GOODBYE OCTOBER.. WE ARE VERY PLEASED TO SEE YOU GO.

I know, I know.. I haven't posted for ages but we, Dear Readers, have had a reallyreally horrid month and she still has a lot of hard work ahead of her. She, of course, being my poor mum.

We have had yet more builders in the flat, the front door has been open all day long and that meant I was confined to our bedroom, so no zoom-a-zooming around for me! Three LONG weeks they were here.

And because they were not her team of builders, she kept her mouth shut and did not fire off emails to the landlord on the stupidity of his workers.. yes, Dear Readers, she practised our favourite saying 'RESTRAINT OF TONGUE & PEN'.

But, of course, stupidity as in cutting corners in building work always comes around and bites you in your bum! HeeHee.. and sure enough the screed floor, which should have been placed immediately after the plumbing was finished and before the woodwork, wasn't done then.

Oh no.. for old cheapo builder only laid the screed just upto the base of the basin units, not all the way underneath them and sure enough old sneaky damp is rising up and getting into the screed! Oh and by the way, photos and damp measures don't lie!

But getting back to October.. it has been a grim time, cold and dirty because of the before mentioned buildings works but it is always a 'painful' month. For Constance died in October and so did Bill, he died on the 30th several years ago, the same day as our most beloved Moley, aka Susan Sams, of Pine Bluff, Arkansas and another old friend Edgar Watkins of NYC and Fredericksburg, Texas.

Anyway, enough of all that doom, gloom and sadness, it's time to cheer up and get cracking at the allotments. Lots to do and chop and down and dig out. There are storage shelves and cupboards to be built in little shed and she wants to make storage rack units at the top for apples and onions that will be mouse or rat proof.

So now you see why she bought the genny.. what? You missed that? Yes, my Dear Readers, she found a petrol generator to give her power at the plots! Yeehaw! Well, you know she lurves power tools and she is after a couple of real toys.. I can't recall their names but you know them, they're things that go zzzzzm (with a hideous noise) through wood!

Back to home.. she found, for veryvery little money, the most wonderful red lantern last week, made of metal with proper glass panels with a fixed base and a door that opens, there are pineapples leaves at the top and a big ball with a handle, she is taking it to one of her magic guys to turn it into a brilliant hanging bathroom lamp.

With bathroom lamps water has to be avoided, as no water could get into this, she has done the sketch and a central column will come down with four light fittings which will take low voltage SES bulbs.. SES stands for small edison screw.

And she has dug out a never-used lamp, made of chrome with chromed mini antlers at the base and the built-in shade is metal, also in chrome. Very smart.. and snappy.. I haven't been allowed into the bathroom as everything has been painted and that means everywhere is wet!

This lamp, is by the way, at the other end of the room, well away from any water!

It's late.. old Cheapo has to come back tomorrow as he allowed a nail to remain in the floor and put the screed over it.. (!) now he has to dig it out as it would puncture our new flooring.

So Chirps to you all.. and we send the lovely Karen our bestest love and many hugs.

GeeGee Parrot.
October 31st, 2016.
All Souls Day.. Aka.. Halloween night.

SHOULD WE BE CALLING HER 'THE BOILER WOMAN'?

This is a very short post as I am laughing so much I might fall off it!

She was suddenly struck by the following..'For goodness sake, why am I being such a wimp? I come from a long line of mechanical & electrical engineers, I rebuilt a Goldring Lenco unit, I must surely be able to fix this wretched boiler?' So she went on-line to look at a website and there, sure enough, were instructions on how to fix our problem of zero pressure.

And having armed herself with a torch and removed me from her head, she went into the boiler cupboard and there, lo and behold, were the two valves. A quick turn to both of them into the FULL position and there was instantly the most intensely gratifying sound of water going somewhere!

The lever in the pressure valve swung up from 0 towards 2 and after switching on the boiler to heating and hot water, the unit stopped flashing E119 and showed the temperature! "GeeGee, I've done it, we can warm up the flat AND have a hot bath tonight.. oh, yubba-dubba-doo!", she cried.

No, she's not for hire, she's now doing what she should be doing which is emptying the cabinets in the bathroom, prior to woman-handling them into the old boiler room where they will do splendidly for storage of things that are vital, like spare Bissell vacuum bits and carpet shampoo, you know the sort of things that are of great importantance but that you don't use all the time.

Me, I'm safely out of harms way in yumyum high up on Goosie head. One of my favourite place to perch.. smelling bones in stock. Very slurpicious it smells too. Chirp.

GeeGee Parrot.
October 2nd, 2016.

OTHER RECIPES FOR TURKEY NECKS ARE PRETTY WEIRD, READ OURS!

Greetings from sunny London where here, in deepest Knightsbridge, we are not yet doing what we, or rather she, 'should' be doing, which is emptying the bathroom of its' contents. Oh no, we have been having much more fun in the yumyum HQ!

That fun has involved eating hard boiled eggs, drinking delicious coffee and stripping meat from those turkey necks I wrote about in the last post. Out of interest, she did a search on-line about turkey neck soup and up came all manner of ways of cooking them, none of which were like what she does.

So I decided that as ours is truly scrummydumptious and dead easy, I would ask her to share it with you.

Now, first up is to find the turkey necks! For a start, you will not find them in a supermarket, no mattter how 'SUPER' it is, they will not be there! Secondly, if you buy your meat from a supermarket, shame upon you! For it is these evil companies who have driven many a meat and or milk farmer to commit suicide let alone bankruptcy.

Go and find a butcher.. a proper butcher who knows his cuts of meat and can 'bone out' properly. Frequent them and get and take their advice, ask them for their 'specials', take your seasonings to them and ask them to make you some sausages, you can then freeze them and have delicious things to eat with no additives.

She frequents two butchers and you know their names if you read this blog regularly. Dickinsons in the North End Road, in Fulham are our local butcher and then up on Central Parade in Streatham is Bartek Express, aka the suppliers of IshPol.

She gets our turkey necks from Bartek. She has never seen them in Dickinsons, they do sell trays of chicken, lamb, pork and beef bones for a £1.00 but she has never seen turkey necks for sale and rather thinks that they are taken home (very fast) by the staff!

Our yumyum HQ is minute but high up on top of a wall unit is just enough space for two stock pots, one gigantic one and one medium sized one. Up she went and down she came with the medium one.

It was given a good scrub with boiling water from the kettle, remember the flippin' boiler blinked' so there's none from a tap, and into the pot went the turkey necks together with home grown garlic, carrots, celariac, a leek, a hamburg parsley and seasoning.

After it had come to the boil, the heat was turned way down and it simmered for 20 minutes. Then it was turned off and it sat over-night with the lid on.

We 'Rised and shined' this morning at some disgracefully late hour after.. teehee.. cuddles in bed with my mum playing silly games under the covers. One cannot be serious all the time and it, life, has been a 'bit' too serious around here for a long while.

Why? Well, what with the cost of the solicitors aka lawyer's bill, the bill for the restoration of the rug and the cost of my three week sojourn in jail, her budget was pared to the bone and nothing, in the way of money, has been spent that was not absolutely vital.

Back to the those turkey necks! More hot water from the kettle into a bowl, she scrubbed her nails with soap and a nail brush and set about the necks. Yes, you take the meat off fiddly neck bones with your thumb and finger nails, you could do it with a knife but it would take forever and you'd get very frustrated doing it like that, so why drive yourself nuts?

The cold meat slipped off the bones easily into a bowl, the bones went back into the stock, she then put the meat, which by the way was all brown meat and no fat, into a tub and weighed it, the tub she knew weighed 20g. She had 578g of meat in the tub, that meant there was 558g of pure meat! Tub went into the chilly white larder.

After adding more root vegetables and seasoning to the stock, she brought it up to boil, it is now simmering on the stove and will do so for about four hours. The vegetables will add flavour and the neck bones will release their goodness.

I don't have to be anxious, I know my mum and I saw a couple of the neck vertibrae didn't go back into the stockpot, I'll 'find' them at some point today and what a cruncy treat they'll be!

Yes, of course, most of us avian folk aka birds are carnivores, why are you surprised? Do you honestly think Mr. Robin Red Breast is taking that Centipede back to the nest to use as a tape measure! Or that Mr. Thrush is playing the cymbals whilst he bashes Mr. Snail on a rock?

I am off! My swimming pool is calling me to go and play 'Splish & Splosh' and she, the poor dear, has to get it together and empty the bathroom of everything today.. because all though Richard and his motley crew aren't arriving until Wednesday morning, she is gardening tomorrow and doing something with an old friend on Tuesday.

And she is a fully paid-up member of the 'Do It Now' school (in this case slightly later today) for if you do it now, then you know it is done and you don't get into a panic at the last minute. Plus, you'll know where you put everything. Which reminds me, she has to put the old lock back into the bedroom door with those longer screws she found.

Back momentarily to the stock.. after being simmered, she'll strain the stock, pick out the bones and puree the vegetables which get added back to the liquid. Some will be chilled and then frozen, but a big bowl, with some of the meat added to it, will be her supper tonight.

She has an all-day jaunt planned for next Saturday and I already know what her lunch will be. Can you guess? It involves her old trusty Thermos flask (for food), you got it, she'll be slurping thick vegetable and turkey potage with a couple of savoury linseed flapjacks.. about which I will write soon, they're our latest best-thing-ever and made in Sussex.

So it's PipPip from us both but before we go, I have to say "Welcome home Nikki, we wish you, Bob and Karen a very happy life, remember to play nice, they've never had a German Shepherd before!"

GeeGee Parrot.
October 2nd, 2016.

TURKEY NECK.. AND HIVES!

No, I'm not talking about her neck, she doesn't have a 'turkey' neck, that's for sure, both Dr. Katherine and Valerie have remarked upon the appearance of her neck which certainly doesn't tell her true age!

No, I'm talking about the necks which came from three mighty large beasts, they're now in a large stock pot with garlic, carrots, hamburg parsley roots and a large leek together with a goodly amount of seasoning. Simmering slowly, the end result will be a wonderful rich turkey meat and vegetable soup! Slurp! And I'll get the neck bones to munch.

Well, that's the good news in this post! Now for all the rest!

It was wet today.. very wet indeed! Luckily it was already raining when she ventured forth at midday so she was wearing a rainproof jacket and there was an umbrella was in her hand, she didn't fool around with buses but went straight underground heading for Oxford Street.

But, oh dearie me, she was sorely disappointed by the choice available in John Lewis's flooring department, they may have the best fitters but they have the dullest and the smallest selection of bathroom flooring!

Thank goodness for the Greek guy on the North End Road, for he stocks pretty stuff and at very reasonable prices, even old CarpetRight have a prettier selection of vinyls than John Lewis and they certainly have much better prices, that's for sure!

So now you know it was wet today and wet weather equals cooler weather and today is the first day of October and it was a little chilly-billy, so she turned the Combi-Boiler onto hot water plus heating.. except the heating didn't turn on. The flipping pressure had dropped like a stone and the boiler is now not producing anything, not even hot water.

Oh, she's mighty bored with this farce. What else did those numpty builders do? Did they disconnect another radiator? She'll have to call / email the landlord on Monday and hopes that Richard will be able to come and kick the f'ing thing into touch.. aka go!

Oh! What a jolly thing to look forward to! Two days of no hot water or heating. Thank goodness for: kettle, gas cooker, wool sweaters, socks and, of course, me to keep her head warm whilst she taps iPad or watches television.

Now onto hives!

I know you're thinking of lots of happy buzzing bees buzzing about making honey! Well, I am sorry to disappoint you but I am talking about her hives, yes, she presently is covered in hives (!) and all because of a cereal company.

She had been eating it, her usual oat cereal, for several days and wondered why she felt weird, as in strange. She knew she wasn't eating any of the dreaded nightshade family and hadn't eaten, or so she thought, any wheat. Until the hives arrived this week and settled in to spring out all over her!

Every bit of her..

And as she knew the only thing she was eating that wasn't raw was the cereal, she picked up the packet and saw to her anger and horror that the greedy company has changed the ingredients and has slipped in toasted wheat flakes.

So it's these wretched flakes that are causing her skin to erupt in these awfully ugly and terribly painful sores. But thank God for her darling Lebanese friend, who saw one of these painful sores on the inside of her wrist and flew upstairs to fetch a tube of some wonderfully soothing gel with which she proceeded to cover my mum in.. such bliss.

Now she has to wait for the poison to leave her system.. oh, and beware those of you who are unable to tolerate wheat.. it's in instant coffee. No, we kid you not.

We are off.. there is lots of work to do because she has to completely empty the bathroom, because Richard is coming in on Wednesday to dig out the wet bathroom concrete floor.. oh, more joy! Joke.

GeeGee Parrot.
October 1st, 2016.