugar to the meat, mix well, set aside.

Pour the stock into a large saucepan and bring to the boil.
Add the carrots and baby sweetcorn and simmer for a minute.
Stir in the chicken mixture, bring back to the boil, then simmer for ten minutes.

Serve with the reserved spring onions as a garnish.

That, Dear Readers, is a perfect Tuesday night supper! You probably don't want to eat chicken again for supper on a Monday night but if you stripped the carcass on Sunday night and put the meat into the chilly white larder.. aka fridge.. you'd be able to put the carcass into a large pan to make stock.

For home made stock is wondrous as soup or to freeze in ice cube containers so you have a ready supply to put into other dishes.

I am a 'bit' deficient in the feather department.. like almost bald on my tumtum and I am not wearing my fluffy trousers as I have 'taken them off' and the witch has turned the heating off! But I am very happy and squeaking and singing and tweeting and blogging along with the best of them, whomever 'they' maybe!

Debbie goaty mum gave her goaty curd yesterday and there was a fair sized bit on my saucer this morning, simply delicious stuff that curd. She had it on top of a thin layer of marmite on a slice of toast last night, I got a crunchy piece of the crust, I've never had marmite before.. it is a curious but tasty taste. She usually has it in the way of a hot drink.

It's a bright but chilly day, she's off to the allotments but I, because of my lack of clothing, have to stay here as it is too cold for me, it is such a daft thing I have done and yesterday she discussed making me a silk vest but goaty mum didn't think it would last long and she's right about that!

So, depending on what time madame comes back from the allotments, I may post later on but I will certainly be prattling away again tomorrow giving you all the news (that's fit to print) and the result of her stepping onto those scales at her 1.00pm weigh-in.

Now.. where is the warmest place to perch?

GeeGee Parrot.
April 10th, 2016.
PostScript: Who is the person considered by a caller on LBC to be "not fit to look after a Bombay car park".

WHAT DID I PROMISE YOU? AH YES, ROASTED SWEET POTATO SOUP AND THE LAST RUNAWAY by TRACY CHEVALIER.

Oh, sweet potato, how we love you. We love you boiled or baked and this recipe gives these tubers a real roasting! Read on.. Dear Readers.. read on!

You will need:

700g of sweet potatoes scrubbed and cut into big chunks.
6 large shallots, peeled and quartered.
3 fat garlic cloves.. Unpeeled!
2 large carrots, scrubbed and cut into big chunks.
1 tbsp of harissa paste plus extra to serve.
1 tbsp of olive oil.
Salt and freshly ground black pepper.
1.2 litres of vegetable stock.
1 level tsp of runny honey.
1 fat lemon.
Fat free yoghurt.. fat free is heavier and stays as a big 'fat' lump in your soup! Delish!

How to make it:

Preheat your oven to 200 / Fan 180 / Gas mark 6.
Put the sweet potatoes, shallots, carrots and garlic into a roasting pan.
Mix the harissa with the oil and pour over the vegetables, stir gently so they're coated in oil.
Season and roast, turning occasionally, for 40 minutes until the veg are tender and golden.
Remove from oven.

Squeeze the garlics out of their skins into the roasting tin.
Stir in the stock and the honey & scrape up all the bits from the bottom of the tin.
Allow to cool slightly.
Carefully transfer everything into a large saucepan.
Using your handheld whizzer ( I hope you've taken our advice and bought one.)
Whizz the vegetables until smooth.

Add a good squeeze of lemon juice.
Then season to taste with crunched salt and freshly ground pepper.
Swirl a tsp of harissa into the yoghurt and plop a dollop into each bowl or serving.

Now, what else did I say we would write about? Oh yes, a book by Tracy Chevalier.

'The Last Runaway' was published in 2013 and it made her wet-eyed, the story is set in 1850, the central figure is a young Quaker Englishwoman who travels with her sister to America. I am not going to spoil it for you but the point of us mentioning this book is about the Underground Railway, a subject about which she knew nothing having never been taught about it at school.

Readers in America will, of course, know about it but it has prompted her to inquire about books on it at her library.. it will be fairly grim reading I suspect..

She's off to find that Goaty mum tomorrow, the farmer's market will be at Balham but in a new location, let's hope she can find it as we are down to our very last slurp of kefir!

Now, I spy with my little eye some walnuts lying unprotected on the bed. My glutinous tumtum is a'telling me to fly off and gobble them up, so I'm away.. chocks away.. cheerio folks!

GeeGee Parrot.
April 8th, 2016.

SLEEPING IN A BLUE LAGOON.

The walls are blue and now the cupboards are too, so all sides of our bedroom are 'very' blue! She went to B&Q yesterday afternoon upon the advice of dearest Leigh and bought several tarpaulins in two sizes. Brick renovation work = dusty conditions and the wisest thing to do is cover everything in plastic or dustsheets.

But each dust-sheet costs a lot of money honey! And can only be used as dustsheets, whereas these tarpaulins can, or rather, will come in use at the allotments as well. She did one side of the room to see if she needed different sizes but no, what she bought will do the job.

It was fascinating, I couldn't think why she was sealing the doors with black plastic, so I watched from the top of a cupboard, but when she started working on the area around my night-house.. aga cage in which I sleep.. I thought I'd better get closer and what could be closer than being on her head!

We must have looked very peculiar - funny peculiar & funny haha - her up the step-ladder with a mouthful of small nails and a hammer in her hand with me perched on top of her head. She'd already done the doors with plastic attached to the doors with masking tape and now was hanging these huge tarpaulins from the top of the cupboards. The thought of brick dust in your linen cupboard is not a happy thought, is it?

So we are ready.. the other cupboards need to be done but we have the right materials with which to do the job of covering the bedside bookcases, the mattress, the massive bookshelf, her desk and the set of nine wall mounted drawers.. our bedroom was the original kitchen of the house and these huge drawers date from that era.

A contractor is coming next Wednesday with the structural surveyor to quote for the work, we have no idea when they propose to start it but she'll email the landlord her medical appointments in May with the suggestion that work should start in June.

As it is just past 10.00 of the morning clock, we're now going to start our day.. but before we go.. do you know this extraordinary true fact.. you all know how she loves pieces of 'useful' information.

That Dolphins sleep with one eye open.

GeeGee Parrot.
April 8th, 2016.

CHINESE GREENS IN GARLIC SAUCE.. YOU'VE GOT TO EAT YOUR GREENS.. JUST LIKE POPEYE DID.

Popeye the sailor man ate his greens, it was spinach she seems to recall.. well today, we are giving you Chinese Greens in Garlic! Ahso.. velly fine gleens too!

You will need:

Vegetable oil.
6 - yes 6 cloves of garlic peeled and crushed.
250ml vegetable stock.
1 tbsp dark soya sauce.
1 tsp of sugar.
2 pak choi sliced thickly lengthways.
500g of choi sum sliced thickly lengthways.
6 stalks of kai lan chopped into 3cms lengths.
8 spring onions cut into 4 cm lengths.
3 cm of peeled ginger root cut into small lengths like matchsticks.
1 level tsp cornflour,
Handful of fresh coriander leaves chopped.
1 tsp of white pepper.

And steamed white dice.. you know how to do that!

How to make it:

Take a large wok or frying pan, pour in a little vegetable oil.
Put the pan onto a medium heat.
Add garlic and stir fry until garlic is lightly browned..
Pour in the vegetable stock, soy sauce and sugar, mix well.
Add the pak choi, choi sum and kai lan.
Mix cornflour with 3 tbsp of water and add to the wok, stir well.
Add the coriander, white pepper and 1/2 of the ginger sticks.
Stir fry for 3 - 4 minutes until sauce is thickened.
Remove from heat, sprinkle on the remaining ginger sticks and serve with steamed white rice.

This is a very 'morish' way to eat your greens.. if you are not able to grow these yourself, then most supermarkets and some street markets sell a few varieties of oriental greens now and of course, if you live in a major city, you will undoubtedly be able to find Asian supermarkets with their fabulous selection of oriental greens.. I 'feel' a visit coming on to Chinatown!

We have just received bad but good news.. ugh.. there are going to be extensive building works being carried out to the front wall of the house.. both inside and out and this, Dear Readers, is our bedroom wall!

Dusty work brick renovation, I will have to go to the avairy as dust and parrots' airsacks (we don't have lungs) are not a good combination. Sigh.. she'll have to get dust sheets and cover the front of all the curpboards in the bedroom and tape them close and put dustsheets over the book cases.

Her porcelain and glass collections will come out of the room and they, like her, will live in the back room. The last time they did serious renovations we were out of the flat for SIX months! There is a surveyor coming again on next Wednesday to look at the extent of the damage.

But how long is it going to take this time? She doesn't like leaving builders here in the house when she's not here and we has several trips planned away for May. The last time the flat was practically emptied as we moved into an empty flat around the corner. Drat and double drat! Just when we thought that life was settling down, ok, let's think of much happier things.

We received the most glorious photo in an email last night, it was sent to us by our dear, Dear Reader, Karen. She is visiting her cousin in Japan, then taking off on a two week trip through Japan by train, the photo was of a Sakura (Flowering Cherry) tree in full bloom and it made her immediately think of those breathtakingly beautiful flowering cherry trees in Washington DC.

Grey sky here, cold as well, she shows no inclinationto go out there except she's read all of her library books and needs new ones. By the way.. Who has read the latest book by Tracy Chevalier? We will tell you about it the next post, she is a clever writer Ms. Chevalier, this novel is set in the 1850's in Ohio.

Okey-dokey.. we are off to start our day.. very late but we have eaten and now much house work needs to be done. And a LOT of work has to be done in the back room if she is going to move in there.. grrr.. but all is not lost folks.. the sun's come out!

GeeGee Parrot.
April 7th, 2016.

SNOW @ SAINSBURYS & SOMETHING IS SERIOUSLY WRONG WITH HER BROTHER IN PARIS.

Oh yippee. I didn't go to the vet today! Things are looking up folks, she looked at the bottom of my cage and found only one feather and telephoned the vet. He agreed that it might trigger me to do more plucking being squished into my travel cage and taken to East Sheen and he was very pleased to hear that my weigh has now increased to.. 425g! Aren't I the fat one around here? For she certainly isn't.

We ate a very light lunch, this for her was a slice of tasty Brawn, she loves Brawn and the remains of the beetroot soup and I had crunchy toast with hummus and a couple of nibbles of sauerkraut. I know, it is surprising that a bird would enjoy such a sour taste but I do.

Then she looked outside to see what the weather was doing.. humm.. wet on the ground and a cloudy sky, this meant she needed a windproof jacket, sweater, lightweight cowl hood, gloves, socks and old WW.

For she was bound for the big Sainsbury's which is in the Cromwell Road. They sell large bottles of clear vinegar, which is what she uses to clean with. She needed some things, such as lentils, some vegetables that cannot always be found in the market and a few other things.. including two pots of their basic hummus for me.

She met a friend in the store so the trip took longer than she anticipated and guess what greeted them when they walked out? A flurry of snow! Ugh.. the temperature was dropping fast. She was glad she had the cowl hood on and up for her ears would have been freezing.

Home again.. home again.. jiggedy-jig.

To see that she hadn't unplugged her mobile from when she had charged it last night, upon switching it on, she found, oh lordy-lulu, another ten voice messages from the brother in Paris, then she checked the landline, there were nine calls on that.

"Enough", she thought "I have to involve the family. So emailed Catherine in Paris, his first wife, to told her what was going on and included what he had said in one of his last messages which was very disjointed and rambled a lot (not his style of speech).

Back came a quick response from Catherine saying " Ma petite, you have every reason to be alarmed, something is obviously not right at all, I have forwarded your email immediately to Sebastian (their son) and he will find out what on earth is going on.. fret not.. he will get on to it asap".

Since then, she has received another two calls with crazy messages, has he had a mini stroke? OR, is he so terrified that she has found paperwork that will implicate him in the betrayal of his mother that it has unhinged him? Who knows, we don't.

It's sunny out there about an hour ago but it was also past 7.00pm so you knew it's wasn't going to be warm, however pretty the sky might look! And they say that we are in for a blustery cold day tomorrow, what was today, if not cold and blustery with a dash of snow added for good measure?

She's made carrot and ginger soup, she'll have this for supper with a small bowl of skinny beans and broccoli. The latest batch of beet kvass is finally doing its' stuff! Goodness me, this batch has taken such a long time to come up to the bubble! (this shows the juice is fermenting).

She made it on Saturday which is four days ago, well, I guess the temperature isn't hot in our house as she has turned the boiler down and started wearing more layers of clothing again, she thinks part of my problem could be the central heating, so my swimming pool is kept topped up and she sprays me (the wretch) whenever  she can sneak up on me with the water spray.. Don't worry folks, I've got eyes in the back of my head and usually see her coming.

Halfway through our week.. what have we got to look forward to next week?

Ah, lunch with an old friend! She's known Patrick ever since she was ten and he was fourteen. He was the elder brother of Bruce, Annabel and Charlie with whom she and her other brother were close friends. She still cannot believe that Annabel and Charlie are both dead.. oi vey.

Patrick is a MV, which stands for Master of Wine and was for many years one of the only four French Masters of Wine. Surprising that, is it not? You would think that there would be hundreds of French MV.. but no. He studied the vine and wine and worked his way to the very top of the top in the booze business.

She has bullied him (gently) into doing his family tree.. for his family is spread over many countries, Mexico, Italy, France and England and it is all too easy to 'lose', as she knows, relatives and the how or why so & so lives in Mexico.o or on Ischia.

They are meeting next Tuesday and I'll get her to tell us about it. But fear not, there will be lots more tales and slurpy recipes for you before then. However, I'm off for she's going to rustle up that soup.. slurpyslurps.

GeeGee Parrot.
April 6th, 2016.

CARROT & GINGER SOUP IS OUR SOUP OF TODAY..

Greetings folks! It's a sunny cloudy day but I have eaten hummus, a few sunflower seeds and a big munch of egg white so I'm alright and I trust you are too.

She was too tired to do my tapping last night so we had a quiet evening and an early bed. She was 'slightly' disturbed to receive SIX telephone calls from her half brother who lives in Paris. She had already received two emails on the same from him in March, they weren't identical in text but had exactly the same content.

Two calls came through on the landline which showed 'Number with-held International'. As none of her (overseas) friends would do that to her, she just let the telephone ring, then in addition, she received in the space of twenty minutes, four calls on her mobile which again showed the same notice, she let them all go through to voice mail.

The caller was her half brother, he is seventy five this year and she hasn't heard from or seen him since their mothers' funeral in 2002. His voice sounded very old, more than a bit 'doddery' and each message was basically the same, it seems as if he has no memory or recall of emailing her or having made four telephone calls.. pre-senile dementia comes to mind.

In each of the four messages he laboriously spelt out his new address, but gave no telephone number, this contact from him is due to the fact she'd let Catherine, his first wife, know she had come across photos of him with their mother in India and Kashmir when he was a baby, circa 1942 and that she would send them to her.

He is a strange man for whom she feels pity, for it cannot be easy to live with the fact by betraying your mothers' trust you broke her heart and ultimately, caused her death.

Enough of sad things over which you have no control.. Let's write about much happier things!

Like food.. for you know how much we love food and we know how much you do too! For the most read post on my blog is the one about the Gateau de Pommes de Terre Savoyard.. which she had eaten when she was a youngster, they were made by the much loved Paulette Hotchkiss.. and then seen being demonstrated on Masterchef Professional by Michel Roux jr.

You all know she on a mission to lose weight in order to save her poor old wonky knees being made worse.. well, soup is something that is delicious hot or cold and can be as chunky or as delicate as you like BUT they do have to be tasty and this Carrot & Ginger Soup is a real cracker!

This is what you need: Timing.. about 30 minutes!

Olive oil.
2 onions peeled & chopped.
2 celery stalks chopped.
2 garlic cloves peeled and bashed, then chopped.
2cm piece of fresh ginger root finely grated.
1.2 litres of vegetable stock.
700g of carrots scrubbed and roughly chopped.
Salt and black pepper to grind.
Fat free yoghurt, the thickest possible.
Flat leaf parsley to chop at the last minute as a garnish.

How to make it:

Put a small amount of olive oil into a large pan.
Cook the onions, celery, garlic and ginger for about 3 minutes on a low heat.
Add the stock and the carrots and bring to a slow boil.
Reduce the heat and simmer for 20 - 25 minutes until the carrots are tender.
Allow to cool slightly.
Season well.
Liquidise using a hand held wand or a food processor.

Serve it with fat free yoghurt and a sprinkling of chopped flat leaf parsley.

Do you have a hand held liquidiser? They save so much time and washing up! She has two, one has a bigger head on it and its' knife blades are larger and sharper which she uses if she is making a soup with meat in it. You simply puree the soup in the pan. We like 'simple' in our tiny YumYum HQ.

Vet again today.. hey ho.. but no collar, they (mother & vet) decided that whilst talking on the telephone. I'll report back later and we are going to give you another cracking recipe.. Ah so..

Chinese Greens in Garlic Sauce.. Gotta eat your greens so they might as well be scrummy!

PipPip..

GeeGee Parrot.
April 6th, 2016.

Better than Borscht AND how about Carrots and Ginger to spice up your life!

Oh.. de Spring, de sun is ris, you wonder were de birdee is? I am here, Dear Readers, here in deepest Knightsbridge, where the sun is shining and we are all a bit happy-clappy at the moment.. for I gained 20g yesterday!

She risked the beautiful rug given to her by Hay darling and put the small tub of hummus and my saucer of boiled egg plus other parrot enticing yumyum on top of the cupboard where I like to spend my days.

I ate a large amount of hummus , almost finished the egg, then ate five walnut halves and a large slice of apple when she was in bed, I ate it sitting on her knee, now you know why she has a lightweight cover on her bed. It can and does get a bit messy around here with grapes and apples and walnuts being consumed and after I have gone to bed, it's taken off, put into the wash machine and its' clean twin put onto the bed.

I also had a small snacket during the night to keep Beaky busy.. he also unfortunately snipped off some feathers from my back.. BAD Beaky.

Now to serious things.. did you read the last post? If not, please do so after reading this.. for that beetroot and carrot soup recipe is something that we should have given you years ago! We were due to have salmon tail.. why the tail instead of the fatter fillets in the middle or nearer to the head?

Think about it.. what makes a fish go? Its' tail.. so you don't have as much fat down there like you do further up and the 'meat' is firmer and it cooks divinely without any oil.

Anyway.. I digress.. she thought "I have got a few beets and carrots that need to be eaten otherwise they'll go soft", so made the soup, 30 minutes later, she whizzed it with her neat little handheld wand liquidiser to make a thick puree.

Plop went three ladles of this divinely coloured stuff into a bowl, she didn't have fromage frais but thick fat free yoghurt was as good. Oooh.. It's better than borscht, the taste is scrummydumptious!

Got to go now, for although her appointment with this new person isn't until 2.30pm, she has to wash, dress, get to Hammersmith where she's taking some clothes back as they're too big for her (yippee) and find Dale Road in Chiswick.

But we'll be back later with another cracking recipe.. Carrot & Ginger Soup. You know we are crazy-daisy about ginger in this house and we eat carrots almost every day so the two of them are a natural and this recipe is as simple and quick as the beet and carrot soup.. that's better than Borscht!

GeeGee Parrot.
April 5th, 2016.