Irish Stew

It’s like an old joke. What does the Gardai say when he gets his supper “Irish stew – in the name of the law” This is one of my recipe posts, so if you’re not a cook, or interested in cheap food, pass on by.

“Irish stew? That’s a Lamb recipe Bill. Lamb ain’t cheap.” You might say, and you would be right, for a given value of right. Loin chops and crown of Lamb are not cheap. You do not use those cuts. You buy those cheap bags of frozen lamb bits or ask your butcher for ‘Scrag’ or neck end of lamb. Yes they’re full of bone, but this adds to the flavour.

This recipe is a make in bulk all in one meal, either for a family or to be frozen for later consumption. Can be made with frozen ingredients or fresh, doesn’t seem to affect the end result.

So, here we go. Make in a slow cooker if you want to save on leccy. This being a classic casserole dish Irish stew is best cooked long and slow. If you’re lucky enough to have a solid fuel stove, that is ideal because as they have to be kept warm, they’re great for slow cooking.

You will need: A four litre casserole. Cast iron or pottery, Doesn’t matter. A means of cooking long and slow. The longer the better.

The what:

• Lamb, a kilo or two pounds is good.
• Two or three medium onions, sliced or chopped
• Two carrots sliced or chopped
• Potatoes (Two pounds is fine) sliced about 6mm thick
• Half a teaspoon of Salt
• Half a teaspoon of black pepper
• A sprig of Rosemary (Or a pinch of dried will do)
• Three quarters of a pint of water
• Optional extra, one parsnip

The how:

Get your butcher to chop the neck end into chunks, or buy a bag of cheap frozen lamb with lots of bone in. Slice potatoes, onions and carrots. put a layer of same on bottom of pot. Put in lamb, salt, pepper and water. Sprinkle rosemary over Lamb. Cover with more layers of potatoes carrot and onions. Put in your heating device of choice. Leave to stew on a low heat (150C) for a few hours. The longer the better. This is not a dish for being fussed over and watched. This is a dish for putting in the oven three or four hours before going out, working up a sweat and coming back with an appetite worth having. Note: leaving the bone in imparts a richer, deeper flavour because of the marrow.

Serve with crusty bread of your choosing. you will need a soup spoon for the liquor, it really is that good. Discard the bones because the meat should fall off them. Enjoy the succulence. On an Autumn evening this really does cut the mustard at the end of a long hard day. Serve with sliced stir fried cabbage (White or savoy) if you like. Contains all the food groups except chocolate and alcohol.

Alternatively, allow to cool and decant into freezer containers for later re-heating and consumption. Do both.

In these times of soaring energy bills and a cold weather, we need all the solid grub we can get. And Irish stew is good old stick-to-yer-ribs solid grub.

Happy eating.

N.B. “Serve with stir fried cabbage. Cabbage! Yuk! I remember school dinners!” I hear people cry. Here’s a little bonus recipe. You will need a wok, a quarter cabbage, a tablespoon of olive oil, one clove crushed and chopped garlic (Garlic granules are fine, a modest pinch will do) with black pepper to taste.

Slice cabbage thinly (4-6mm, under a quarter inch, is fine). Put wok on a medium heat, put in spoonful of olive oil, add cabbage, garlic and black pepper. Stir fry with a wooden spoon until lightly browned at the edges. Serve. It’s a lot more palatable than the boiled to death crap they used to serve us back in my schooldays. Very tasty and full of vitamins and minerals. Win-win.

Could, if, therefore

I think I’m having to give up on growing any brassicas after losing all my precious plants to cabbage white caterpillars. I mean totally wiped out. Broccoli, Cabbages, Pak Choy, everything vaguely brassica-ish. Leaves chewed to a filigree, almost to the stalk. Well, at least until I can sort out some garlic and soap spray for the next planting. My onions, tomatoes and beets on the other hand are in fine fettle. Salad stuff is kind of okay, but some of it has ‘bolted’ due to the weather and me not sorting out some shading for my salad greens.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but at the time of planting I was sans-Interweb, and so unable to source the advice of the many gardening gurus out there. That situation has been remedied and I am looking forward to a more successful planting and growing season of Winter veg. Of course, I have been barraged with advice, much of it contradictory and counter intuitive, however, wheat is being sorted from chaff and I will need to evolve a different planting plan for all my green stuff.

Speaking of the future, father of the atomic model, Niels Bohr was once quoted as saying; “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future!” I had no way of predicting that a blast of hot air sweeping in from Europe this year would affect us this far west, but it is what it is and my mind has been pulled every which way, what with the builders and all.

Temperatures are back to oscillating between 14 and 22 Celsius every other day, and despite all the hand waving about ‘Global Warming’, and how it’s all our fault, the weather remains cooler than usual for August. A petition of 1100 proper scientists saying there’s little, if anything to worry about will not make much headway, especially since the politicians love the drama of ‘saving the world’. Apart from a cold Winter. Then people are going to freeze to death, and you know whose fault that will be? The ‘Climate activists’ who can’t even keep up with real science (Or even look at weather history events from other centuries). And the politicians who made the decisions.

The IPCC report doesn’t help, even though all the claims don’t hold up under even the most cursory scrutiny. The report says that there ‘will’ be an increase in weather disasters, and predicts an increase in same, yet when you get down to it, it’s governed by conditional statements like “Could, if.” Yes well, I could fly by flapping my arms if I grew feathers, and therefore I’d be able to fly like a bird. But as I am unlikely to undergo such a transformation, I’ll be stuck buying an airline ticket and getting bored in an airport queue just like everyone else.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my bees are doing okay, filling out the frames, and with a good nectar flow, I may get a decent crop of honey next week, weather permitting. I’ll have to check the brood box for Queen cells, but as these are young Queens in my hives, the likelihood of swarming is not so great. However, it never hurts to check and do a split if need be. And this is the time of year to do it.

What with having the household upended for over six months, which I also did not foresee when we first made the decision to spend money on refurbishments. But we have adapted and improvised, making the best of a tricky situation. Mrs S got crocked with a nasty dislocation, but she’s on the mend and doing her physio exercises as directed. Definitely didn’t see that one coming, but we’re coping. All things considered it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster.

However, am grimly confident about my assessment from April 2020 that the fallout from the COVID debacle will be worse than the disease ever could be. I take no satisfaction whatsoever in being proven right. Along with a lot of other, far more eminent people who were deliberately ignored and silenced by those claiming that established epidemiological protocols were ‘disinformation’. How was that allowed to happen?

In the beginning the threat of the disease was unknown, but over April 2020 the figures told a more hopeful story, but the politicians ignored the unfolding data in favour of ‘worst case scenario’ data projections. By June 2020 the worst was over, but still the mainstream media and politicians, presumably seeking affirmation from the drama, kept upping the ante. I mean, mask mandates were imposed in August 2020 for crying out loud. Long after the worst was past in June that year. The data was unequivocal. The models told a story at 180 degrees to reality. Yet the model output was used as opposed to empirical data and standard disease control. People were kept indoors when they should have been outdoors getting some fresh air and exercise. Children, those at the lowest risk of all have had their emotional and psychological development severely damaged,

Again, the fault lies with the noisy activists and cowardly politicians. Also with those who had a vested financial interest in mRNA ‘vaccines’ which do not convey much protection compared to a healthy mixed diet, fresh air, sunshine and moderate exercise. Don’t forget the culpability of those using the “Science Denier” and “Conspiracy theorist” pejoratives. They bear much of the blame too. Ignorant, bigoted bastards.

Well the truth isn’t just out there, it’s kicking down our front doors and spitting in our eyes for letting ourselves be treated like cattle. And what’s coming soon is a completely artificial economic depression, caused by the lockdown enthusiasts and those pushing ‘net zero’.

Well I hope they’ll be happy with what happens next, because the rest of us won’t be. Right, I have some trading to do. Catch you later.

Here we go

The honey is almost ready to be harvested and I will be getting ready to start brewing in three weeks time. There will be spare honey, but half of that will be going as gifts and for personal use rather than for retail. My crop won’t be big enough for much more.

I’ve ordered my brewing gear and lined up the water, yeast and other materials for the mash. A still is in the mix and I’ve lined up some small barrels for ageing. So we’re almost all good to go.

Money is a bit tight, as we’ve run slightly over budget on the house alterations. Which is easily done on a major refurbishment like ours and we’ve had to keep a careful eye on what the trades are doing. However we’re on top of it and having heaved a shuddering sigh knowing that costs are still on the rise (Especially labour costs) and we got most work done before the worst occurred. Even so we’re having to take a small divot out of our reserves. No matter, we have enough. Better to spend some now before inflation annihilates it’s value.

I’m still watching world events with a wary eye, knowing the financial fallout from the COVID debacle will be with us for some time. However, we’ve done our worst case scenario calculations and heads will be kept above financial water. Unfortunately this is an outcome that many will not share, and Western politicians will be looking to rob Peter to pay Paul as they usually do, because they’re small minded vote-grubbers with no real courage or vision.

As for penalising Nitrogen. 71% of an inert gas? Who gave these people science lessons? Nitrogen Dioxide is no fun but Nitrogen Oxide (Laughing Gas ) can be. The politicians making these rules are a bunch of scientific illiterate morons, as are the people advising them.

Besides, adding Nitrogen compounds to the soil can be done with a Clover crop. It used to be part of the old Norfolk four course rotation system before chemical fertilisers were introduced in what was called the ‘Green revolution’ of the late 60’s and early 70’s. One of my Aunts participated in a few of the early Market Gardening trials during the 50’s and 60’s which she said increased her yields several times over.

The problem is that the politicians and others behind this assault on agriculture see nothing but the money to be made pricing farmers off their land and monopolising food production. Modern agricultural chemicals can feed several times more people than the old farming practices and despite all the unscientific brouhaha of ‘only 70 more crops’ before the soil is reduced to little better than sand, can, with small alterations to soil management, keep feeding people until the cows come home. If the politicians and activists don’t have them all slaughtered and replaced with massive insect farms first.

Fun fact: maggot farms are big business, or used to be, the output of which is mainly used mostly for feeding chickens. KFC anyone?

Personally, I’d rather have my protein from chicken than the insects.

Apropos of nothing

On the way back from a busy day out on Friday, Mrs S and I were confronted by two cyclists on a fast stretch of the link road up to localtown. Now common sense alone would have dictated that said slower vehicles be travelling single file, but instead both were puffing and wheezing across over half the width of the road. I mean who did they think they were? Tractor drivers?

This set off a spirited discussion about the need for some kind of licensing and insurance for cyclists. Mrs S being a now retired teacher, was adamant that all cyclists be helmeted, licensed, insured and taxed up the wazoo just like every other road user. I took the milder position that an insurance scheme for cyclists should be available so that those who fall foul of the law, or are held guilty of causing an accident should have some kind of insurance cover for any damages they are held responsible for. Those without should suffer the full financial penalty for any misdemeanours, just like any other road user, with the exception of horses I believe. but even so I am led to believe that many horse riders carry additional PPE and veterinary insurance, as horses are expensive to stable, feed and care for, and if startled and sent bolting down a road, some form of insurance is necessary to cover the expense of a large vets bill. Here’s the advice from Horse and Hound, who recommend some form of third party insurance for on road use.

An additional thought occurs. With 20mph areas being on the increase in dear old blighty, a speed which a bicycle is easily capable of exceeding, some form of identification for the cyclist in question should be available to the farces of law and disorder to hand parking or speeding tickets to the correct offender.

Then on Saturday I was listening to the GB news YouTube channel, and guess what they were discussing? The licensing, insuring and taxing of cyclists. Mind you, we’ve had this discussion before and Mrs S’ position on cyclists is well known; tax ’em till they glow and then book ’em in the dark.

This is what passes for entertainment because I never switch the car radio on. It’s bad for the blood pressure.

A

New name for an identifiable condition has been publicly called for. The condition in question is a low- to medium-grade anxiety disorder caused by the realization that the bureaucrats and politicians who are nominally in charge do not really know what they’re doing, cannot read or understand data, and will not course correct in response to new information.

It’ s caused by a grinding disillusionment and realization that the people in charge (including the people writing about the people in charge) are, if not quite idiots, not nearly as smart as they think they are and everyone is going to have to fight like mad to keep things from getting worse. Regrettably I can confirm that I am a terminal sufferer.

Lead suggestion is Scranton Syndrome.

Any others?

From the Daily Sceptic.

The word on… insect protein

Now there are cultures that subsist off insect protein. They are invariably poor, people often never reach their full physical development and they tend to be shorter than average.

Places where insect eating is most practised are Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and South Africa along with places in South East Asia. The very poor bits of the world. Where more conventional protein sources are not available, or there’s a famine.

At best, insect protein is a starvation ration, which the western gastro-intestinal system is not adapted for. For some Africans, certain parts of south East Asia, and in obscure tribes in South America, where deep fried tarantula is considered a delicacy, this is their lot.

Now as a beekeeper I do not agree with eating insects. Honey products yes, but that’s not the same as eating my bees, which I would strenuously object to. I happen to like my little workers and try to do everything within reason to ensure their safety and comfort. Shelter, food sources and plenty of undisturbed time to produce. Mass slaughter as a direct food source? Definitely not.

We have systems to produce good quality animal and vegetable protein, yet someone wants everyone to eat reprocessed insects. Never mind the problems with digesting chitin etcetera which leg-iron gives a quick primer on, without going into the details on various bad stuff like Toluene, exposure to which can cause eye and nose irritation, tiredness, confusion, euphoria, dizziness, headache, tears, anxiety, muscle fatigue, insomnia, nerve damage, inflammation of the skin, and liver and kidney damage. To name but one. There are other potential hazards in an insect based diet becoming a staple.

There appears to be no upside. So why in the bleedin’ crystallised feck are some people saying it’s a good idea and the way to go? They’ve either fried their two remaining brain cells, or as is more likely, there’s money to be made for people who don’t need any more.

The propaganda being spouted about this is reminiscent of the blather about breakfast cereals in the early 1900’s, many of which have a higher glycaemic index than sugar for heavens sake. It is worth noting that our massive intake of sugars and starches is most likely behind the ‘obesity epidemic’ and massive increase in type II diabetes.

No doubt we will be repeatedly told that like these unhealthy breakfast cereals (With perhaps the exception of mueslis etc), insect protein is the way to go, but is it?

I used to be a fan of a TV series called ‘Doomwatch‘ where a team of investigators faced down threats to the food chain and Earth. As a boy I had a grainy old 405 line set donated by a neighbour and managed to squirrel it up to my room to watch TV on low volume while Mum and Dad watched their programmes late in the evening. All BBC hokum of course, but I hadn’t quite hit puberty yet and there weren’t many girls to distract me. Well, none that would have anything to do with a rascal like me.

The scientist cast as hero, where a team led by a Dr Spencer Quist exposing human caused threats to the environment. Usually where a technology got out of control. Such as where a rogue virus escapes from a lab, or a new foodstuff has potential for harm. Which is where we came in….

Clockwork mice

Apropos a spin off from a discussion Mrs S and I were having between bouts of clearing up builders residue, grouting tiles and moving furniture. Has anyone else heard of this little phrase? It’s a device used in play writing where:

You have a bunch of clockwork mice. You know how they all behave – maybe some go faster than others, maybe one of them veers to the left, maybe one goes round in circles – and you want them to collide in an interesting way. So you wind them up and put them on a table. However, you must observe this one rule: You cannot touch the mice once they are on the table.

In the current cultural dysfunction, where no side is actually talking to the other in any meaningful way, the reason doesn’t matter, far too many people switch off their higher brain function and go full “Clockwork Mouse”.

Add to the situation that there are a lot of ‘playwrights’ out there who understand how a particular type of mind works, and simply spread information in a way that will cause the clockwork mouse in question to go spinning around the table, bouncing into other clockwork mice and sending them in turn spinning chaotically around the table. Some will fall off the edge, some will be knocked over, little wheels spinning as their springs wind down, and a few will be wound up so tightly that they literally explode in a shrapnel cloud of cogs and springs. Some will keep attacking another clockwork mouse until they in turn are disabled. You get the picture? Does this metaphor make any sense?

What I am describing is a stimulus /reaction loop where the frontal lobes are in shutdown mode and the emotions are in full spate. Like those people who attack people giving a talk or speech, thinking that by silencing one voice they will silence all. Few of these people actually think. Most just react. This goes for everyone, because like it of not, we humans are driven more strongly by emotion than logic, as I keep finding whenever engaging with an opposing mindset. Yes, yes, I know I should just wind my neck in, but they’re all such low hanging fruit the temptation is enormous.

I used to refer to same as the General Dyslexic, because 85% plus of the population couldn’t read, or be bothered to read simple instructions. Now I know that they’re all leading with their pwecious icle fi-fi’s, it just engenders a sense of “Oh well, what the hell, glad I’m not involved with that bunch of comedians any more.” The problem is that if you’re still breathing you have to keep a weather eye out for the bastards, because their poor decision making ability will impact you in all sorts of ways if you’re not careful.

On the upside, my bees are producing some very nice looking honey which will be cropped during the last major hive inspection in three weeks time. I may get my timing right and head off a possible swarm ready to fill one of my spare hives with a new colony, meaning more honey next year.

In these times of chaos and idiocy, it’s good to have a positive goal.

Getting a grip

Mrs S and I now have our house back. True, there are bits that don’t work and look a bit dog eared, but nothing that can’t be fixed without a few gallons of elbow grease and cleaning materials. We have power, we are once more connected to the jolly old Interwebs. We are home.

True, there are no paintings on the wall, some of which are not painted, no curtains grace our windows, but we are home. There is wine and beer in the fridge and food in the larder. We are not stumbling over a rats nest of extension cables. The heating works. Our showers are hot and even the dishwasher works. There is even the promise of a modest crop of honey in the next few days.

So we will be taking tiffin out in the yard this evening with two ever refilling glasses of Prosecco (Neither of us think we’re at the champagne stage yet) and a dry little Sauvignon blanc to complement our repast. We’ve spent a chunk of hard earned change to get to this point, but we currently owe no-one anything, at least until our next tax bills come in.

Mrs S is still hobbling around on crutches because she has to wear a brace on her leg, but we get by. Money moves to where it does most good, which is daily business by the way, not money laundering as one feckin eejit intimated. I take a dim view of being accused of something I do not do, and tend not to forgive such slurs. Call me any name you like and it won’t raise an eyebrow. However, false accusations will always get short shrift. My customary good humour always goes into failure mode on such occasions.

Notwithstanding, we are finally getting our lives back in some sort of order. Getting a grip, as they say.

Speaking of honesty, I keep on seeing some academic or luminary popping into the public press stating that they are ‘following the science’ and therefore anyone else is a heretic and should be publicly burned at the next barbecue. As one whose training includes courses on Technical writing and editing, I thought I’d have a look through the literature they claim is so air tight. I’ve deliberately left the TV off the hook, no Amazon Prime, no other televisual entertainment, so I downloaded a few tools and set to reading. The following is what I know to be true.

Let me explain; in technical writing and editing there is a thing called an ‘executive summary’, which is to put it in it’s simplest form, a list of talking points. Not definite facts or figures, but talking points. Things which look like facts, but sometimes don’t reflect the original document or can actively misrepresent what the original documentation says. Say a scientific paper presents with the interpretation that states that such and such might happen if the figures are right. If the mathematical modelling turns out to be accurate, In the executive summary this may be rewritten to read that such and such is definitely true, so help us God, so send more money please. We may have to recheck our figures to be sure. We really mean it about the money.

Now what is stated in the executive summary is often written by people who are not the original researchers, but those paid to interpret the information for the lowest common denominator of intelligence, politicians.

In the commercial world, a board of directors or senior manager requires an ‘executive summary’ to provide information that is timely and reflects the situation as presented. In the public sector, these rules seem not to apply and executive summaries are often posted as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, cross my heart and hope to die, terrapins tickle me if I lie, when the source documentation is often more vague on a topic. In the public sector the requirements for the summary can say “What’s the worst that can happen?” so those who produce the interpretations of the summaries provide the worst that can happen. Whether this is supported by the studies in question or not. Even NGO’s get involved in this cavalcade of glossy misrepresentation and very few people have the time and energy to tell them that’s not what the study says at all. Thus failure and inaccuracy have thus become baked into the system. ‘The science’ becomes “What we say it is. So there!” rather than the result of diligence, experimental replication and erudite investigation.

Scientific researchers who contradict these narratives constructed on the back of such executive summaries can find themselves out in the cold, because if they do not provide what the politicians underlings or the NGO’s want, bang goes their funding. They can even find themselves losing tenure, which is academic death. Unless they can get a decent social media channel going and have the skills to explain their work to the public direct. Even so, they risk being publicly derided by the dishonest as ‘conspiracy theorists’ spreading ‘disinformation’, even when such a statement is a bald faced lie.

We caught a glimpse of part of this phenomenon in a Twitter stream observed by Spectator Editor, Fraser Nelson during the ongoing COVID debacle, where the then head of SAGE was caught stating that they had been asked for a worst case scenario, so they had torture the data models until that’s what the pandemic looked like. A worst case scenario.

So politicians produce legislation based on bad information. Because that’s all they can do with the information provided.

Now if only we had politicians educated and motivated enough to see through the misrepresentations…. Bugger it. We’re screwed aren’t we?