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Wed. Dec. 31, 2025: Sliding Out of the Old Year Literally
image courtesy of pixabay.comWednesday, December 31, 2025
Waxing Moon
Chiron, Uranus, Jupiter Retrograde
New Year’s Eve
Cloudy and cold
Happy New Year’s Eve to you! May you have the night for which you wish, be it social or quiet.
We hope for quiet, here in this house!
The past few days, I’ve read the most recent memoir by a well-known author who set herself up to be adored, and then pretends to be humble and fails miserably. Her writing is beautiful, but I’ve encountered her several times in person, and don’t like her. I keep my distance. This is not someone I want in my life, much as I respect the career she’s built and admire her writing. This memoir is beautifully written, made me dislike her even more, and, oh, she’s “found God.” After spending decades riding the goddess wave and profiting from it, she figured to cash in on the evangelical front and “find God.” Blech.
I am not a fan of the way organized religion is often weaponized, especially in this country at the moment. I do, however, have several friends with deep faith in their chosen organized religion who actually walk their talk, and I have enormous respect for them and their beliefs. I do not have respect for someone who cashes in on whatever religious or spiritual trend is popular at the time.
Another author who set herself up for decades as oriented in women’s spirituality when it was profitable also “found God” in her latest book (which otherwise re-treads everything her first book and all subsequent books have, under their various titles). I don’t live in either of these individual’s skins. Maybe they genuinely changed belief systems. But since they’re making money from that switch, I am skeptical.
Both of these individuals, for decades, perform as being kind and generous with great knowledge and wisdom, and Teachers (rather than teachers). Yet each time I’ve encountered them in person, I’ve witnessed them treating people like absolute crap, which, in my eyes, makes them hypocrites. Once is a bad day, and we all have those. But I’ve watched this be consistent patterns with both of them.
They have not treated me badly, because I haven’t orbited close enough to allow it. I’ve trusted my instincts and kept my distance. Although when I was able to intervene and cut them off at the metaphorical knees in one of their inappropriate rants at someone, I have. And, like all bullies, they back down.
On a happier note, I managed to get the sticky thrift store label off the pot I bought for less than $3 a few days ago, and got to the maker’s mark. Researching it, I was quite stunned. I was right, it is pewter (and I have to look up how to best care for it). This piece in particular was made by a highly regarded firm in Albany in the mid-1800’s. Researching some listings, similar pieces are selling for anywhere from $95-$220. I have no plans to sell it; I will simply honor it and care for it. I am, however, going to learn more about the story behind the company that made it, because it sounds interesting.
I received three decks for the holidays: the NO BAD DAYS affirmations deck, which is very 1960’s mod and fun; THE MYSTIC STORYTELLER TAROT (which includes pencils and notebooks and typewriters in the artwork); and the GREEN WITCH’S ORACLE DECK, by the same author who did the GREEN WITCH’S TAROT, which I love and use often. I’m looking forward to getting to know the decks better in the coming months.
Yesterday morning was stormy. I did my work as best I could, crossing my fingers that the power wouldn’t go out, although I can still use my laptop offline until the battery runs out. Or write in longhand. We have the skills, people, and we adjust as needed.
I wrote the opening of BETTING MAN, massaged it a few times, popped it into the back of the VICIOUS full, and got that off to my editor. Only a day early, but early! I set up the tracking sheets, so I don’t drop any of the details as I go.
By then, it was well after lunch time. I got some work done on the ghostwriting, but I’m not where I want to be with it, so I may do some more work on it today or Friday.
I walked up to yoga. While we were in class, the snow started (it wasn’t supposed to start until after 7, after I got home). I was glad I hadn’t driven; maneuvering out of that tiny parking lot with everyone slip sliding would have been tough.
Unfortunately, I fell walking home, on sidewalk ice that hadn’t been cleared away that I couldn’t see under the snow. Feet right out from under me, landed on my back, glasses flew off, hit my head.
For a minute, I worried I broke something and only wasn’t in pain because of shock. But I found my glasses, tried all the bits and pieces, and nothing was broken. I was especially worried about my neck, but I was so wrapped up between a turtleneck and the hood of a sweatshirt rolled up under my coat, the hood of my coat, and a scarf that I was okay. In fact, I have more mobility and less pain in my neck than I’ve had in weeks, as though I had a chiropractic adjustment. Go figure.
I didn’t say anything to my mom when I got home. Either she would worry and ask the same questions over and over again, or she’d forget and ask a different set of questions over and over again, and I wasn’t up to dealing with either of those scenarios. I cooked dinner, read in the evening, monitored how I felt. I was a little sore, but fine, and no headache or double vision or lump on the back of my head or anything like that. I was lucky. That it wasn’t much worse, and that I’d basically bubble wrapped myself in puffy fabrics for the trek. I was more shaken up than actually hurt.
So on brand for 2025. Glad to kick this year out the door, in many ways, although there was also a lot of good.
Slept reasonably well, don’t remember the dreams, so hopefully that means June will be quiet. I woke up a couple of times feeling sore, but fell back asleep pretty fast, and woke up after 6:30. Tessa Was Not Amused, and even Bea was outside my room squeaking.
Fed everyone, usual morning routine. I’m a little sore, but really, fine. The morning yoga wasn’t a problem, and it’s good to keep moving. I had to go out on the back balcony – because of the high winds, part of the tarp came unfastened over the bench, and I had to resecure it.
This morning, I have to do a quick trip to the grocery store to pick up a few things like the salmon for tonight’s dinner, an orange for tomorrow’s sauce, and a few things for a Thai chicken peanut butter soup I want to do in the crockpot over the weekend.
I hope to get some writing done, on both BETTING and on the ghostwriting. I will make some devilled eggs, and bake a cranberry coffee cake. We stay up until midnight, and watch the ball drop over Times Square.
I have a greeting post scheduled for tomorrow, but I’m not posting a regular blog. We will catch up on Friday, though, when it is 2026!
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Wed. Dec. 31, 2025: Sliding Out of the Old Year Literally
image courtesy of pixabay.comWednesday, December 31, 2025
Waxing Moon
Chiron, Uranus, Jupiter Retrograde
New Year’s Eve
Cloudy and cold
Happy New Year’s Eve to you! May you have the night for which you wish, be it social or quiet.
We hope for quiet, here in this house!
The past few days, I’ve read the most recent memoir by a well-known author who set herself up to be adored, and then pretends to be humble and fails miserably. Her writing is beautiful, but I’ve encountered her several times in person, and don’t like her. I keep my distance. This is not someone I want in my life, much as I respect the career she’s built and admire her writing. This memoir is beautifully written, made me dislike her even more, and, oh, she’s “found God.” After spending decades riding the goddess wave and profiting from it, she figured to cash in on the evangelical front and “find God.” Blech.
I am not a fan of the way organized religion is often weaponized, especially in this country at the moment. I do, however, have several friends with deep faith in their chosen organized religion who actually walk their talk, and I have enormous respect for them and their beliefs. I do not have respect for someone who cashes in on whatever religious or spiritual trend is popular at the time.
Another author who set herself up for decades as oriented in women’s spirituality when it was profitable also “found God” in her latest book (which otherwise re-treads everything her first book and all subsequent books have, under their various titles). I don’t live in either of these individual’s skins. Maybe they genuinely changed belief systems. But since they’re making money from that switch, I am skeptical.
Both of these individuals, for decades, perform as being kind and generous with great knowledge and wisdom, and Teachers (rather than teachers). Yet each time I’ve encountered them in person, I’ve witnessed them treating people like absolute crap, which, in my eyes, makes them hypocrites. Once is a bad day, and we all have those. But I’ve watched this be consistent patterns with both of them.
They have not treated me badly, because I haven’t orbited close enough to allow it. I’ve trusted my instincts and kept my distance. Although when I was able to intervene and cut them off at the metaphorical knees in one of their inappropriate rants at someone, I have. And, like all bullies, they back down.
On a happier note, I managed to get the sticky thrift store label off the pot I bought for less than $3 a few days ago, and got to the maker’s mark. Researching it, I was quite stunned. I was right, it is pewter (and I have to look up how to best care for it). This piece in particular was made by a highly regarded firm in Albany in the mid-1800’s. Researching some listings, similar pieces are selling for anywhere from $95-$220. I have no plans to sell it; I will simply honor it and care for it. I am, however, going to learn more about the story behind the company that made it, because it sounds interesting.
I received three decks for the holidays: the NO BAD DAYS affirmations deck, which is very 1960’s mod and fun; THE MYSTIC STORYTELLER TAROT (which includes pencils and notebooks and typewriters in the artwork); and the GREEN WITCH’S ORACLE DECK, by the same author who did the GREEN WITCH’S TAROT, which I love and use often. I’m looking forward to getting to know the decks better in the coming months.
Yesterday morning was stormy. I did my work as best I could, crossing my fingers that the power wouldn’t go out, although I can still use my laptop offline until the battery runs out. Or write in longhand. We have the skills, people, and we adjust as needed.
I wrote the opening of BETTING MAN, massaged it a few times, popped it into the back of the VICIOUS full, and got that off to my editor. Only a day early, but early! I set up the tracking sheets, so I don’t drop any of the details as I go.
By then, it was well after lunch time. I got some work done on the ghostwriting, but I’m not where I want to be with it, so I may do some more work on it today or Friday.
I walked up to yoga. While we were in class, the snow started (it wasn’t supposed to start until after 7, after I got home). I was glad I hadn’t driven; maneuvering out of that tiny parking lot with everyone slip sliding would have been tough.
Unfortunately, I fell walking home, on sidewalk ice that hadn’t been cleared away that I couldn’t see under the snow. Feet right out from under me, landed on my back, glasses flew off, hit my head.
For a minute, I worried I broke something and only wasn’t in pain because of shock. But I found my glasses, tried all the bits and pieces, and nothing was broken. I was especially worried about my neck, but I was so wrapped up between a turtleneck and the hood of a sweatshirt rolled up under my coat, the hood of my coat, and a scarf that I was okay. In fact, I have more mobility and less pain in my neck than I’ve had in weeks, as though I had a chiropractic adjustment. Go figure.
I didn’t say anything to my mom when I got home. Either she would worry and ask the same questions over and over again, or she’d forget and ask a different set of questions over and over again, and I wasn’t up to dealing with either of those scenarios. I cooked dinner, read in the evening, monitored how I felt. I was a little sore, but fine, and no headache or double vision or lump on the back of my head or anything like that. I was lucky. That it wasn’t much worse, and that I’d basically bubble wrapped myself in puffy fabrics for the trek. I was more shaken up than actually hurt.
So on brand for 2025. Glad to kick this year out the door, in many ways, although there was also a lot of good.
Slept reasonably well, don’t remember the dreams, so hopefully that means June will be quiet. I woke up a couple of times feeling sore, but fell back asleep pretty fast, and woke up after 6:30. Tessa Was Not Amused, and even Bea was outside my room squeaking.
Fed everyone, usual morning routine. I’m a little sore, but really, fine. The morning yoga wasn’t a problem, and it’s good to keep moving. I had to go out on the back balcony – because of the high winds, part of the tarp came unfastened over the bench, and I had to resecure it.
This morning, I have to do a quick trip to the grocery store to pick up a few things like the salmon for tonight’s dinner, an orange for tomorrow’s sauce, and a few things for a Thai chicken peanut butter soup I want to do in the crockpot over the weekend.
I hope to get some writing done, on both BETTING and on the ghostwriting. I will make some devilled eggs, and bake a cranberry coffee cake. We stay up until midnight, and watch the ball drop over Times Square.
I have a greeting post scheduled for tomorrow, but I’m not posting a regular blog. We will catch up on Friday, though, when it is 2026!
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Mrs Maciver: the thread about Edinburgh’s first cookery teacher and publisher of the earliest known Haggis recipe
Today’s Auction House Artefact is this old Edinburgh-published cook book, an edition from 1777.
COOKERY,
and
PASTRY.
As taught and practised by
Mrs MACIVER,
Teacher of those Arts in Edinburgh.Although it is neither the first such book printed in Scotland (that title goes to Mrs McLintock’s Recepits for Cooking and Pastrywork, Glasgow, 1736) Cookbook, nor even Edinburgh (A New and Easy Method of Cookery, 1755), this remains a very special cookbook. If you were a member of Enlightenment Edinburgh’s genteel classes then this was probably the cookery book; instructing you and your domestic staff in all the latest food and dining trends.
The Georgian kitchen in Edinburgh.James Boswell (feathered hat) and his kitchen staff preparing a meal of grouse for Dr Johnson (in the background in the tricorn hat) “Wit and Wisdom. Picturesque Beauties of Boswell. Part the First, 1786, Thomas Rowlandson after Samuel Collings. National Galleries of Scotland collection.Mrs Maciver (or Mciver) was Susanna Maciver, born circa 1709. In her own words prefacing the first (1774) edition of her book and written in 1773, she stated “her situation in life hath led her to be very much conversant in Cookery, Pastry etc. and afforded her ample opportunity of knowing the most approved methods practiced by others“. She “opened a school in this city for instructing young Ladies in this necessary branch of female education, and she hath the satisfaction to find that success hath accompanied her labours“. Running a school for other women would have been one of the few business opportunities open to an enterprising lady in Georgian Edinburgh. And clearly she was both enterprising and successful in her chosen career path.
Etching by John Kay, 1786, entitled “Mr Robert Johnston and Miss Sibilla Hutton“, no. 158.Her 238-page book was laid out in a format that would be recognisable to modern home cooks; starting with soups and then going through fish, flesh (meat), pies and pasties etc. – mixing savoury pies with sweet desert dishes – and finishing on preserves and pickles etc. It is full, cover-to-cover, of Georgian recipes, from Imperial White Soup to Roast Cod’s Head to Beef a-la-Mode to Carrot Pudding. But my personal favourite is the Syrup of Turnip:
A recipe for Syrup of Turnip, Page 222 of the first edition.Despite the Syrup of Turnip it proved to sell well and was republished over a number of years. The advert to announce the initial publication was placed in the Caledonian Mercury newspaper on December 4th 1773 and was repeated in The Scots Magazine that month. From this we can also glean that she also sold her own preserved fruits, cakes and pastries.
Caledonian Mercury advert announcing the publication of Mrs Maciver’s book. December 4th 1773. The books are dated 1774 on the inside coverHer house and cookery school was in Stephenlaw’s Close (also spelled Stevenlaw, Stanelaw and Stonelaw’s) off the High Street – it is number 74 on Edgar’s town plan below of 1765. You can handily located for the city’s produce markets centred on the Tron Kirk. The structure in the middle of the High Street marked M is the City Guard referred to in the above advert, the old guardhouse of the Toun Rats.
Edgar’s Town Plan of Edinburgh, 1765. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandFrom her preface to the first edition, we know that the school had been established some time when her book was first printed and is listed in Edinburgh’s first postal directories (those of the similarly enterprising “Indian Peter” Williamson).
Williamson’s Postal Directory of 1784.In October 1786 a “New Edition, With Additions“, described as “Greatly Improved” was released, now running to 264 pages. Those who had recently purchased the previous edition were offered the additional pages gratis per an advert in the Caledonian Mercury. Susanna Maciver would have been almost 80 at this time, a very good age for the 18th century.
It was suggested by some friends, that the addition of some figures of courses for dinners and suppers should be subjoined; accordingly, I have made out several courses from five to fifteen dishes.
This took the book from being just a collection of recipes to a complete guide to entertaining in Georgian polite society, keeping you right in such important matters of etiquette as how to lay the table correctly. Wealthy people still dined service à la Française at this time where a whole range of sweet, savoury and side dishes were put on the table at the same time and would be replaced as they were finished. This is opposed to the more modern style of service à la Russe where you are served in separate courses. So at this time any host or hostess had to know where to place the Soup and when to remove it, where the Roast Tongue went relative to the Artichoke Bottom Fricasee, how to stew Peas and Lettuce etc.
“Bill of Fare” diagram for family dinners of twelve or fifteen dishes, from the 1789 edition.The prospect of serving orange pudding and apricot tart alongside the roast pig and Boiled turkey with oyster sauce may seem odd to us these days, but it was the height of gastronomic sophistication in its own time! This second edition was also reprinted both in Edinburgh and London, being advertised in the London Morning Post for sale at 2 shillings and sixpence. One of the more unusually named recipes was Robert Walpole Dumplings, a stodgy, fatty, rotund pudding served soaked in alcohol. Whether or not this was a homage to, or a clever mocking of Cock Robin is a secret that only she will know. But undoubtedly Susanna Maciver’s greatest contribution to both the Edinburgh and Scottish culinary arts, and culture in general, was that in her books she published the first ever “standard” Haggis recipe (north of the border)!
Susannah MacIver’s first recipe for Scottish Haggis, 1774But note the bit in parenthesis at the end of the last paragraph. Yes, shockingly, Haggis has a rather longer history on record in English printed cuisine than Scottish! A dish very similar to haggis called Afronchemoyle is contained in the first known English cookbook, The Form of Cury, from way, way back in 1390 by the cooks of King Richard II of England. As a Scottish dish, it does not have quite such a long recorded history. The word itself is Old Scots, with a root from Middle English hagas, hagese etc., probably from the noun hag, to chop. The Gaelic for haggis, taigeis, is imported from the Scots. The earliest printed mention seems to be it used in an insult, in an early 16th century poem by William Dunbar:
The gallows gapes after thy graceless gruntill,
The Flyting of Dunbar and Kenndie, c. 1500-1520
As thou wouldst for a haggis, hungryThe poet Alexander Pennecuik uses it as a pejorative (haggis-headed) in 1715, Alan Ramsay refers to it as haggies in 1725 in The Gentle Shepherd and surviving household ledgers from Ochtertyre House for instance record it as haggise, being served for the servants’ meal in 1737 (alongside puddings and mutton). The haggis of course has been immortalised in Scottish culture by its association with the poet Robert Burns and the annual Suppers held in his memory. In 1786 Burns was newly arrived in Edinburgh and wrote the Address to a Haggice (sic). It was first published in the pages of the Caledonian Mercury newspaper on December 19th that year (n.b. most internet sources will tell you December 20th, but the newspaper did not publish that day, it was thrice weekly). Its book publication was the next year in an Edinburgh edition of his Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. It is noteworthy that the last verse of the newspaper version is different from the Edinburgh edition version which is that used to this day.
Front page of the Caledonian Mercury, 19th December 1786, highlighting the date and the “Address to a Haggice”.Ye Pow’rs wha gie us a’ that’s gude,
Last verse of the 1786 Caledonian Mercury version of “To A Haggice”.
Still bless auld Caledonia’s brood
Wi’ great John Barleycorn’s heart’s blade,
In stowps or luggies;
And on our board that king o’food,
A glorious Haggice!”When Robert Burns immortalised the Haggis in Scottish culture as the “Great Chieftain o the puddin race” with his eponymous address of 1787, there is every chance he was referring to something made to Mrs Maciver’s recipe. And if it was served in the manner she prescribed, it may well have been on the same table as the blancmange, cheesecake and trifle! And speaking of trifles, it was her book that give us one of the earliest recipes for what we would recognise as a “modern” trifle.
“The Cottar’s Saturday Night”, an illustration of Burns’ 1786 work by David Allan. Burns thought Allan “a man of very great genius” and that it was “one of the highest compliments I have ever received” to have Allan illustrating a book of his works. A cooking pot simmers over the ifre on the left. A man on a stool to the right eats from a bowl while a hungry dog waits patiently for a tid-bit. National Galleries of Scotland collection.The Scottish food historian Florence Marian McNeill and the food writer Clarissa Dickson Wright both favour the theory that the practice of cooking the contents of an animal in its own stomach point to a Scandinavian origin of the dish. A haggis is fundamentally an offal sausage, and offal was an important source of food for the poorer classes; it spoils quickly and is not easy to transport without a modern cold chain, so it would be eaten quickly at the source; people could just not afford to waste it and it was also still perfectly nourishing. Chopping up the less palatable and digestible parts of the “pluck” of an animal and mixing it in with oatmeal as a binder and to make it go a bit further was a perfectly logical way to make a slaughtered animal feed more people for longer. Some pepper, spice or herbs – as available – would make the contents more palatable. At a time when many people would have possessed only a fire on which to cook and probably only a pot and a griddle to cook on or in, the boiled haggis is just a logical sort of dish for the ordinary folk to be cooking and eating. The cooked final product could then be smoked to preserve it.
“The Haggis Feast”, Alexander George Fraser, 1840, National Trust for ScotlandAs evidenced by its inclusion in Maciver’s book, by the time of Burns haggis had moved on from being purely a peasant and servants’ dish of necessity to something popular amongst the enlightenment classes on their dinner tables. It also became increasingly popular with the men of letters on their drinking tables. Perhaps the earliest known illustration of haggis, from c. 1810, shows two enlightenment worthies of Glasgow supping on a giant haggis, washed down with copious quantities of claret.
“Dr Balfour of Glasgow having taken lodgings in a questionable house” a caricature by John Gibson Lockhart c. 1810, National Library of Scotland Acc.11480, f.5In the 1826 book The Cook and Housewife’s Manual etc. by Margaret Dods, a recipe is given fora genuine Scotch haggis at the head of the chapter entitled Scotch National Dishes (introduced by quoting Burns). Margaret – Meg – Dods was actually a character from a Walter Scott novel and the book itself was by the writer Isobel Christian Johnston, the publisher’s wife. Scott himself contributed the book’s introduction.
This elusive but important Susanna Maciver died on August 23rd 1790 at Jamieson’s in the Canongate, aged 81 years, of “decay” (registrars’ speak for dying of old age of otherwise unknown specific reasons.) There is a plaque to mark the approximate location of her house and cookery school at Stevenlaw’s Close, appropriately featuring her recipe for “A Good Scotch Haggis”.
The plaque to “A Good Scotch Haggis” at Stevenlaw’s Close. Picture credit Historic Environment ScotlandBut that is not the end of the story, because she had a protégé, Mrs Frazer, who took on the school and the book, updating and expanding it and issuing subsequent editions. She describer herself as the “sole teacher of these arts in Edinburgh” and “several years colleague and afterwards successor” to Mrs Maciver. Of Mrs Frazer (later rendered as Fraser), I can find nothing concrete and the surname is much too common to get lucky on Scotland’s People without any dates or a forename.
Mrs Frazer’s version of the cook bookFrazer’s book moved on from purely recipes, to describing general principles and techniques of both cooking and also buying and choosing ingredients (an important skill in a time of no real food controls and produce that would easily spoil or potentially have been doctored). An interesting addition are the illustrations of table setting plans. More calf feet jelly with your small tarts?
A diagram on how to arrange dishes on the table from Mrs Maciver’s recipe book, from the 2nd edition. Notice that pork cutlets, blancmange, cut beetroot, orange cheesecake and macaroni pie are all placed adjacent!As well as this guide to laying your table, other helpful information such as foods listed by their season, a one-page ready reckoner of suggested “Things for Supper Dishes” and “General Observations” were also included such as the correct order of serving your boiled, baked and roasted meats.
General Observations as to serving up Dishes.By 1806 she had moved the cook school, now described as a “pastry school“, to Milne’s Square; opposite the Tron Kirk, still handy for the markets. The school is listed in the post office directories under her name until 1831-32, after which it disappears for a few years then a school under Miss Fraser appears at 69 Northumberland Street. I have made the assumption this was a daughter perhaps.
You can read a digital version of Mrs Maciver’s cookbook for free online and it is still published in a modern facsmilie edition. If you want to get a bit closer to the wacky dining habits of Enlightenment Edinburgh, I recommend a trip to the National Trust for Scotland’s Georgian House, who have a great display and description of the eating, drinking and cooking habits in the 18th century New Town’s dining room and kitchens.So if you want to pay homage to the great, great, great, great, grandmother of Scottish cuisine, why not do as the Georgians might have done and serve yourself up a tasty supper of haggis and trifle this weekend?
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… from a former Pret employee having survived systemic workplace bullying and gaslighting under Pret’s HR, CEO Clive Schlee and a Development Manager from HQ, who’s also an NLP Practitioner and Hypnotherapist under the National Hypnotherapy Society. On a side note, many Pret leaders from HQ and Operation Managers are NLP practitioners. It seems Pret encourages them to the NLP course, and if one researches on Neuro-linguistic Programming, it is or can be a tool to manipulate people.
As my website has become quite large with various writings from behind the scenes, I decided to create an Index to the most important issues regarding Pret A Manger, that portray themself as this ethical and caring company.
I am still in disbelief myself on what I went through, and writing about it helped me survive and come back to my senses, and expose Pret A Manger! I declined 4 settlement offers from Pret if I am silent about my ordeal and never go to court. I explain in full in my interview at the bottom of most pages here or as the first feature of the below index.
The very fact that Pret did NOTHING after TWO customer deaths, a third nearly fatal, several hospitalized, and numerous warnings ignored, should ring massive alarm bells! But the public remains lulled in, especially in the UK whereas in the U.S. it would hail a storm of lawsuits! The German Reimann family behind JAB, the new owners of Pret, work very hard to divert issues opening in various countries in a whirlwind, more charity work etc.
I write so boldly and loud because I almost lost my life, having been targeted and bullied during already traumatic bereavement. I had several close calls at the bridge and am very proud that I made it through to expose this company!
If this is the only thing I do, having survived this toxic company that hides behind the shiny PR[et] facade and fake smiles, I will do it as thoroughly and detailed as I did when I worked for Pret! I wasted 10 years of my life in this company and explain in my interview how I went through this. This is not about a dis-grunted former employee, this is more. This is about a company that portrays itself to the public as this ethical company and lures in customers as well as employees, exploiting staff for profit. This is just a usual business out for profit as any company is, but the public has been lulled in for years about Pret A Manger and it is human nature to want to believe a fairy-tale…
I confront Pret on a suicide of an assistant manager in 2017 of whom I learned prior to her death. I almost went over the edge, Pret hid TWO customer deaths until it became public, how many suicides of current or former staff happened no-one knows about. I was recently leaked an email that Director of HR Andrea Wareham sent to all Pret shops informing them that two Pret staff have died in two different UK shops. One of them I was told was a suicide, the other person’s death is unclear to the persons who leaked the email. The press is informed and in my 10 years in Pret having had access to Pret emails as I was a team leader, I have never seen an email regarding staff deaths.
Pret must have learned from the customer deaths they never even told us about and also my situation that the truth will always come out.
It is my biggest regret having wasted my time, skill, effort and care for Pret A Manger.
If people don’t believe my story, I have evidence and confront Pret openly on Twitter, Facebook etc. Again, I explain in my interview why Pret is not responding. All I can say to everyone regarding the nice facade of Pret or any company is:
If something looks too good to be true, take a closer look!
The below Index takes openness to read, as many people want to believe the fairy-tale that is Pret A Manger. Only the Unions, Activists and some from the Press know better and look closer.
I start the index with my own story in an interview and continue with general issues, categorizing as best as I can. Any reader and writer, please be aware of the work I’ve put into this website before you just cope & paste and mind the copyright. I have other websites as back-ups. I am open for any interview and article feature, as well as questions.
Any new writings in the future that I may add, I will indicate as UPDATE or NEW.
Index:
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INTERVIEW
For the first time I share my story with Pret verbally in an interview on a podcast based in California. Interview with The Adam Paradox: (The interview can be played while scrolling through this page and is featured on my website at the bottom of most pages)
https://expret.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/workplace-bullying-an-intervie-683101e6895da.m4a
ARTICLES
Two articles I wrote for the Scottish Left Review:
1. “Late Night Girl” Story with Pret
2. Pushing Back Against PretThank you for reading/listening.
UNRELATED TO PRET – But important
> My call-in to BBC radio show of Dotun Adebayo early morning on Christmas Day 2019. The subject of the show was »What does “Christmas spirit” mean to you?«. One of the questions was, if more people are alone at Christmas than it used to be, and what people’s experience is with Christmas in general. As I was up, I just called in. I didn’t speak about Pret, as death and grief is already “heavy” as it is on Christmas Day and I don’t think a BBC radio program would be ready to hear about Pret! I kept it “light” I hope.
https://expret.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019-12-25-radio-call-in-dotun-adebayo-show.mp3
(My losses happened in a span of 3 years, not 5 years, I just spoke from looking back on 5 years.)
PRESS
Journalist Amy Sharpe from the Sunday Mirror went undercover into Pret after reading my blog, and having suggested to her to go undercover. I added my thoughts to her report in “Undercover Under Pressure”
UPDATE May 2019
LINK >>> TWO recent Pret staff deaths
I was leaked an email that HR Director Andrea Wareham sent to all Pret shops mid/end of May that TWO Pret staff have died within a month. One staff I was told was a suicide, the other TM the “leakers” don’t have the info. It’s not the first suicide in Pret!
£1000 FOR ALL STAFF
(£800 after tax)Timing of Clive Schlee’s £1000 announcement (after he became aware of my Blog)
PRET STAFF REVIEWS & COMPLAINTS
On the below slideshow I added just a selection of staff reviews and comments to save long blog entries. These are from review websites like Glassdoor and Indeed, but also from YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and other websites where people commented on the work environment in Pret.
Just some examples, before the Slideshow, from former Pret employees in NYC, London etc.:
Four years after Bridgepoint took over Pret and tasked to open on every corner in London specifically. Scrolling to the 23 July 2012 at 12:53 comment.
June/July 2019 overall figures on Glassdoor
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The above slideshow is just a selection, the list goes on in —> Pret Staff Complaints
NEW
I’m branching out to YouTube, as not everyone likes to read long blog posts. I cover mainly staff issues currently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdF2YCy_l-Q
CEO CLIVE SCHLEE RETIREMENT
NEW CEO PANO CHRISTOUNEW 01. July 2019: Announcement of early “retirement” of Clive Schlee supposedly in September, but new CEO Pano Christou is already featured on Glassdoor, probably to avoid further negative voting for Schlee.
A list of articles I wrote on Clive Schlee: “Clive Schlee – Late Night Girl Articles”
Article on Pano Christou, new CEO officially from September 2019.
July 2019 New CEO, new start on Glassdoor
UPDATE October 2019
CUSTOMER OBSERVATIONS
on Stressful Work conditionsThe Pain of Working at Pret A Manger
Pret Staff work in overheated shops. Customer complaints on behalf of employees regarding excruciating work conditions in 35-40ºC+ heat for prolonged time, weeks and months.
FORCED SMILES & HAPPINESS
for Mystery Shopper bonus, extra cash and fear managementHow Companies Force Emotional Labor on Low-Wage Workers
The Truth Behind the Pret A Manger Smile via cash incentives and fear management
How Emotional Labour Harms us all – my comments on an article in the NewStatesman
PRET’S MARKETING with Charity
and Former Homeless PeopleOpen Letter to the Pret Foundation Trust
ALLERGEN DEATHS
and Pret’s procrastinationOngoing Issues – Hospitalization, mislabelling, cross-contamination, understaffed …
Vegetarians eat Ham and Meat products – more ongoing issues
Pret’s Labelling Commitment?
Allergen Label Warnings Pret ignored before and even after customer deaths
VARIOUS LAWSUITS
(that I’m aware of, there are more, but depending how public they are)A recent staff review from New York mentions that Pret is constantly being sued. In the UK the legal system isn’t as helpful:
USA: Two Wage Lawsuits settled that Pret employees filed, re-paying 4000 workers (middle section of page).
USA: Deceptive Packaging Class Action settled. But the misleading packaging still continues.
Pret A Manger – Ready to (ch)eat Lawsuits vs. Pret on the “Natural” Food claim while Glyphosate was found in food. Change of signage, packaging and Website.
USA: 2016 “sesame reaction” Lawsuit and Pret doing ZERO
At the bottom of the page: A New York customer suffered an anaphylactic shock from unlabelled sesame in a Pret Wrap. He lost the case, yet Pret still did nothing to label food even after Natasha Ednan-Laperouse died from the same unlabelled allergen in the same year of 2016.USA March 2019 Court PDF Document of new lawsuit regarding Pret’s “Natural” claim. List of chemicals from page 10 onward.
No Lawsuit, but ongoing complaints regarding the watery Chicken Broccoli and Brown Rice soup
NEW Slideshow: Pret A Manger Bang Bang Rip-Off Wrap
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FREE COFFEES MARKETING
And why Pret doesn’t do a Loyalty Card System
EXTERNAL PRESS ARTICLES
Pret A Manger and “broken windows” syndrome
My Comments on Sathnam Sanghera’s article in The Times: “Pret was the best thing since sliced bread but private equity ruined it”
Man invoices Pret A Manger and EAT. for time spent waiting in shops
The Guradian article: “The brilliant Pret a Manger marketing con we want to fall for”
… more to come
A customer’s comment in Chicago regarding a deceased Pret employee and Pret in general.
Lastly, THE Best description of SYSTEMIC Workplace Bullying and what I have gone through under Pret’s senior leadership and HR, is summed up in this text I found on Twitter.
I have spent over a year writing my hands into a carpal tunnel (not really, just using a metaphor!) on what I’ve been through in Pret A Manger. I described how systemic and toxic Pret’s bullying is behind the smiley facade!
I can wrap up my whole experience and website in this one text:
From Twitter @scwb_now
Further Staff Reviews, one which states that they felt always being “hounded”. I based more reviews in a YouTube slide on this statement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kQCj30vueA
“Worked into the ground without empathy”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdF2YCy_l-Q
Smile for the Mystery Shopper – Forced to do emotional labour for cash incentives and fear management (I re-named as the “Misery” Shopper for a reason!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WToaIvRWVHg
I worked at Pret A Manger for almost 10 years and survived systemic workplace bullying during bereavement that involved HR, the top leadership, HQ and even the now “retired” former CEO Clive Schlee. I declined 4 settlement offers if I am silent about my ordeal. But I rather starve and speak out to help others. For an overview of important blog entries of my experience with Pret, please visit “My Ordeal with Pret A Manger”. The little arrow to the right next to each heading will lead directly to the post.
I tell my story for the first time verbally in below audio player interview on a podcast by The Adam Paradox, and wrote an article in the Scottish Left Review.
Thank you for reading/listening.Interview:
https://expret.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/workplace-bullying-an-intervie-683101e6895da.m4a
©2019 expret.org
Unless otherwise stated or linked to, this website and all writings within this site are the property of expret.org, poetrasblok.com, LateNightGirl.org and are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. Reproduction and distribution of my writings without written permission is prohibited.
©2017 – Present: expret.org, poetrasblok.com, LateNightGirl.org unless otherwise stated. All Rights reserved. Disclaimer.
https://expret.org/2019/05/25/most-comprehensive-website-on-pret-a-manger/
#CliveSchlee #Index #MostComprehensiveWebsiteOnPretAManger #PretAManger #PretStaffComplaints
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Amy Sharpe from the Sunday Mirror contacted me on Facebook after I declined another Mirror Journalist’s request for an interview.
I declined her request as well, as I wasn’t ready for the press, and as I am still paranoid to be tricked and trapped like Pret did with the Development Manager I write extensively about in Open “Letter” to Lila Tighilt Warren. My experience in Pret is very complex and sounds like straight from a twisted Hollywood script, but I have it all in writing and confront Pret openly on Twitter, which in turn have them report me to get shadow-banned (secretly censored on Twitter & Co. which then hides my posts and accounts from public search). But I urged her to go undercover to see for herself and not just take my word for it, just like James Bloodworth did in Amazon. And she did.
My Facebook message after Amy contacted me, but I was not ready for the press:
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What I meant by Pret “infiltrating” the mental health club I was a member of, Pret knew about this club as I mentioned it in my last hearing. I write about Pret “infiltrating” the club in my open “letter” to the Pret Foundation Trust which is just a smokescreen to pretend charity to the public. Pret never responded when I AND an OPs manager asked if I could be placed under someone from the Pret Foundation when I became bereaved and then targetted. Pret never responded.
As I commented on Sathnam Sanghera’s Times article, I’d like to give my two cents also to Amy Sharpe’s undercover article. Both articles from very different perspectives as one from a customer and business point of view, the other from behind the scenes for a few days. But both are equally important and revealing how business works with the main goal of profit in mind.
I have to say that when I saw the undercover reporting yesterday morning (28.11.2018) linked on Twitter, after Amy has been very silent about going “under”, and rightly so, I teared up. I cried when I read her name on the report because not just did she follow my suggestion taking my ordeal serious, but someone from the outside saw what I and many others experience(d), but the public doesn’t want to know about unless it is the press poking into an organization.
It sadly takes deaths becoming public to show how negligent a company, in this case Pret, really is. I’ve been writing openly about my experience with Pret since May 2018 after my father died in March and I started to come to terms again of another loss… still recuperating from my Pret trauma that has “postponed” my grief for my brother. Regular readers know the story.
Some people criticize The Sunday Mirror’s report as being part of a witch hunt, but I don’t think that. The public is so used to be lulled in by a nice and shiny facade, free coffees and cookies.
Customers are so used to the smiles of staff, but no-one knows what really is behind it. The fear management via the Mystery Shopper, rewarded extra £100 if specially nice or told off by the boss in the office and threatened with job security if they didn’t smile non-stop in the highly stressful work environment. I mentioned this in a Tweet response to a customer who without any thought or empathy complained to Pret about a barista, even naming him, for not smiling and rushing the service:
Amy Sharpe’s undercover article to me is like someone understanding this and finally confirming my and the team’s ordeal. Some points I want to highlight as I don’t use the full article, just what I want to confirm and expand upon a little from what this journalist has experienced and witnessed. The article will be in black and my comments in grey. I added the bold to the text to highlight some issues.
Article:
A manager reacts in horror as I point out the mistake (of an Almond Croissant with a Jam Croissant label).
“Oh my god!” he cries as he switches labels on two trays of croissants – one containing jam, the other almonds.This is the typical PANIC reaction of a manager who either didn’t take the time or is too disorganized to do the MBWA (Managing By Walking Around) to check that everything is in its proper place, health & safety checks and so on. This could easily be improved by investing to have plenty of staff, instead of cutting staff to save money, so that the Manager On Duty (MOD) can concentrate on checking everything daily as well as throughout the day. It’s a very simple organizational issue. Very, very simple.
Article:
In the wake of two allergy deaths, he adds: “It’s really dangerous, especially with everything that’s been going on.”And yet, no-one steps on the brakes to put immediate, and what CEO Clive Schlee calls, “meaningful” changes in place. The problem with the word “meaningful” to me here is, it sounds too wishy-washy, “poetically” correct but shows no urgency, even though “it’s really dangerous”. The appropriate word should have been to implement “immediate” changes! As Natasha’s parents are in shock over Pret’s procrastination, ITV’s November report:
Article:
I am standing behind the counter in Pret a Manger … The pace is so relentless, the demands so constant – customers want serving super-quick – that I find myself under constant pressure. I sense that other staff feel the strain too.Ms. Sharpe does not give the time of day she was behind the counter, but mentioned having to dash to the toastie machine, so this may have been lunch time. But the strain can especially be felt when a Team Member does the morning shift from 5 or 6am till 2 or 3pm going through two intense rushes: breakfast and lunch. When I worked in Pret I made a decision to not meet with a friend or have an appointment straight after my morning shift having come out of lunch time. I was always like having come out of a tumbler, being shaken for hours and still on electricity. My friends commented on this, so I tried to get home first to clean up and rest and calm down before joining any events.
One staff review paints this very bluntly. This is why I wished Amy Sharpe would have also covered a week in the kitchen to really get the full Pret “blow”: “This job can annihilate every piece of humanity inside of you.“
Many kitchens I have seen with very small working areas for the Hot Chef in particular. Someone leaked a photo to Twitter.
Customer areas are increased to get as many customers / money in as possible; staff areas are decreased. This then creates multiple problems, not only on the mental strain of staff but customers lives as mistakes happen quickly as with labelling I collected in another post “Vegetarians Get Meat Products“:
Or a shop where I worked where there was only ONE multitask room: office, staff changing room with lockers, fridges, freezers, stock room, hot chef soup prep area, chemical room for cleaning materials etc and to top it all, illegally the rubbish room next to the food prep area! This shop was the worst shop I’ve worked in. This photo is from 2015 and after years like this, Pret was forced to expand the work space to separate the rubbish for health and safety reasons. This room was medium size and approx. 15 square meters max. A total nightmare.
Article:
I am at a central London branch, where 10 staff vie for space, muttering apologies as we collide and stretch across one another to grab pastries and bags.
I shout orders to a barista while dashing to a beeping toastie machine to retrieve a baguette.
I make green teas and filter coffees while my other drinks orders are prepared. It’s stressful and confusing and the queue makes it even more so.
All the while, staff must be alert to the issue of allergens.Yep. And as one customer on Twitter pointed out the chaos and stress on the staff and customers alike. I had to console Team Members many times over the years who held their tears back or just cried in the staff room after being shouted at by the manager. Another review: “Better salary than McDonalds or Costa as long as you keep your fake smile up. Staff with more experience cuts corners on Sanitary rules because otherwise it is impossible to finish your batch on time.
– The coffee calling system is broken. During busy times it is nearly impossible to keep up with the orders without hating everyone around you. A lot of people cry in the staff room especially in their entry period.”
I also shed many tears on my way home in the bus, especially during grief of course, but after a terribly depressing shift this was a common thing to let the tears finally flow.UPDATE Jan. 2019
I found a photo of the coffee area and it shows how cramped and small the work area is. And the barista/coffee makers are required to get PERFECT coffees out within 1 minute that the Mystery Shopper times to the second! It doesn’t get any more dehumanizing and mentally straining than this. I don’t know how I managed, but we worked a lot in mental and physical pain. Under the coffee machine where the silver jugs are, this working area is so small baristas switch on autopilot and just keep going. Hence, lots of stress, shouting and customers going to Twitter with complaints of half cups of coffees that are made so fast to satisfy the Mystery Shopper, the manager and the long queue.
Link by @terry_mcparlane Twitter
It is rare that a customer speaks out like this and it’s sad that most customers don’t care how stressful it is behind the counter. They see it, at times even commented about it to me, but they just want their coffees fast. Pret has spoiled them where they would be perfectly happy to wait 5-10 minutes in Starbucks, Pret made the service so fast to get the money circulation into the shops fast. Pret staff are expected to whip out PERFECT coffees within ONE minute and are timed to the SECOND by Mystery Shoppers, while customers think that staff is just happy working under intense pressure. They don’t realize what’s behind that happy facade!
Excerpt:
1 minute aim to serve and another 1 minute to have a perfect hot drink ready, checked by the MS to the second:
“I was served very quickly, after 15 seconds, very quick service.”
“I received my hot drink very quick, after 30 seconds, quick service.”
And then customers run to Twitter with pictures of half full cappuccinos, missing cream, lukewarm coffees…! There’s nothing more dehumanizing at a workplace that I have experienced. And should anyone suffer from boredom, do an experiment and just read through some Pret Tweets a few minutes each day for a week, with the same sweet-talk response from Pret veering customers away from public Tweets to private DM.
Some complaints are legitimate when a customer already spoke to the manager, and yet Pret has a DM button, but customers feel the public needs to be aware of their dilemma in Pret shops. I know, I know I respond a lot to some Tweets, and maybe it is because for 10 years I had to bite my tongue towards rude customers, I take the opportunity now to give my opinion. And Pret doesn’t block me as they collect my Tweets in case for court and certainly to learn some tips, as I have showered them with suggestions for improvement while I worked there. Be my guest, Pret.
Article:
Staff now repeat orders to customers to avoid any mistakes. Allergen enquiries are referred to the duty manager, who will show a list of ingredients.Which is good to repeat, but the pace is still kept high with all sorts of demands, especially for the “Misery” Shopper: always smile, eye contact, make some small-talk, serve within 1 minute, stand on your head, dance on one feet, bend your back, twist your brain, know all the answers, kiss their butts … and all this with a big fake Pret A Smile to keep a low-paid job! In other words you either develop superhuman abilities or mental illness. The pace is the same, the demand is higher, and life is still at risk including the lives of staff who suffer depression, mental ill health and at times become suicidal. But the public “just” wakes up once customer lives are affected. Forget the “slaves“.
A positive Mystery Shopper visit, excerpt:
“The staff member who served me made good eye contact and greeted me with a friendly smile. While remaining focused and efficient, she also took time to engage in a few words of conversation, which added a personal element to the exchange – enhancing the welcoming atmosphere of this store.”
A negative Mystery Shopper visit, excerpt:
“I was not greeted at the till or given a smile. The only conversation was what was necessary for the transaction. To be welcoming the team member could have greeted me and smiled and be engage(d) and positive, the team member could have given me a friendly remark or made small talk.”
— or —
“Team members should smile at customers and may not work when ill, as team member was coughing whilst serving me and was therefore not feeling cheerful to smile that day.”
I wish I could have told this MS that staff are not paid sick leave for the first 2 and 3 days depending on age. So one had to decide if to stay home sick and lose income, or go to work unwell and get a telling off from the manager like I did because I coughed when I happened to serve the MS.
I wonder if Amy Sharpe served the Mystery Shopper and how she would have felt reading a negative comment on her service while feeling the experience of the “overstretched staff” and it being “stressful and confusing and the queue makes it even more so.”
I even wished sometimes customers would just join us for a few hours, especially those who quickly complain about everything.
Just few of the countless Tweets, just from this week:
This customer had good service for THREE years, then one negative experience and the world has come to an end. I linked her to Amy Sharpe’s report to bring some perspective for her feeling so unwanted. But I deleted the Tweet again as I write too many Tweets and always like to de-clutter my Twitter feeds:
“Every time…”
“Oh no!…”
etc. etc.
So, companies like Pret have created a “nation” of complainers where the British were usually patient and polite, they now cry like babies whose bottoms haven’t been wiped in a while! And the money keeps coming in while Pret responds with “Oh no…” and “Oh gosh, are you okay?…” sweet-talk to keep the babies happy and the money rolling!
I responded, but since deleted as well to this baby who had no issues to call hard working people the “C” word because he was in the “teething” period having his day ruined by a hard avocado. Pret’s typical cut’n’paste response, apologizing while he is offensive, and as if they really contact each shop all day long for repeated hard avocados:
Article:
The mantra, I am told repeatedly, is “NEVER guess”.
But from what I witness, the speed at which staff often have to work could put these commendable new standards at risk.
On my second shift I find an orange juice two weeks out of date on the shelves.
The shocked team leader tells me: “You don’t need to tell anyone, otherwise we’re f****d. It is really bad… I’ll throw it away.”
One barista tells me the cramped service area is a “nightmare”.
He says: “If I’m next to you, you have to shout. If you don’t shout I can make a mistake. A person can grab the wrong coffee. Make mistakes and the customer gets mad. You’ve got to focus, stay calm.”
With soybeans and dairy prominent on the menu – and among the 14 allergens kitchens must legally declare – this admission is worrying.
On my last shift, stickers are introduced to distinguish between soya, coconut and regular milks. But one barista serves a coffee without a sticker – and a manager barks: “Where is the sticker?”
The £8.25-an-hour shifts are tough and I collapse into bed exhausted after eight hours on my feet, lifting boxes, mopping and dragging tables around.Nothing more to add except this Link
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Article:
Some staff do 12-hour shifts or work at other branches to earn more. To add to the intensity, employees are battling the cold due to its station location. I wear extra layers to stay warm – there are only two Pret fleeces to go round, so we share.Nothing more to add except that some staff even do 60-70 hour weeks assigned by the manager! I had to speak out about this as Team Members were exhausted, at times became sick from the amount of work, but were too scared to speak with the GM. Again, I did not make friends with my bosses. But neither did I care!
Article:
When the bustle dies down I clean the shop but a colleague urges me to skip certain tasks.
“You’re supposed to sweep and mop every day but don’t do that or you’ll never leave on time,” he says.This unfortunately is common in most shops that staff are so swamped with work they are not able to finish in time and are NOT paid for overtime. I fought for this with my managers in every shop. I would say to my teams who did their best and me as the Team Leader helping them, that if they can’t finish I will mark this on the cleaning rota with an explanation, instead of just ticking off the jobs as done like most do to keep the appearance that jobs were completed. I’d then take responsibility when the boss summons me in the office the next day. I let the team go on the dot when our shift finished at 9 or 10pm or whatever closing and cleaning time the branch had.
Coffee Specialist, London April 2018
Most Team Members have families with kids at home, not seeing their children all day as they are in school, and later the parent is working when they go to bed. So I made it a point to let them go when the shift finished. I was very organized and made sure that the important jobs, health & safety was taken care of and prioritized these. I structured my teams in this way and left the unimportant jobs unfinished if we didn’t have time or enough staff.
In the early times in Pret I would work and work, finish in time and also worked overtime unpaid. But then the time came where I drew a line. It is okay here and there to finish a little late, but it was the norm in Pret and it seemed a very calculated one as Teams worked extra for no pay every day. I struggled with my managers and communicated that if we have to stay longer to finish the job, I will pay them the extra time through the system as was part of my job. If my bosses didn’t want that, then I told my team to finish on the dot and we go home. Full stop.
This of course didn’t make me friends with my bosses, but neither did I care! My friends are not these kind of people who exploit workers for their own bonuses. One Pret staff reviews this as a common practice for managers to give them a job to do 15 minutes before the Team Member would have finished the shift. But the job would take 30 – 60 minutes to complete. I experienced this many times as well and was made to feel bad if I needed or wanted to leave. It took me some time to stand up against this. Pret staff in the UK should do what their colleagues in the U.S. did, a class action suit for not being paid overtime.
Full article of the Sunday Mirror
I have to be honest that I wished Amy Sharpe would have worked longer, a month or so like James Bloodworth did in Amazon. It would have been good for Ms Sharpe to cover the early shifts and weekends as well, including working in the kitchen, as each time and job has its own challenges. But I’m not complaining. She covered 1 or 2 weeks (?) really really well, while I have 10 years of “material” to share that almost literally killed me having survived bullying during bereavement.
So, I have to be patient and acknowledge the brilliant work by this journalist having been willing to do this, as well as Sathnam Sanghera’s article. And many more people will tell their story in time away from the typical PR that Pret does so well. I keep confronting Pret on a staff suicide in 2017 and who knows how many more are under the carpet when they could hide two customer deaths for two years and the other for 10 months! I know my approach and direct confrontation is full on, but I almost lost my life after having worked with integrity, honesty, very hard and with passion for my teams. I cannot be silent after having wasted 10 years of my life in Pret with the knowledge that staff continue to suffer behind the facade. And if any reader wonders if I went to court, I explain here.
Thank you for your time in reading this. And thank you to anyone in the press to have taken a closer look. Thank you to Amy Sharpe. Ironic and delighted to be calling a reporter a now former colleague of mine! Well done Amy!
Life is short, please be kind to yourselves and others.
expret.org
UPDATE: 14.12.2018 A rare observation from a customer regarding forced friendliness.
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UPDATE March 2019 – The first time I share my story verbally in one go in this interview.
Interview:
https://expret.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/workplace-bullying-an-intervie-683101e6895da.m4a
Above interview is with Adam from The Adam Paradox podcast on my experience in Pret A Manger.
We spoke about gaslighting (being from Germany, that word doesn’t exist in Germany except in its English form. I had to explain it to a German therapist), “shadow banning” and censorship on social media, as well as bereavement, trauma and mental health in general. I further talked about the significant timing of Pret CEO’s announcement of the £1000 Tweet for all staff. I also talked about a regular day in Pret and how staff have to cut corners, in order to fulfill the immense workload under constant pressure.
It is hard to squeeze my traumatic experience into a podcast segment, but we covered enough to get a good picture of today’s systemic stress environment for profit driven global companies.
Please visit his Podcast and Twitter @1AdamParadox.
UPDATE February 2019, my posts on “Why do Pret Staff continue under Harshness“
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I worked at Pret A Manger and survived systemic workplace bullying during bereavement that involved HR, the top leadership, HQ and even the now “retired” former CEO Clive Schlee. I declined 4 settlement offers if I am silent about my ordeal. But I rather speak out to help others. For an overview of important blog entries of my experience with Pret, please visit My Ordeal with Pret A Manger. The little arrow to the right next to each heading will lead directly to the post.An incomplete list on what other Pret staff say about Pret’s bullying environment Caught in the Act Bullying and What shop MANAGERS and HQ staff say about Pret incl. CEO Pano Christou.I tell my story for the first time verbally in below audio player interview on a podcast by The Adam Paradox, and wrote two articles in the Scottish Left Review as well as mentioned by the BBC.Please also see the MEDIA page for more.
NEW LinkTree
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Thank you for reading/listening.
©2017 – present expret.org
Interview:
(Please be aware that the player shows 0:00 as WordPress sometimes “messes” with my blog. Just press play or go straight to the interview on Adam’s page).
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https://expret.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/workplace-bullying-an-intervie-683101e6895da.m4a.
Unless otherwise stated or linked to, this website and all writings within this site are the property of expret.org and are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. Reproduction and distribution of my writings without written permission is prohibited.©2017 – Present: expret.org unless otherwise stated. All Rights reserved. Disclaimer.
https://expret.org/2018/11/29/undercover-under-pressure/
#000000 #0000ff #333333 #50 #99cc00 #AmySharpe #AmySharpeJournalist #AmySharpeTheSundayMirror #ExposingPretAManger #ff0000 #PretAManger #PretAMangerReviews #PretAllergen #UndercoverInPret #UndercoverReport
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Fake Spring
Fake Spring came to Minnesota last week. Fake spring usually happens a couple times in late winter before real spring arrives. Temperatures soared to 50F / 10C and a few degrees above. Now that might not sound warm to you, but for us, that meant going out on neighborhood foot patrol in sneakers and a hoodie. It was glorious. And then Wednesday temperatures crashed, and the forecasted 2 inches/ 5 cm of snow turned into 7.6 inches/ 19 cm. And today the windchill is currently -9F /-23C. The garden had almost been clear of snow and the chickens were loving wandering around and scratching in the mud. They are extra grumpy right now at the sudden return of winter. I don’t blame them.
Along with the fake spring season came the fake spring of DHS drawing down federal agents in Minneapolis. We were hopeful, but continued to be vigilant. And while there are fewer agents—I’ve seen it suggested there are now less than 1,000 (pre-surge ICE staffing in Minnesota was 150 agents in the entire state)—they remain active. They are continuing to change tactics, and have shifted out to the suburbs where people are more spread out, making keeping eyes on them harder. They are still plenty active in Minneapolis though, just much quieter about it than previously. So while the broader media has looked away because the surge here is “over,” it isn’t over.
The Bulwark has a good article, Special Saturday Triad: What I Saw at the Battle of Minneapolis, that gives an overview of what has been happening in the city and where we are now. My neighborhood is right next to the Federal building where DHS operates from, and a Lord of the Rings loving neighbor compared us to Gondor and the Whipple Building to Mordor. It made me laugh, but also, it’s kind of true. Except we have no wizards or kings or armies, just a bunch of Hobbits mostly. But Hobbits can do great things.
Real spring will eventually arrive, and we’ll have ice out on the lakes and hopefully ICE out of the state. However, while the melted lake ice doesn’t invade another city or state, I hope ICE doesn’t take their thuggery elsewhere. Perhaps Congress will actually manage to do something worthwhile and not cave in during this partial government shutdown.
Ice out on my neighborhood lake is generally around the last week of March to the first week of April. Not long now. In anticipation of real spring, I have begun indoor seed starting. I dragged my seed starting shelves, heat mats, grow lights, pots and trays up from the basement yesterday and set it up in front of my kitchen window. Sorry James. This makes things a bit tight in our kitchen for the next few months, but there is nowhere else to set this up, so…
I hadn’t yet opened the envelopes my new seeds came in and got a surprise. Two of the seed companies unexpectedly sent me free seeds and they were all tomatoes. I was already set with four tomato varieties I grew last year and saved seeds, so these new choices caused a conundrum. Do I try them? How could I not? So I went from planning on 10 tomato plants to planting 18. Um where will they all go? Don’t ask such silly questions!
Here are the tomatoes I am starting:
- Hungarian Heart—This quickly became our favorite tomato when I first grew it three years ago. They are huge and make great sauce, salsa, and sliced on a sandwich. Saved seeds.
- Grappoli D’Inverno—Another one that became a favorite when I first grew it three years ago. This is a plum tomato that makes great sauce and also roasts up nicely. Saved seeds.
- Orange Peach—I grew this for the first time last year. They are sweet small to medium-sized tomatoes. They struggled in the cool spring and then got overwhelmed by the monster tomatillo, but still managed to fruit enough to try them again and see if they do better a second time around. Saved seeds.
- Alley Tomato—This is a small cherry tomato that we found growing from a crack in the alley pavement behind our house three years ago. We moved it into the garden and it grew big and strong and produced an abundance of marble-sized red tomatoes that were quite tasty. I have no idea what actual variety it is, so we just call it Alley Tomato. Saved seeds.
- Kathy’s Red Barn—One of the free packets. This is a large red beefsteak tomato that is intended for slicing. The description says it has outstanding flavor and is great for BLTs, but in my house that would be TLT—tofu or tempeh, lettuce and tomato.
- Yellow Ping Pong—This came free from Sandhill Preservation. It’s a 2-inch yellow cherry tomato, which makes it about the size of a ping pong ball. The description says it is sweet and juicy and has a lemon-like finish to the flavor. Yum
- Goose Creek—Another free one from Sandhill. This is a small pink tomato. It’s an heirloom that has been grown since the 1800s. The story is that the seeds were smuggled in the pocket of a Caribbean slave woman on a ship that docked at Charleston near Goose Creek, South Carolina. The seeds were passed down through her family and her great-great grandson, Jimmy Williams, owner of Hayground Organic Gardening in California, has offered the seeds to the rest of the world.
That’s all the tomatoes. Now for the 15 pepper plants:
- Early Jalapeño—I had to buy new seeds because the ones I had been saving from jalapeños we got in our csa box three years ago didn’t sprout last year and I had to buy plants at the May plant sale. These seeds are open-pollinated so I will be able to save them and grow them on for years and years. They are also a variety adapted to Minnesota, even better! I’ve got six pots planted with these. We love us some jalapeños!
- Ancho Poblano—I have never grown poblanos before so we’ll see how it goes. James wanted something good for roasting and stuffing.
- Lunchbox Orange Sweet Pepper—This is a small sweet snacking pepper. I’ve never grown these before either.
- Long Red Cayenne—Third year growing these and they do really well in the garden. They make great hot sauce and add a spicy kick to other dishes. We have a small jar of dried ones from last summer that we crush up for spice. Saved seeds.
And, I’ve got three pots planted with zebra eggplant. It’s a small green and white striped fruit used in a lot of traditional African recipes. The flavor is semi-sweet and it is good raw, boiled, sautéed, in soup, or grilled—very versatile! This has been northern climate adapted over the last seven years in Fargo, North Dakota, by grower Simeon Bakunda, an immigrant from Congo. Also, apparently, the leaves of the plant are edible and highly nutritious and make a delicious side dish when sautéed with onion, garlic, anise, mushrooms, hot pepper, parsley , and nutmeg. I have never grown these before and the last time I tried to grow eggplant was in the early 2000s. I grew the big purple kind and had only one plant, carefully nursing along a single fruit that a thieving squirrel came along and tore apart just days before it was ripe. Never tried eggplant again after that. I’m hoping because these are smaller and green that it tricks the squirrels into thinking they aren’t ripe. If the squirrels aren’t fooled, at least I know I can eat the leaves.
Planting all these seeds felt so good, a balm for my soul. I love the cusp of gardening season when everything is full of possibility and abundance and nothing has yet gone awry. Last year was cooler than usual with plentiful and regular rain. The Climate Prediction Center outlook for this summer indicates a likelihood of a warmer than usual summer with precipitation at equal chances to be higher or lower than average. The cool weather plants will not be happy but the tomatoes and peppers will be.
For now though, everything is beautiful potential and I’m just gonna sit with that joy for awhile.
#eggplant #fakeSpring #iceOut #peppers #seedStarting #tomatoes -
Fake Spring
Fake Spring came to Minnesota last week. Fake spring usually happens a couple times in late winter before real spring arrives. Temperatures soared to 50F / 10C and a few degrees above. Now that might not sound warm to you, but for us, that meant going out on neighborhood foot patrol in sneakers and a hoodie. It was glorious. And then Wednesday temperatures crashed, and the forecasted 2 inches/ 5 cm of snow turned into 7.6 inches/ 19 cm. And today the windchill is currently -9F /-23C. The garden had almost been clear of snow and the chickens were loving wandering around and scratching in the mud. They are extra grumpy right now at the sudden return of winter. I don’t blame them.
Along with the fake spring season came the fake spring of DHS drawing down federal agents in Minneapolis. We were hopeful, but continued to be vigilant. And while there are fewer agents—I’ve seen it suggested there are now less than 1,000 (pre-surge ICE staffing in Minnesota was 150 agents in the entire state)—they remain active. They are continuing to change tactics, and have shifted out to the suburbs where people are more spread out, making keeping eyes on them harder. They are still plenty active in Minneapolis though, just much quieter about it than previously. So while the broader media has looked away because the surge here is “over,” it isn’t over.
The Bulwark has a good article, Special Saturday Triad: What I Saw at the Battle of Minneapolis, that gives an overview of what has been happening in the city and where we are now. My neighborhood is right next to the Federal building where DHS operates from, and a Lord of the Rings loving neighbor compared us to Gondor and the Whipple Building to Mordor. It made me laugh, but also, it’s kind of true. Except we have no wizards or kings or armies, just a bunch of Hobbits mostly. But Hobbits can do great things.
Real spring will eventually arrive, and we’ll have ice out on the lakes and hopefully ICE out of the state. However, while the melted lake ice doesn’t invade another city or state, I hope ICE doesn’t take their thuggery elsewhere. Perhaps Congress will actually manage to do something worthwhile and not cave in during this partial government shutdown.
Ice out on my neighborhood lake is generally around the last week of March to the first week of April. Not long now. In anticipation of real spring, I have begun indoor seed starting. I dragged my seed starting shelves, heat mats, grow lights, pots and trays up from the basement yesterday and set it up in front of my kitchen window. Sorry James. This makes things a bit tight in our kitchen for the next few months, but there is nowhere else to set this up, so…
I hadn’t yet opened the envelopes my new seeds came in and got a surprise. Two of the seed companies unexpectedly sent me free seeds and they were all tomatoes. I was already set with four tomato varieties I grew last year and saved seeds, so these new choices caused a conundrum. Do I try them? How could I not? So I went from planning on 10 tomato plants to planting 18. Um where will they all go? Don’t ask such silly questions!
Here are the tomatoes I am starting:
- Hungarian Heart—This quickly became our favorite tomato when I first grew it three years ago. They are huge and make great sauce, salsa, and sliced on a sandwich. Saved seeds.
- Grappoli D’Inverno—Another one that became a favorite when I first grew it three years ago. This is a plum tomato that makes great sauce and also roasts up nicely. Saved seeds.
- Orange Peach—I grew this for the first time last year. They are sweet small to medium-sized tomatoes. They struggled in the cool spring and then got overwhelmed by the monster tomatillo, but still managed to fruit enough to try them again and see if they do better a second time around. Saved seeds.
- Alley Tomato—This is a small cherry tomato that we found growing from a crack in the alley pavement behind our house three years ago. We moved it into the garden and it grew big and strong and produced an abundance of marble-sized red tomatoes that were quite tasty. I have no idea what actual variety it is, so we just call it Alley Tomato. Saved seeds.
- Kathy’s Red Barn—One of the free packets. This is a large red beefsteak tomato that is intended for slicing. The description says it has outstanding flavor and is great for BLTs, but in my house that would be TLT—tofu or tempeh, lettuce and tomato.
- Yellow Ping Pong—This came free from Sandhill Preservation. It’s a 2-inch yellow cherry tomato, which makes it about the size of a ping pong ball. The description says it is sweet and juicy and has a lemon-like finish to the flavor. Yum
- Goose Creek—Another free one from Sandhill. This is a small pink tomato. It’s an heirloom that has been grown since the 1800s. The story is that the seeds were smuggled in the pocket of a Caribbean slave woman on a ship that docked at Charleston near Goose Creek, South Carolina. The seeds were passed down through her family and her great-great grandson, Jimmy Williams, owner of Hayground Organic Gardening in California, has offered the seeds to the rest of the world.
That’s all the tomatoes. Now for the 15 pepper plants:
- Early Jalapeño—I had to buy new seeds because the ones I had been saving from jalapeños we got in our csa box three years ago didn’t sprout last year and I had to buy plants at the May plant sale. These seeds are open-pollinated so I will be able to save them and grow them on for years and years. They are also a variety adapted to Minnesota, even better! I’ve got six pots planted with these. We love us some jalapeños!
- Ancho Poblano—I have never grown poblanos before so we’ll see how it goes. James wanted something good for roasting and stuffing.
- Lunchbox Orange Sweet Pepper—This is a small sweet snacking pepper. I’ve never grown these before either.
- Long Red Cayenne—Third year growing these and they do really well in the garden. They make great hot sauce and add a spicy kick to other dishes. We have a small jar of dried ones from last summer that we crush up for spice. Saved seeds.
And, I’ve got three pots planted with zebra eggplant. It’s a small green and white striped fruit used in a lot of traditional African recipes. The flavor is semi-sweet and it is good raw, boiled, sautéed, in soup, or grilled—very versatile! This has been northern climate adapted over the last seven years in Fargo, North Dakota, by grower Simeon Bakunda, an immigrant from Congo. Also, apparently, the leaves of the plant are edible and highly nutritious and make a delicious side dish when sautéed with onion, garlic, anise, mushrooms, hot pepper, parsley , and nutmeg. I have never grown these before and the last time I tried to grow eggplant was in the early 2000s. I grew the big purple kind and had only one plant, carefully nursing along a single fruit that a thieving squirrel came along and tore apart just days before it was ripe. Never tried eggplant again after that. I’m hoping because these are smaller and green that it tricks the squirrels into thinking they aren’t ripe. If the squirrels aren’t fooled, at least I know I can eat the leaves.
Planting all these seeds felt so good, a balm for my soul. I love the cusp of gardening season when everything is full of possibility and abundance and nothing has yet gone awry. Last year was cooler than usual with plentiful and regular rain. The Climate Prediction Center outlook for this summer indicates a likelihood of a warmer than usual summer with precipitation at equal chances to be higher or lower than average. The cool weather plants will not be happy but the tomatoes and peppers will be.
For now though, everything is beautiful potential and I’m just gonna sit with that joy for awhile.
#eggplant #fakeSpring #iceOut #peppers #seedStarting #tomatoes -
Fake Spring
Fake Spring came to Minnesota last week. Fake spring usually happens a couple times in late winter before real spring arrives. Temperatures soared to 50F / 10C and a few degrees above. Now that might not sound warm to you, but for us, that meant going out on neighborhood foot patrol in sneakers and a hoodie. It was glorious. And then Wednesday temperatures crashed, and the forecasted 2 inches/ 5 cm of snow turned into 7.6 inches/ 19 cm. And today the windchill is currently -9F /-23C. The garden had almost been clear of snow and the chickens were loving wandering around and scratching in the mud. They are extra grumpy right now at the sudden return of winter. I don’t blame them.
Along with the fake spring season came the fake spring of DHS drawing down federal agents in Minneapolis. We were hopeful, but continued to be vigilant. And while there are fewer agents—I’ve seen it suggested there are now less than 1,000 (pre-surge ICE staffing in Minnesota was 150 agents in the entire state)—they remain active. They are continuing to change tactics, and have shifted out to the suburbs where people are more spread out, making keeping eyes on them harder. They are still plenty active in Minneapolis though, just much quieter about it than previously. So while the broader media has looked away because the surge here is “over,” it isn’t over.
The Bulwark has a good article, Special Saturday Triad: What I Saw at the Battle of Minneapolis, that gives an overview of what has been happening in the city and where we are now. My neighborhood is right next to the Federal building where DHS operates from, and a Lord of the Rings loving neighbor compared us to Gondor and the Whipple Building to Mordor. It made me laugh, but also, it’s kind of true. Except we have no wizards or kings or armies, just a bunch of Hobbits mostly. But Hobbits can do great things.
Real spring will eventually arrive, and we’ll have ice out on the lakes and hopefully ICE out of the state. However, while the melted lake ice doesn’t invade another city or state, I hope ICE doesn’t take their thuggery elsewhere. Perhaps Congress will actually manage to do something worthwhile and not cave in during this partial government shutdown.
Ice out on my neighborhood lake is generally around the last week of March to the first week of April. Not long now. In anticipation of real spring, I have begun indoor seed starting. I dragged my seed starting shelves, heat mats, grow lights, pots and trays up from the basement yesterday and set it up in front of my kitchen window. Sorry James. This makes things a bit tight in our kitchen for the next few months, but there is nowhere else to set this up, so…
I hadn’t yet opened the envelopes my new seeds came in and got a surprise. Two of the seed companies unexpectedly sent me free seeds and they were all tomatoes. I was already set with four tomato varieties I grew last year and saved seeds, so these new choices caused a conundrum. Do I try them? How could I not? So I went from planning on 10 tomato plants to planting 18. Um where will they all go? Don’t ask such silly questions!
Here are the tomatoes I am starting:
- Hungarian Heart—This quickly became our favorite tomato when I first grew it three years ago. They are huge and make great sauce, salsa, and sliced on a sandwich. Saved seeds.
- Grappoli D’Inverno—Another one that became a favorite when I first grew it three years ago. This is a plum tomato that makes great sauce and also roasts up nicely. Saved seeds.
- Orange Peach—I grew this for the first time last year. They are sweet small to medium-sized tomatoes. They struggled in the cool spring and then got overwhelmed by the monster tomatillo, but still managed to fruit enough to try them again and see if they do better a second time around. Saved seeds.
- Alley Tomato—This is a small cherry tomato that we found growing from a crack in the alley pavement behind our house three years ago. We moved it into the garden and it grew big and strong and produced an abundance of marble-sized red tomatoes that were quite tasty. I have no idea what actual variety it is, so we just call it Alley Tomato. Saved seeds.
- Kathy’s Red Barn—One of the free packets. This is a large red beefsteak tomato that is intended for slicing. The description says it has outstanding flavor and is great for BLTs, but in my house that would be TLT—tofu or tempeh, lettuce and tomato.
- Yellow Ping Pong—This came free from Sandhill Preservation. It’s a 2-inch yellow cherry tomato, which makes it about the size of a ping pong ball. The description says it is sweet and juicy and has a lemon-like finish to the flavor. Yum
- Goose Creek—Another free one from Sandhill. This is a small pink tomato. It’s an heirloom that has been grown since the 1800s. The story is that the seeds were smuggled in the pocket of a Caribbean slave woman on a ship that docked at Charleston near Goose Creek, South Carolina. The seeds were passed down through her family and her great-great grandson, Jimmy Williams, owner of Hayground Organic Gardening in California, has offered the seeds to the rest of the world.
That’s all the tomatoes. Now for the 15 pepper plants:
- Early Jalapeño—I had to buy new seeds because the ones I had been saving from jalapeños we got in our csa box three years ago didn’t sprout last year and I had to buy plants at the May plant sale. These seeds are open-pollinated so I will be able to save them and grow them on for years and years. They are also a variety adapted to Minnesota, even better! I’ve got six pots planted with these. We love us some jalapeños!
- Ancho Poblano—I have never grown poblanos before so we’ll see how it goes. James wanted something good for roasting and stuffing.
- Lunchbox Orange Sweet Pepper—This is a small sweet snacking pepper. I’ve never grown these before either.
- Long Red Cayenne—Third year growing these and they do really well in the garden. They make great hot sauce and add a spicy kick to other dishes. We have a small jar of dried ones from last summer that we crush up for spice. Saved seeds.
And, I’ve got three pots planted with zebra eggplant. It’s a small green and white striped fruit used in a lot of traditional African recipes. The flavor is semi-sweet and it is good raw, boiled, sautéed, in soup, or grilled—very versatile! This has been northern climate adapted over the last seven years in Fargo, North Dakota, by grower Simeon Bakunda, an immigrant from Congo. Also, apparently, the leaves of the plant are edible and highly nutritious and make a delicious side dish when sautéed with onion, garlic, anise, mushrooms, hot pepper, parsley , and nutmeg. I have never grown these before and the last time I tried to grow eggplant was in the early 2000s. I grew the big purple kind and had only one plant, carefully nursing along a single fruit that a thieving squirrel came along and tore apart just days before it was ripe. Never tried eggplant again after that. I’m hoping because these are smaller and green that it tricks the squirrels into thinking they aren’t ripe. If the squirrels aren’t fooled, at least I know I can eat the leaves.
Planting all these seeds felt so good, a balm for my soul. I love the cusp of gardening season when everything is full of possibility and abundance and nothing has yet gone awry. Last year was cooler than usual with plentiful and regular rain. The Climate Prediction Center outlook for this summer indicates a likelihood of a warmer than usual summer with precipitation at equal chances to be higher or lower than average. The cool weather plants will not be happy but the tomatoes and peppers will be.
For now though, everything is beautiful potential and I’m just gonna sit with that joy for awhile.
#eggplant #fakeSpring #iceOut #peppers #seedStarting #tomatoes -
Fake Spring
Fake Spring came to Minnesota last week. Fake spring usually happens a couple times in late winter before real spring arrives. Temperatures soared to 50F / 10C and a few degrees above. Now that might not sound warm to you, but for us, that meant going out on neighborhood foot patrol in sneakers and a hoodie. It was glorious. And then Wednesday temperatures crashed, and the forecasted 2 inches/ 5 cm of snow turned into 7.6 inches/ 19 cm. And today the windchill is currently -9F /-23C. The garden had almost been clear of snow and the chickens were loving wandering around and scratching in the mud. They are extra grumpy right now at the sudden return of winter. I don’t blame them.
Along with the fake spring season came the fake spring of DHS drawing down federal agents in Minneapolis. We were hopeful, but continued to be vigilant. And while there are fewer agents—I’ve seen it suggested there are now less than 1,000 (pre-surge ICE staffing in Minnesota was 150 agents in the entire state)—they remain active. They are continuing to change tactics, and have shifted out to the suburbs where people are more spread out, making keeping eyes on them harder. They are still plenty active in Minneapolis though, just much quieter about it than previously. So while the broader media has looked away because the surge here is “over,” it isn’t over.
The Bulwark has a good article, Special Saturday Triad: What I Saw at the Battle of Minneapolis, that gives an overview of what has been happening in the city and where we are now. My neighborhood is right next to the Federal building where DHS operates from, and a Lord of the Rings loving neighbor compared us to Gondor and the Whipple Building to Mordor. It made me laugh, but also, it’s kind of true. Except we have no wizards or kings or armies, just a bunch of Hobbits mostly. But Hobbits can do great things.
Real spring will eventually arrive, and we’ll have ice out on the lakes and hopefully ICE out of the state. However, while the melted lake ice doesn’t invade another city or state, I hope ICE doesn’t take their thuggery elsewhere. Perhaps Congress will actually manage to do something worthwhile and not cave in during this partial government shutdown.
Ice out on my neighborhood lake is generally around the last week of March to the first week of April. Not long now. In anticipation of real spring, I have begun indoor seed starting. I dragged my seed starting shelves, heat mats, grow lights, pots and trays up from the basement yesterday and set it up in front of my kitchen window. Sorry James. This makes things a bit tight in our kitchen for the next few months, but there is nowhere else to set this up, so…
I hadn’t yet opened the envelopes my new seeds came in and got a surprise. Two of the seed companies unexpectedly sent me free seeds and they were all tomatoes. I was already set with four tomato varieties I grew last year and saved seeds, so these new choices caused a conundrum. Do I try them? How could I not? So I went from planning on 10 tomato plants to planting 18. Um where will they all go? Don’t ask such silly questions!
Here are the tomatoes I am starting:
- Hungarian Heart—This quickly became our favorite tomato when I first grew it three years ago. They are huge and make great sauce, salsa, and sliced on a sandwich. Saved seeds.
- Grappoli D’Inverno—Another one that became a favorite when I first grew it three years ago. This is a plum tomato that makes great sauce and also roasts up nicely. Saved seeds.
- Orange Peach—I grew this for the first time last year. They are sweet small to medium-sized tomatoes. They struggled in the cool spring and then got overwhelmed by the monster tomatillo, but still managed to fruit enough to try them again and see if they do better a second time around. Saved seeds.
- Alley Tomato—This is a small cherry tomato that we found growing from a crack in the alley pavement behind our house three years ago. We moved it into the garden and it grew big and strong and produced an abundance of marble-sized red tomatoes that were quite tasty. I have no idea what actual variety it is, so we just call it Alley Tomato. Saved seeds.
- Kathy’s Red Barn—One of the free packets. This is a large red beefsteak tomato that is intended for slicing. The description says it has outstanding flavor and is great for BLTs, but in my house that would be TLT—tofu or tempeh, lettuce and tomato.
- Yellow Ping Pong—This came free from Sandhill Preservation. It’s a 2-inch yellow cherry tomato, which makes it about the size of a ping pong ball. The description says it is sweet and juicy and has a lemon-like finish to the flavor. Yum
- Goose Creek—Another free one from Sandhill. This is a small pink tomato. It’s an heirloom that has been grown since the 1800s. The story is that the seeds were smuggled in the pocket of a Caribbean slave woman on a ship that docked at Charleston near Goose Creek, South Carolina. The seeds were passed down through her family and her great-great grandson, Jimmy Williams, owner of Hayground Organic Gardening in California, has offered the seeds to the rest of the world.
That’s all the tomatoes. Now for the 15 pepper plants:
- Early Jalapeño—I had to buy new seeds because the ones I had been saving from jalapeños we got in our csa box three years ago didn’t sprout last year and I had to buy plants at the May plant sale. These seeds are open-pollinated so I will be able to save them and grow them on for years and years. They are also a variety adapted to Minnesota, even better! I’ve got six pots planted with these. We love us some jalapeños!
- Ancho Poblano—I have never grown poblanos before so we’ll see how it goes. James wanted something good for roasting and stuffing.
- Lunchbox Orange Sweet Pepper—This is a small sweet snacking pepper. I’ve never grown these before either.
- Long Red Cayenne—Third year growing these and they do really well in the garden. They make great hot sauce and add a spicy kick to other dishes. We have a small jar of dried ones from last summer that we crush up for spice. Saved seeds.
And, I’ve got three pots planted with zebra eggplant. It’s a small green and white striped fruit used in a lot of traditional African recipes. The flavor is semi-sweet and it is good raw, boiled, sautéed, in soup, or grilled—very versatile! This has been northern climate adapted over the last seven years in Fargo, North Dakota, by grower Simeon Bakunda, an immigrant from Congo. Also, apparently, the leaves of the plant are edible and highly nutritious and make a delicious side dish when sautéed with onion, garlic, anise, mushrooms, hot pepper, parsley , and nutmeg. I have never grown these before and the last time I tried to grow eggplant was in the early 2000s. I grew the big purple kind and had only one plant, carefully nursing along a single fruit that a thieving squirrel came along and tore apart just days before it was ripe. Never tried eggplant again after that. I’m hoping because these are smaller and green that it tricks the squirrels into thinking they aren’t ripe. If the squirrels aren’t fooled, at least I know I can eat the leaves.
Planting all these seeds felt so good, a balm for my soul. I love the cusp of gardening season when everything is full of possibility and abundance and nothing has yet gone awry. Last year was cooler than usual with plentiful and regular rain. The Climate Prediction Center outlook for this summer indicates a likelihood of a warmer than usual summer with precipitation at equal chances to be higher or lower than average. The cool weather plants will not be happy but the tomatoes and peppers will be.
For now though, everything is beautiful potential and I’m just gonna sit with that joy for awhile.
#eggplant #fakeSpring #iceOut #peppers #seedStarting #tomatoes -
Fake Spring
Fake Spring came to Minnesota last week. Fake spring usually happens a couple times in late winter before real spring arrives. Temperatures soared to 50F / 10C and a few degrees above. Now that might not sound warm to you, but for us, that meant going out on neighborhood foot patrol in sneakers and a hoodie. It was glorious. And then Wednesday temperatures crashed, and the forecasted 2 inches/ 5 cm of snow turned into 7.6 inches/ 19 cm. And today the windchill is currently -9F /-23C. The garden had almost been clear of snow and the chickens were loving wandering around and scratching in the mud. They are extra grumpy right now at the sudden return of winter. I don’t blame them.
Along with the fake spring season came the fake spring of DHS drawing down federal agents in Minneapolis. We were hopeful, but continued to be vigilant. And while there are fewer agents—I’ve seen it suggested there are now less than 1,000 (pre-surge ICE staffing in Minnesota was 150 agents in the entire state)—they remain active. They are continuing to change tactics, and have shifted out to the suburbs where people are more spread out, making keeping eyes on them harder. They are still plenty active in Minneapolis though, just much quieter about it than previously. So while the broader media has looked away because the surge here is “over,” it isn’t over.
The Bulwark has a good article, Special Saturday Triad: What I Saw at the Battle of Minneapolis, that gives an overview of what has been happening in the city and where we are now. My neighborhood is right next to the Federal building where DHS operates from, and a Lord of the Rings loving neighbor compared us to Gondor and the Whipple Building to Mordor. It made me laugh, but also, it’s kind of true. Except we have no wizards or kings or armies, just a bunch of Hobbits mostly. But Hobbits can do great things.
Real spring will eventually arrive, and we’ll have ice out on the lakes and hopefully ICE out of the state. However, while the melted lake ice doesn’t invade another city or state, I hope ICE doesn’t take their thuggery elsewhere. Perhaps Congress will actually manage to do something worthwhile and not cave in during this partial government shutdown.
Ice out on my neighborhood lake is generally around the last week of March to the first week of April. Not long now. In anticipation of real spring, I have begun indoor seed starting. I dragged my seed starting shelves, heat mats, grow lights, pots and trays up from the basement yesterday and set it up in front of my kitchen window. Sorry James. This makes things a bit tight in our kitchen for the next few months, but there is nowhere else to set this up, so…
I hadn’t yet opened the envelopes my new seeds came in and got a surprise. Two of the seed companies unexpectedly sent me free seeds and they were all tomatoes. I was already set with four tomato varieties I grew last year and saved seeds, so these new choices caused a conundrum. Do I try them? How could I not? So I went from planning on 10 tomato plants to planting 18. Um where will they all go? Don’t ask such silly questions!
Here are the tomatoes I am starting:
- Hungarian Heart—This quickly became our favorite tomato when I first grew it three years ago. They are huge and make great sauce, salsa, and sliced on a sandwich. Saved seeds.
- Grappoli D’Inverno—Another one that became a favorite when I first grew it three years ago. This is a plum tomato that makes great sauce and also roasts up nicely. Saved seeds.
- Orange Peach—I grew this for the first time last year. They are sweet small to medium-sized tomatoes. They struggled in the cool spring and then got overwhelmed by the monster tomatillo, but still managed to fruit enough to try them again and see if they do better a second time around. Saved seeds.
- Alley Tomato—This is a small cherry tomato that we found growing from a crack in the alley pavement behind our house three years ago. We moved it into the garden and it grew big and strong and produced an abundance of marble-sized red tomatoes that were quite tasty. I have no idea what actual variety it is, so we just call it Alley Tomato. Saved seeds.
- Kathy’s Red Barn—One of the free packets. This is a large red beefsteak tomato that is intended for slicing. The description says it has outstanding flavor and is great for BLTs, but in my house that would be TLT—tofu or tempeh, lettuce and tomato.
- Yellow Ping Pong—This came free from Sandhill Preservation. It’s a 2-inch yellow cherry tomato, which makes it about the size of a ping pong ball. The description says it is sweet and juicy and has a lemon-like finish to the flavor. Yum
- Goose Creek—Another free one from Sandhill. This is a small pink tomato. It’s an heirloom that has been grown since the 1800s. The story is that the seeds were smuggled in the pocket of a Caribbean slave woman on a ship that docked at Charleston near Goose Creek, South Carolina. The seeds were passed down through her family and her great-great grandson, Jimmy Williams, owner of Hayground Organic Gardening in California, has offered the seeds to the rest of the world.
That’s all the tomatoes. Now for the 15 pepper plants:
- Early Jalapeño—I had to buy new seeds because the ones I had been saving from jalapeños we got in our csa box three years ago didn’t sprout last year and I had to buy plants at the May plant sale. These seeds are open-pollinated so I will be able to save them and grow them on for years and years. They are also a variety adapted to Minnesota, even better! I’ve got six pots planted with these. We love us some jalapeños!
- Ancho Poblano—I have never grown poblanos before so we’ll see how it goes. James wanted something good for roasting and stuffing.
- Lunchbox Orange Sweet Pepper—This is a small sweet snacking pepper. I’ve never grown these before either.
- Long Red Cayenne—Third year growing these and they do really well in the garden. They make great hot sauce and add a spicy kick to other dishes. We have a small jar of dried ones from last summer that we crush up for spice. Saved seeds.
And, I’ve got three pots planted with zebra eggplant. It’s a small green and white striped fruit used in a lot of traditional African recipes. The flavor is semi-sweet and it is good raw, boiled, sautéed, in soup, or grilled—very versatile! This has been northern climate adapted over the last seven years in Fargo, North Dakota, by grower Simeon Bakunda, an immigrant from Congo. Also, apparently, the leaves of the plant are edible and highly nutritious and make a delicious side dish when sautéed with onion, garlic, anise, mushrooms, hot pepper, parsley , and nutmeg. I have never grown these before and the last time I tried to grow eggplant was in the early 2000s. I grew the big purple kind and had only one plant, carefully nursing along a single fruit that a thieving squirrel came along and tore apart just days before it was ripe. Never tried eggplant again after that. I’m hoping because these are smaller and green that it tricks the squirrels into thinking they aren’t ripe. If the squirrels aren’t fooled, at least I know I can eat the leaves.
Planting all these seeds felt so good, a balm for my soul. I love the cusp of gardening season when everything is full of possibility and abundance and nothing has yet gone awry. Last year was cooler than usual with plentiful and regular rain. The Climate Prediction Center outlook for this summer indicates a likelihood of a warmer than usual summer with precipitation at equal chances to be higher or lower than average. The cool weather plants will not be happy but the tomatoes and peppers will be.
For now though, everything is beautiful potential and I’m just gonna sit with that joy for awhile.
#eggplant #fakeSpring #iceOut #peppers #seedStarting #tomatoes -
Fri. March 27, 2025: Pens and Paints
image courtesy of Free Photos from PixabayFriday, March 27, 2026
Waxing Moon
Rainy with the temperature dropping
Happy Friday, and I hope you have a lovely weekend planned.
Today is World Theatre Day! Celebrate the theatre and those you know in it.
Bechdel Project is fully funded for next year, so I think now is a good time to talk about how to work remotely together. Since, you know, they claim to like my work and all.
I got an email from the cat anthology that seemingly contradicts what the editor sent me a few days ago, so I need to get in touch and sort that out. The editor gave me a date and promised details on the contract. This email goes into maybe-someday territory. So I want to find out what’s actually going on. Also, the editor’s email was specific to me and to my piece, and this email is a “dear author” email.
Contradictory information annoys me. It’s one thing if things need to change, and it’s clearly stated that it is changing. It’s another to pretend the original conversation never happened. Which is one of many reasons I do everything in writing.
Meditation was lovely, and Charlotte was happy.
I finished the March newsletter and got it out the door. I set up the document for June’s newsletter, so as things happen, I can do little write-ups, and it’s all set to pop into the template when it’s time for format and send.
I went to the grocery store my own damn self and had such a good time shopping! I was even in budget, although it was temping to just Buy All the Things. But I didn’t need all of it, just some of it, and restocking some basics. I got to catch up with the fishmonger, too, which was great. And treated myself to a bundle of purple tulips.
It was all I could do to keep from bursting into song, as though I was in a musical.
Oh, and suddenly, they have cooking implements back, but moved to be between the canned fish and the soup. With plenty of packages of wooden spoons! At least I know if I screw up this weekend, I can get more.
Came home, hauled everything up the stairs, put it away, set up on the porch, and painted the first coat on the next set of spoons.
By then, it was time for the marketing and the #FreelanceFriends chat. That was lively, and a lot of fun.
I had my lunch break, then did the next coat of paint on the spoons. Because it was clouding up and getting more humid, it took longer for the paint to dry on this batch.
I kept thinking yesterday was Friday, but it was Thursday.
Switched over to the ghostwriting, the project that was originally due this week, but was pushed out to Monday, due to the switch. I’ve been struggling with it, but I think/hope I’m doing some solid work. I didn’t move ahead as far as I hoped, but I was pleased with the work I did.
Heated up leftovers for dinner. It started raining by then.
I attended the virtual reading my fellow Boiler House Poets read in. All the work was really interesting, but their work, in particular, was terrific. I’m so glad they invited me!
It was bucketing down with rain by the time the reading was done. I sat and read for a bit with the cats. Bea wanted attention. Tessa wanted attention.
I slept reasonably well, and woke up around 4. I lazed in bed until 5, then got up and started the routine. I was up before Tessa had a chance to start yelling, and she was quite surprised. The rain seemed to have let up, so I fed everyone and did the day’s yoga practice, then hauled the laundry to the laundromat. I had trouble with the card reader – it said, “network error.” Fortunately, I had some cash on me and the coin machine was working, so I got quarters and put them through. And about a half hour later, I got a notification that the card payment was put through. Twice. Guys, I am not paying nearly $30 for a single load of laundry that should cost me $10.50. So I will be in touch with their office AGAIN. I want to switch back to only using cash there.
Very frustrating.
Hauled all the laundry home and up the stairs. It’s raining lightly, and I can feel the temperature drop. It’s supposed to snow tomorrow night. Urgh.
On today’s agenda: ghostwriting and the two art projects. I hope to get to where I need to be on the ghostwriting today, because it’s due at the end of day Monday. I would rather spend the entire weekend focused on finishing the two art projects. But we will see what needs to be done.
Tomorrow, I have a community obligation to attend (if you know, you know) for a few hours, and housework, but the bulk of the weekend will be finishing the art.
Next week, we end one month and start a new one. A full moon on April Fool’s Day is the universe having a good laugh at our expense, I think. Plus, with the regime in charge over here, every day is a day of fools, and not in the positive sense of the word.
I have a book review due today, so I will get that out after breakfast, and then get back to work on the art and the ghostwriting. I also need to do my 30-minute meditation and my 15-minute free write at some point.
It will all get done, and I’m excited about the new things I’m learning working on the art pieces.
Have a great weekend, and we’ll catch up on the other side.
#art #business #fiction #freelance #ghostwriting #groceryShopping #poetry #writing -
Seed for Thought
Saturday’s mail brought the first of the season’s seed catalogs. And Saturday night it snowed. The snow was just a sugar coated dusting, but it was a reminder that winter is coming—eventually—because it is forecast to be as warm as 59F/15C by next Saturday.
But today is gray and very windy and below freezing, a perfect reason to lose myself for a little while in the seed catalog. Yes, yes, I know, the garden just finished up and James picked all the collards Friday and has them fermenting—collard kraut! It’s a thing!
My internet recipe searches told me collard kraut used to be very popular across the southern United States and some people say it is even better than sauerkraut. James has ours fermenting with some garlic and crushed red pepper. I’ll let you know how it comes out.
This is the first year I’ve ever grown collards in the garden, and they’ve been a great success. Not only did they grow well, but we enjoyed eating them too. The small leaves made it fresh into salads and as they got bigger they’d get sautéed with onions and eaten as a side dish or combined with other things like tofu scramble, lentil eggs, curry, or soup. The variety I grew was “yellow cabbage” and came from a Minnesota seed company called North Circle Seeds. I asked James whether he liked the collards enough to grow them again next year, and he said that while it took him a little while to figure out how to use them and get used to cooking with them, he did indeed like them and we should definitely grow them again. Noted!
I also grew Swiss chard for the first time this year and we liked that too. I grew “bright lights” and the plant stalks and leaf vein colors ranged from golden yellow to bright red. We generally ate the leaves while they were small, chopped up in salads, which added some lovely color. The bigger leaves sometimes ended up in a stir fry. This will also make it into next year’s garden. Yum!
Tasty and nutritious!It’s sunchoke digging time! I dug up the first bowl Saturday afternoon just from one small area in the chicken garden. There are sunchokes in the chicken garden because last year I was silly enough to plant two roots along the outside of the chain link fence thinking—actually I don’t know what I was thinking. At the end of last season I dug up half a bowl of huge roots and thought, there, I’ve got them all. Yeah, right.
This year I had even more sunchokes growing along the fence outside and inside the chicken garden. So I dug and I dug and I didn’t worry about pulling out runner roots I came across because I am sure in spring I will discover that they have spread even more.
The sunchoke patch in the main garden is enormous. There will be more bowls to come as James has time to preserve them and I have time to dig and as long as the ground is not frozen. In spring when the ground thaws I will be able to dig up more, and there will be more, because I will find out as they pop up where all the runner roots have gone to this growing season. It’s a good thing we like them.
My turn for Reaping What She Sows: How Women are Rebuilding Our Broken Food System by Nancy Matsumoto came up on Friday. So far I’ve read the first chapter, “Black Mutual Aid, From the Rural South the Urban Northeast,” and it is fantastic.
As with everything in U.S. history, Black farmers have been, and continue to be, discriminated against. You can read a very good and succinct history in this September 2019 Atlantic article (gift link), The Great Land Robbery: The shameful story of how 1 million black families have been ripped from their farms.
Matsumoto tells pieces of this history in her storytelling about a number of women farmers who have created cooperatives, training and helping Black farmers acquire land, seed, and fair prices through a cooperative distribution network. The women and their stories are inspiring and full of lessons on how to support regenerative farming outside a white-supremacist agri-capitalist system.
Matsumoto is familiar with cooperatives. Her Japanese grandparents were interred during World War II and her grandfather helped create a cooperative network in the internment camps. This network became the second largest consumer co-op in the United States. Given the political and economic situation in the United States currently, I suspect we will be seeing more cooperatives and mutual aid societies popping up all over the country in the coming years.
Throughout history women have been the seed keepers, carefully saving and preserving seeds from season to season and generation to generation. A few years ago I read a wonderful novel called The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson. It is the story of a current day Dakota woman who is gifted a cache of seeds saved by her ancestors when they ran from being attacked by U.S. troops. It is a story of healing and renewal. I was reminded of this novel while reading the first chapter of Reaping What She Sows because one of the women she profiles is a seed keeper and works for Truelove Seeds, an heirloom seed company that offers culturally important seeds.
Of course I had to look at their offerings, and wow! If you want to read more about the company, The Sierra Club has a great article about them, The Preservation of Culture Begins With a Seed I am definitely going to try and grow green striped cushaw squash! And they also have Korean hong-gochu peppers so I can make kimchi and even collard-chi next year.
The next chapter of the book is about rebuilding the grain economy. Looking forward to learning even more!
While I am on the subject of seeds, I have been a fan of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and bought seeds from them many times through the years. But in the last few months I’ve found out that as wholesome as they advertise themselves to be, this is not the case. In 2019 they invited a white supremacist to speak at their spring planting festival. After much uproar, they uninvited him, but issued no statement of apology or anything that I was able to discover. I have also heard that they steal seeds from indigenous peoples and then rename them and don’t acknowledge where they really came from, though I am unable to find direct confirmation of that. However, just last year the tomato they had on the cover of their catalog turned out to be a recently released GMO variety they sold as non-GMO. They said their seed came from France and they tested it and the results were inconclusive. Nonetheless, they pulled it from their stock and destroyed all the seeds.
Along with just discovering Truelove Seeds, I learned a few months ago about Native Seed Search and there is also Bertie County Seeds I just found out about. I generally buy seeds from Fedco who tell you exactly where the seeds come from (corporate grower, independent farmer, etc) and also credit and pay indigenous communities for their seeds. There is also Seed Savers Exchange. And then, as I mentioned earlier, North Circle Seeds, a small independent Minnesota seed company that sells varieties that will grow in my climate.
I guess I am getting a lesson in seed keeping and seed companies that I hadn’t thought much about before. Seeds are more than hybrid, open-pollinated, heirloom, GMO, organic. It’s important to know their origins and to make sure the people who have stewarded them are acknowledged and compensated. For some reason I always believed this was the case, but it turns out to be otherwise.
#collardKraut #collards #cooperatives #firstSnow #NorthCircleSeeds #seedCatalogs #seedKeepers #seedSaving #seeds #sunchokes #swissChard #TrueloveSeeds
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All is ready for my special meal for tonight's visitors. I made the fish stock from Halibut bones on Friday, it is ready to be turned into the soup, which will have beetroot, celery & carrots, along with pieces of Coley (Pollock) marinated in Soy sauce. For the main dish, the casserole of Yorkshire mutton in chicken stock with a multitude of veggies is now in the oven, cooking super-slowly well below simmering, the flavours highly concentrated and super-intense. For the cheese we have Comte and goats cheese. Sharing honest food with good friends, in difficult times, that too is resistance.
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Saturday night was a very special night, for several reasons. As some of you know, this past year was a tough one as my father was diagnosed early on with terminal lung cancer, and subsequently suffered a few health crises which had him in the ICU a couple of times. For most of the past year, Jess & my lives were occupied with helping him, and visiting him regularly in New York. We were happy to do it, but it did mean a pause in our usual get togethers with friends, which we missed.
On December 10th, 2025, my father succumbed to his cancer. As you might expect, the subsequent weeks have been full of grief, and paperwork. Even death has bureaucracy.
December 10th was also the day that the Compass Box Whisky Confluence auction at Bonhams Skinner, to benefit The Wolfsonian-FIU, ended. I'd been watching the auction, but uncertain about bidding - despite being a longtime Compass Box fanatic. However, after my father passed early that morning, I decided that I needed something good to go with the day - and that was going to be winning Confluence, which I did. You only live once, as was painfully clear that day.
My birthday is at the end of December, and we had planned a small gathering with friends to celebrate - but Jess & I both came home from my father's services in NY under the weather, and not really in a celebratory mood, so we cancelled that.
Instead, yesterday we had a gathering which was partly a delayed birthday celebration, partly a toast to my father's memory, and partly an exploration of a truly unique whisky. But, more than anything, it was a gathering of good friends for the first time in quite a while - and boy did I need that more than I realized.
Thank you Jess, Jer, Shamala, Marc, Lizzy, Lisa, Carol, Friski and Betsy for making the evening wonderful.
Before we could dive into the whisky, we had to put something in on stomachs - so we had an assortment of my father's favorites, in his honor. There was an antipasto salad, some veggies and cheese, meatballs and sauce (for subs or over pasta), pickle soup (the Cafe Polonia recipe), kielbasa and sauerkraut, pierogi, a texas sheet cake, rice pudding, cupcakes, and some fine Läderach chocolates.
Properly fueled, we attacked the mission of the evening.
We'd assembled a lineup of whiskies for the evening - of course, there was the Confluence, but we also pulled some expressions from the component distilleries. Obviously, these were not *the* components used to make Confluence, but it was just a fun way to try a few things.
We'd lined up Mackmyra, a Gordon & MacPhail Miltonduff, a G&M Macallan, a Highland Park 25, a Flora & Fauna Teaninich, and a Glen Moray (which was peated, it was what we had). We also had a couple of whiskies from Nashoba Valley Distillery, right here in town - Papa's Bourbon and the Stimulus Twenty 20 year old American Single Malt. Thanks to Marc Follit, our good friend, neighbor, and distiller at Nashoba, for bringing those.
Oh, yes, and there is also the Black Tot Rum Last Consignment. It seemed like another special bottle to open - after the whiskies.
We started off with the Confluence, so that we'd have clear palates - the better to taste it with. Whisky reviewer extraordinaire, Friski Whiski, agreed to write up a joint review with input from the whole crew, and we spent quite a bit of time on that. A most enjoyable time it was, too. We avoided reading the official tasting notes before creating our own, and were pleased to see that our notes ended up aligning fairly well with the official ones once we were done.
Friski posted the review on his page (https://www.facebook.com/friski.whiski/posts/pfbid0cQjrjpvFAm7XzAwf54Y62YPcTHMwcriwn5aF1b4JifQrV9XumhkTR5NYcwrT18tMl), but here it is:
---START---
Dram of a lifetime on 1/10/26Compass Box
Confluence
Blended Malt Whisky
Age: NAS
Abv: 48.9%
No. of bottles: 1Components:
The Mackmyra Distillery
Swedish Single Malt
Cherry Wine Fresh Seasoned American Oak
9%The Mackmyra Distillery
Swedish Single Malt
Oloroso First Fill Sherry Seasoned American Oak
9%The Mackmyra Distillery
Swedish Single Malt
American First Fill & Virgin Oak Casks
9%The Mackmyra Distillery
Swedish Single Malt
Swedish Virgin Oak & First Fill Casks
3%Teaninich Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Sherry Butt
12%Miltonduff Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Bourbon Barrel
12%Highland Park Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
Recharred Hogshead
3%The Macallan Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Bourbon Barrel
14%Glen Moray Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Bourbon Barrel
15%Glen Moray Distillery
Scottish Single Malt
First Fill Bourbon Barrel
15%Availability: 1 of 1 bottle. Bonhams auction house event "Art & Alchemy of Spirits: Presenting Compass Box to Benefit the Wolfsonian".
Crowd source notes: MegaZone, Jess Terry, Jer Johnson, Shamala Rao, Marc Follit, Lizzy Nicolai, Lisa Mulvehill, Carol Ann, Betsey Hendricks, and Friski Whiski.
Color: Medium honey and golden syrup
Neat (without water)
Nose: Soft and crisp. Honey, green apple, marzipan, cooked caramelized pineapple, confectioner’s sugar, lemon citrus, orange peel, with hints of cardamom and anise.Texture: Warm. Creamy, buttery, slightly drying through the finish and pleasantly astringent.
Palate: Apple blossom honey, honey comb, marzipan, caramel, and birchwood. Swedish Kanelbulle (which is a classic Scandinavian cinnamon bun, spiced with cardamom in the dough, less gooey and use a lighter cinnamon application).
Finish: A roller coaster ride of white pepper, fresh green olive oil, saline, toasted almonds, fine Corinthian leather, oak, grapefruit pith, and oleo saccharum.
Unleash the serpent (with water)
Nose: An orchard house of fruit moved to the forefront. Pear, apple frangipane, sliced almonds, sweet cracked malt and fresh cream. Birchbeer float with vanilla bean ice cream. Lakrits, lemon blossoms where floral and citrus combine into a confluence of marriage.Texture: Creamy, buttery, woody without the tannic astringency.
Palate: Baked apple dumplings, roasted butternut squash, demerara sugar, sweet cream, and candied meyer lemon.Finish: Earthy notes get amplified. Warm spiced sweet potato pie with a pastry crust, sea spray, salted caramel, walnut skins, and toffee with subtle hints of a gentle smoke.
Tasting notes glass used: Open Up Chef and Sommelier 5.5oz glass.
The morning after glass: Sweet cracked malt, dust, vanilla, and caramelPairings...
Season: AnyMusic: Lovefool by The Cardigans
Food: Rosemary pork loin with homemade applesauce
Media: Best enjoyed with great company and good conversation.
Overall: From first nose to final sip, several of us ended up in a journey from an apple orchard to our grandmother's seaside cottage while various desserts were being cooked. Fantastic debut from Angela D'Orazio at Compass Box! We really look forward to her future creations.
---END---As you can see, we loved it. This is a fantastic whisky, IMHO, and I'm thrilled that we were able to try it. Whisky is for sharing, not for staring. It would have been a crying shame for this to sit on someone's shelf, never to be tasted. You can tell we enjoyed it - we went through about 1/3 of the bottle compiling those tasting notes. ;-)
Afterwards we did taste through the other whiskies - which were good, but kind of paled a bit after Confluence. The Mackmyra was well-loved as well, and you can see the influence in Confluence. The other standout for the group was the Flora & Fauna Teaninich - really good. Enough so that we're going to be looking for more Teaninich at auctions to try in the future.
Really, everything was good - and, more importantly, we had a lot of laughs and great conversation trying them.
After we ran the line of whisky, we did open the Last Consignment - and I figured out why it comes with two extra corks! The cork in the bottle is fully seated and covered in wax - so you have to pull it like a wine bottle, and it isn't really designed to go back in. So you use one of the supplied corks to reseal the bottle. Mystery solved!
It is a very rich, unctuous rum that those who tried enjoyed. It is also liquid history, and it was special just to be trying it. The previous evening I'd also read through the little booklet that is included, going through the history of the rum and rituals in the Royal Navy, and that was quite interesting.
The molasses note is front and center, but there are tropical fruits, spices, chocolate, leather, a bit of funk (there has to be some Jamaican rum in there)... a really thought-provoking sip.
As the evening ran down, and some of the crew left for home, we decided to keep the evening going with a few additional drams. So I grabbed some Glenmorangie. We hit Year of the Snake first - I'd opened this, but some of the others had not had a chance. This is still a standout dram - a blend of ex-Bourbon and Amontillado finishing casks.
They we opened the Rare Cask 21 year Mizunara finish. As expected, this is a very fine whisky, but the Snake was still in the lead by consensus.
And we last turned to the new 25 year, The Altus. This is mostly aged in designer bourbon casks, but is seasoned with a little whisky finished in Malmsey Madeira casks. A very juicy, fruit-forward dram, this ended up coming in second place, bumping the Mizunara to 3rd. Still, they're all fantastic.
That pretty much wrapped up the night. It was an amazing time start to finish - fantastic drams, but even better friends.
Next Saturday we're doing a larger gathering - this time for Raising Glasses rums. Should be fun!
#Whiskey #Whiskey #Rum #CompassBox #BlackTot #Mackmyra #Miltonduff #Teaninich #Macallan #HighlandPark #GlenMoray #NashobaValleyWinery #Glenmorangie #Scotch #Bourbon
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#GazaSoupKitchen Update
March 15, 2026 by #HaniAlmadhoun, Organizer
"Friends, supporters, allies —
Tonight is Laylat al-Qadr, the Night of Power, and I wanted to share a personal update from the last ten days here at the Gaza Soup Kitchen. I hope you’ll read this as a conversation, because that’s what this work is: real people, real families, real moments, not just numbers or logistics.
A lot of people aren’t paying close attention to #Gaza right now, and that’s understandable. People here don’t want to always be in the news. But they also don’t want to suffer in silence.
Silence, right now, looks like this: in March alone, food prices in Gaza rose by at least 37%, and they continue to climb. A small piece of clothing for a child for Eid can cost $60, when the same item might sell for $20 elsewhere. Aid has slowed, deliveries cut to a fraction of what they were — 80 trucks a day instead of 250–300. Prices spike, families struggle, and every day is harder than the last.
For our team, this means every meal costs more. Every food parcel is more expensive. But we refuse to compromise. The meals we serve in hospitals continue to include animal protein because families here have already been forced into mostly vegetarian diets for far too long. Nutrition, dignity, and care matter — even if it’s harder or more expensive to provide.
Running the kitchen is exhausting. Driving across Gaza to coordinate deliveries. Writing updates and responding to emails. Balancing logistics with compassion. There’s no real gain here, no profit, no easy path. The only reason we keep showing up is because it is needed, because the people we serve are counting on us, and because the smiles, the laughter, the moments of joy — even amid hardship — are worth everything.
During Ramadan, one of the things we’ve done is host communal iftars. Elderly folks gather, laugh, tease each other, sometimes even play small games. For a few hours, they feel lighter, younger, alive in a way that the day-to-day challenges can’t take away.
Today, we hosted a special program for children who are orphaned or separated from their parents. We brought live characters to dance and sing with them, set up face painting, served food — and yes, even cotton candy. These little touches are not easy, not cheap, but they bring joy and dignity in a situation that is otherwise incredibly difficult.
Everything we do is family-first. Mothers, sisters, daughters, brothers cook as they would for their own families. Portions go home just like they would in a family kitchen. We never compromise on quality, because the people we serve deserve the care we would want for our own families. Our name is on this work because it is personal, not commercial.
Looking ahead, we are planning a few changes to make our work even more effective. We’ll slightly reduce the size of some food parcels to expand the number of kitchens we operate. We’ll expand our hospital meal programs — right now we serve two hospitals, and after Ramadan we hope to serve at least three. Food parcels are important, but hot meals reach the families and children most in need, where hunger is visible, urgent, and unavoidable.
During Ramadan, we delivered around 35,000 food parcels — a massive effort — but still only about 10% of Gaza’s population. That’s a small fraction of the need. So we focus on where every dollar is spent wisely: hot kitchens, hospital meals, clean water deliveries, and programs that bring dignity and care.
This Ramadan, there is also something deeply meaningful that fills us with pride and hope. We’ve seen mosques raising funds for the Gaza Soup Kitchen, collectives of rabbis from Ceasefire, and even a few churches around the country coming together to support families in Gaza. Moments like these remind us of the good in humanity, of the ways people reach across divides to care for others. It’s a badge of honor to witness it — and a reminder that, even in the hardest times, kindness persists.
This work is exhausting, yes. It can make you cry. It can make you smile in the same moment. But it is also deeply human. The smiles on children’s faces. The laughter of elders at iftar. Families receiving a parcel that truly sustains them. These moments remind us why we keep showing up, day after day, even when it’s hard.
And none of this would be possible without you — your trust, your generosity, your willingness to stand with Gaza when the world’s attention shifts elsewhere. Every meal, every parcel, every program is made possible by your support. You make it possible for us to keep showing up for people who need it most.
From all of us here, with deep gratitude and respect for the resilience of the communities we serve: thank you. Thank you for being part of this family. Thank you for helping us hold space for dignity, care, and humanity in the hardest of circumstances.
With gratitude and heart,
Hani and the Board of the Gaza Soup Kitchen"To donate:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/Hot-meals-in-gaza-daily#NorthGaza #GazaAid #GazaFundraisers #FreePalestine #Fundraisers #FoodIsLife #WaterIsLife #GoFundMe #BeitLahiya #BaitLahiya #KhanYounes #Palestine #Genocide #Starvation #IsraeliWarCrimes #NorthernGaza
Remember #ChefMahmoud
#HumanRightsAreNeverWrong #IsraeliWarCrimes #BibiIsAWarCriminal -
Summary of "Metaeugenics and Metaresistance: From Manufacturing the ‘Includeable Body’ to Walking Away from the Broom Closet
I will start this summary by explaining the title. I usually skip that part. This time I am going to explain the title because the title is so long, and so annoying. In "Academia" (which is just a fancy way to say college), there is a joke about how professors choose titles for their papers. It's not a specific joke. But everyone likes to make fun of titles that go like this "short catchy title": "long title with complicated meaning". I choose this kind of title a lot, because I think it's fun. I don't take myself too seriously.
The first part of this title is "Metaeugenics and Metaresistance". Something-ics is a kind of science, or a way of thinking, like economics, or politics. Eugenics is a way of thinking that says there are good bodies and bad bodies, and that human beings have a moral duty to keep their bodies "good" and to only have children with "good" bodies. Eugenics also says that governments are responsible for making sure their citizens are only people with "good" bodies. Eugenic science was overtly racist and ableist.
Most people believe that eugenics is over. They believe it was a bad science that happened in the past, and that we don't believe in it anymore. The problem with believing eugenics is over is that it makes it hard for you to notice when it is still happening. When more black and Indigenous people die from a virus, some people understand that this is because of racism in medicine. But when more disabled people die, we think it is because their bodies are weaker - That they do not have "good" bodies. The truth is that disabled people are dying more not /just/ because they are vulnerable but also because we made public choices that endanger their lives.
We made these choices because we still believe in good bodies and bad bodies. We still believe that it is everyone's moral duty to make their body as strong as possible. We still believe that some people deserve to die because of the body they are in. This is metaeugenics.
For something to be meta- is for it to exist without being said or written out loud. It is important to be clear that when we say disabled people, we do not mean just white disabled people. Understanding metaeugenics helps us to understand why we are okay with so many disabled people dying. It also helps us to understand that black and Indigenous people are not just vulnerable to racism, but to ableism also, even when they are not disabled in ways that are obvious to us. Because we do not care about disabled people, we allowed black and Indigenous people to be put at greater risk from racism in public health. Metaeugenics can help us understand how racism and ableism work together.
Resistance means to work against something. In this paper I want us to think about the ways we can work against metaeugenics by paying attention to metaresistance. To notice metaresistance, you have to think differently about what you are seeing when you see people resisting something. You have to notice both what someone is directly working against, and also notice how that resistence “speaks” or does resistance against other things that are not clear - like metaeugenics. I will give some examples later.
The next part of the title is “manufacturing the includable body”.
The “includable body” is something disability scholars write about. When we talk about inclusion, we usually mean that society should be open and accessible to everyone, no matter their disability. But when we “do” inclusion, schools and workplaces usually set some rules about what a person must do or be or look like in order to be included. Some scholars that write about this are Tania Titchkosky, Sara María Acevedo, Joe Stramondo, Eunjung Kim, and Anne McGuire. When a disabled child has to “earn” their place in the mainstream classroom by graduating from certain therapies, this means they have been made “includable”.
This is one way we uphold metaeugenics. We make disabled people work to make their bodies “includable” in therapies before we will accommodate them in “mainstream” spaces. Disabled people are morally obligated to make their bodies as “good” as possible, and if they don’t, they are called “non compliant”.
If you know anything about inclusion, you might be a little confused. Inclusion is a right! In the United States, we have the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act which means disabled people have the right to accommodations to access public life, work, and school. Unfortunately, rights and laws do not work without people doing the right thing. Even if you have the "right" to be included, who decides what counts as inclusion?
The problem with rights is that someone else is always in charge of deciding what "counts".
The United Nations has the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). In my paper, I try to explain that when you put these documents together, they show a global metaeugenic attitude toward disability. The CRPD says that disability must be recognized as a natural part of human diversity, but that adult decision makers have the authority to determine the "best interests" of a disabled child. In the CRC, adults are responsible for considering the "best interests of the Child" and children are guaranteed the right to "develop healthily". What does this mean when the child is born into a body that the world declares is "unhealthy" or "disordered"? Basically, a disabled child has the right to be "fixed". Our rights comand us to manufacture an includable body for any person whose body is not "normal".
The final part of this paper's title is "Walking away from the broom closet". Ursula K. le Guin was a famous science fiction author. She wrote a book called "The Ones who Walk away from Omelas". In this book, Omelas was a Utopic society. A utopia is a place where everyone is happy and cared for. In the story, people find out that Omelas's happiness is only possible because there is a child, locked in a broom closet, who takes on all the suffering so that everyone else can be happy.
I think that in the real world, we have lots of broom closets where we make people suffer so that we can have our happy idea of normal. I think prisons are an example of broom closets. I also think that for many disabled children, the "intensive interventions" we force them to do in their "best interests" are a kind of broom closet. They suffer so that we can have our happy idea of a future without disability.
Attitudes toward children can tell us about attitudes toward the future. If we want to ensure our children do not have to be disabled, then we must also want a future where there are no disabled people. The disabled community is large and diverse. There are some conditions which are painful and some people want treatments that help them feel at peace in their own bodies. But that doesn't mean that you can eliminate disability. Disability is a natural part of human life. The society that wants to eliminate disability can only hope to eliminate itself.
I will end this summary with some stories.
On August 2, 2018, NBC News’ Health website published an article praising Google Glass
and researchers at Stanford University for the creation of a wearable app that may improve eye
contact for children with autism (Scher, 2018).
In preschool, [he] struggled socially with other kids. One hit him in the
face with a rubber mallet and another in the shoulder with a metal shovel.
“He didn’t see it coming,” [she] told NBC News. “When you don’t look
kids in the face, you can’t see their reactions or know what to expect.”
When he was 5, he was diagnosed with autism.
[N]ow 9, [he] started working one on one with a therapist using applied
behavioral analysis, a technique to improve social behavior, but [his
mother] saw little progress.
“Nothing really changed,” she said. “Until Google Glass.”This child was assaulted by his peers. Because he was disabled, the solution was to put him in therapy. To use technology to change his behavior. To put him in a broom closet. So that other people could be happy.
In another project, researchers made a smart watch that would buzz to notify a child that they were behaving inappropriately. In this example, even "hand flapping" was considered inappropriate. At one point, "Child 5" was buzzed. He looked up and noticed that his teacher was too far away to stop him, and he continued flapping his hands. This child is my patron saint of noncompliance. His microresistance, written down in a scientific paper, is a testimony for all to see that the researchers are focusing on the wrong idea.
There are other examples, like the children who run away from robots designed to teach them social skills, or the children who scream at their therapists.
If we pay attention to where our participants are resisting our research, we can learn to recognize these broom closets, unlock the doors, and take these children out of Omelas forever.
https://ojs.library.carleton.ca/index.php/cjcr/article/view/1976
Hashtag soup
#SciComm #ScholarComm #STS #CDS #HCI #DisabilityStudies #HumanComputerInteraction #HumanRights #ChildrensRights #CRPD #CRC #Metaeugenics #Metaresistance #Eugenics #Omelas #UrsulaKLeGuin #Autism #Disability #DisabilityJustice #TechJustice #Technoableism #ColiberationLab -
The real story of the “Penny Tenement”: the thread about slum landlordism in 1950s Edinburgh
The story of the “Penny Tenement” is a (relatively) well known one; a slum tenement whose owner couldn’t give it a way to the City Corporation . Its very dramatic and well publicised collapse on November 21st 1959 seared it into the public consciousness, something that (just about) lingers on locally to this day. But its very nature also held the public gaze in a certain direction and meant much of the story got simply overlooked, its full details obscured. This thread is a valiant attempt at a fuller re-telling of the tale of the Penny Tenement; or Landlordism in 1950s Edinburgh.
The short, accepted version of the Penny Tenement story was that it was a condemned slum in the St. Leonard’s district of the city, so called because its owner tried (and failed) to sell it to an MP for that amount after the Edinburgh Corporation refused to take it off his hands. Everyone knew it might fall down – and then it did. Fortunately no one was badly hurt. And none of that is untrue, but there’s more to it than that. Much more. And while it happened over 65 years ago, it’s still remarkably pertinent to the city’s housing situation and the state of some of its old tenement housing stalk. So gather round, let’s start at the beginning shall we and see how the long version of the story unfolds?
Corner of Beaumont Place and St Leonards Street, Adam H. Malcolm, 1959. © Edinburgh City LibrariesNumber Six Beaumont Place, to give it its proper name, was part of a row of basic tenements built in 1812 and 1813, adjoining an existing 1780s tenement at 200-202 Pleasance. It is the four storey plus attic tenement to its right in the 1927 photo below. Post-WW1 slum clearances saw some demolition and rebuilding in the worst of the Southside. The demolition order for 200-202 Pleasance came in 1931, and it was for that reason it was part of a photo recording project at that time.
“2 Beaumont Place (Pleasance corner)”, A.H. Rushbrook, 1927. © Edinburgh City LibrariesThe removal of this end block on Beaumont Place required those massive and dramatic wooden buttresses to shore up the party wall with no. 6 (no. 4 was the ground floor shop beneath the flats). So to be clear, in 1959 when the photograph was taken, these were old buttresses, which had been there 25 or more years. Ironically, this part of the building did not collapse! But they make a great photo and draw stark attention to the neglected condition in partially-cleared districts where progress had stalled and which had been left like this for decades.
Contemporary newspaper image after the collapse of the Penny Tenement. A dramatic, but frequently misinterpreted image.Number Six (and adjoining numbers) was bought by a local man, Donald Rosie, in 1952 for all of £50 (c. £1,190 in 2024). He owned similarly decrepit tenements in Leith on Bangor Road and had some in Union Place at Greenside too. One of the first facts that has been missing in this story is that Donald Rose bought Beaumont Place knowing full well his purchase was condemned “as unfit for human habitation” – he was a slum tenement landlord and speculator. In 1935, the gable end of a tenement in adjacent Carnegie Street had dramatically collapsed, but nobody was hurt and it was simply demolished. But many neighbouring houses, including those on Beaumont Place, were condemned at this time. But that didn’t really mean much; they could still be bought and sold and let out to tenants. There was still money to be made out of this sort of housing; rents to collect and repairs to ignore if you didn’t let the ethics of it get in your way. The photo below of the Carnegie Street collapse is sometimes mistaken for that of the Penny Tenement, but it was 100 metres to the north of it and 14 years earlier.
10 Carnegie Street gable wall collapse. Newspaper photo 13th August 1935.The valuation rolls for number 6 show that in 1940 it had 23 flats and brought in £222 a year in rents. By 1953 that was £266 (c. £5,700 in 2024( or just a little over five times what Rosie paid for it. In December 1952, the same year he bought it, Donald Rosie publicly tried to sell the tenement to the Labour MP for Camlachie, William Reid, for a penny. He told the Courier & Advertiser that the condition of the sale was “[William Reid] will maintain the property, as I am expected to do, on the clear rents only, execute all repairs, meet all owner’s obligations and prove to the public that this can be done on the rents“. This was a stunt; Rosie said he wanted to show MPs how hard it was for landlords to repair and maintain tenements on the rental income alone, with fairly strict rent controls still in place after World War 2. Reid naturally refused. The fact here is that Rosie wouldn’t put any of his own money into the property. Indeed, he is on the record multiple times in both print and in Court saying that the problem was the rents, after taxes and costs, wouldn’t not pay for any repairs. It must not have occurred to him to improve his building at his own expense. The position of the landlords was that they should be allowed to increase rents first, to allow for repairs and maintenance to be improved (rather than the other way around, as was the Government position).
Because of this stunt, the Penny Tenement name stuck in the press. Rosie now tried to simply give it away to the Edinburgh Corporation (a Progressive, i.e. Tory administration). But they too declined; taking the liability of decrepit properties on for themselves and repairing them or rehousing residents to allow demolition wasn’t part of their rather gradual slum clearance plans. Perhaps Rosie had overplayed his hand somewhat now with the city authorities as as in June 1953 the City Prosecutor took him to the Burgh Court for failing to comply with a repair order from the City Engineer that had been issued in February that year. Rosie didn’t trouble himself to appear before the Magistrate. He sent his lawyer, who said it was estimated the repairs would cost £600 to complete. The City Engineer told the court “Nothing has been done so far as the roof work is concerned and the position has greatly deteriorated… Within the last day or two the ceiling in one of the houses fallen down and children have been injured to a minor extent“. Rosie’s lawyer said his client would pay “every penny of free rent” into the repairs and asked for a 3 month extension, which was granted.
Three months passed. Nothing happened. The Court summoned Rosie again for failing to comply. Again, he sent his lawyer along. The City Prosecutor said he “could not allow more latitude” and so a trial was set for October 2nd 1953. At the trial, Rosie tried but failed in a bid to call the Town Clerk, City Engineer and Housing Executive Officer as witnesses. The Magistrate Bailie Mrs K. Cameron found him guilty of “failing to comply with a Corporation order” but gave him another 3 months to make the repairs. those three more months passed. Nothing happened and Six Beaumont Place remained neither wind nor water right.
“Penny Tenement, Beaumont Place”, 1959. Adam H. Malcolm. © Edinburgh City LibrariesIn January 1954, the Burgh Court once again summoned Donald Rosie to appear for non-compliance. He sent them a letter instead and so in his absence a trial date was set for January 29th. At this he claimed to have made £74 of repairs but the City Engineer had made an inspection and told the Court no work had been done since 1953, and that residents had made two further complaints about the building to him while he was there. Rosie was found guilty (again) of failing to comply with the repair order. The Magistrate handed down a fine this time – of £2! Yes, that’s not a typo. Two Pounds. The landlord got a £2 fine for failure to carry out £600 of essential repairs. You can see now how landlords could and did act as they did with relative impunity.
Two months later, on 19th April 1954, Donald Rosie was in front of the Magistrates yet again. This time he was charged with failing to make repairs at a tenement he owned at 76 Bangor Road in Leith. At this time we now come upon another overlooked fact. One month after this, in May 1954, Rosie formed The Bangor Tenement Co. Ltd. with a capital of only £100, himself and mother as directors and himself as company secretary. Into this company the ownership of his tenements were placed. By doing this, he was cutting off his personal financial liability towards them. This was a smart financial move as he could probably see the Corporation and Courts were now intent on pursuing and making an example of him.
Newspaper notice of the formation of the Bangor Tenement Co. Ltd., Scotsman, May 29th, 1954One assumes Rosie finally made enough repairs to keep the City Engineer off his back for a while, but not for long. Two years later, in April 1956, the Dean of Guild Court ordered repair work to be carried out by the Bangor Tenement Co. after a petition by the Procurator Fiscal. But yet again, no repairs were made. At this time, Rosie claimed to have asked the Corporation to take 6 Beaumont Place off his hands or demolish it again. But if he did try this, again they didn’t want it.
It was around this time that Rosie now adopted a new tactic. He started “selling” flats at Beaumont Place to their residents. This was a clever scheme, it diluted Rosie’s ownership and liability and made the Corporation’s legal paperwork a lot more complicated. Instead of dealing with 1 owner, the Corporation were now dealing with a multitude of owners; it was top-level obfuscation. Except these “owners” weren’t really owners, even if they were entered as such on the Valuation Rolls – Donald Rosie kept the deeds. He admitted so much himself later in Court. Local councillor Pat Rogan, who we will meet further on in our story, described these “sales” as being conveyed on “scraps of paper” with transactions recorded in plain notebooks. This sort of scheme again was fairly common amongst slum landlords. The tenants stumped up a sizeable amount of their cash (from £14 to £100 was noted at Beaumont Place) and in return they got to lived in a slum rent free. But they owned it only at the discretion of their landlord and had no real security. Many tenants knew what was going on and entered willingly into such transactions; there was an attraction to the prospect of rent free living and there was hope that progress would come along soon and sort things out for them. Others also hoped – naively or cynically – that voluntarily living in a condemned slum would get them a council house sooner.
“Corner of Dalrymple Place and Carnegie Street”, Adam H. Malcolm. 1959. © Edinburgh City LibrariesOver the following 2 years, Rosie managed to “sell” at least 14 of his condemned flats on Beaumont Place to their residents. But the City Engineer eventually lost patience with the repairs and had some of the basic essentials carried out themselves. In January 1958 they sued Rosie for £12 14/- to recoup the cost of these. No surprise, Rosie didn’t pay this and went before the Sheriff Court (the next step up the Scottish legal system from the Burgh Court). He contended that as the City had declined his free offer of Number Six and as they had refused him a “closure order” on it, they were obliged to acquire it off of him instead. He lost this case and the City got its £12 14/-.
Two more years passed, in which time Rosie managed to “sell” at least 14 of his condemned flats on Beaumont Place. The City Engineer lost patience with the repairs though and had some basics carried out themselves. In January 1958 they sued Rosie for £12 14/- for these. But the wheels of progress in the St. Leonard’s district by now were now (slowly) beginning to turn, interminably. In February the following year, 1959, the city issued Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) for the worst of the housing around Beaumont Place. This extended to 391 flats with 538 different owners, superiors, occupiers and holders of heritable security (in Scottish property law, mortgage lenders) to deal with. The Landlords had helped conspire to make the ownership of property in the Slums incredibly complex and it was now slowing everything down. All this legal paperwork was just for a few streets, with scores more like them in the neighbourhood. As a result, it took a full 9 months to sort the mountain of paperwork out for the “Carnegie Street areas A & B“. It was not until the 19th November 1959 that the CPO finally crossed the desk of the Secretary of State for Scotland, Rt. Hon. John Scott Maclay MP, and was approved.
“Carnegie Street from the East.” (looking towards the Pleasance, this is the street adjacent to Beaumont Place). 1959, Adam H. Malcolm. © Edinburgh City LibrariesThe Penny Tenement would now be purchased by the Corporation for a lot more than a penny and demolished, and it would no longer be Donald Rosie’s problem. But there was a catch; CPOs did not become operative until 30 days after signing. So he had better hope nothing happened in the next 30 days. The tenement had stood for 145 years, surely it could manage one more month?
It started to rain.
It rained a lot in fact. It was mid-November in Scotland after all. It rained all the next day, November 20th. In the evening, local Councillor Pat Rogan was called to Number Six by concerned residents. He was well known and popular locally; “one of us“, a son of the district. Although he was a Labour councillor and the Progressives held power, Rogan was not content to just sit in opposition made and made slum clearance his personal priority. He was energetic about his duties and did what he could to help people in his ward. He was on good terms and first names with Corporation officials and workers and was able to swing many favours to not circumvent the usual channels and get things sorted for people. “Pat” was also a builder by trade and by his account had become something of an “out of hours” housing service for his constituents. On occasions where he couldn’t rouse a member of the City Engineer’s department to deal with an issue, he had been known to go to his own yard to get materials to make emergency repairs. So there wasn’t anything that unusual in the residents of Six Beaumont Place summoning a city councillor to their tenement one evening to look over something with his builder’s eye and to see if he could get anything done.
Pat Rogan (centre right figure, to the right of prospective PM Harold Wilson holding the pipe) when he was Housing Committee Chairman, showing Harold Wilson around the slums of Jamaica Street in 1964.At Number Six, Rogan took one look at the way the back wall of the tenement had stated to bulge and did not like what he saw. As it was late, he advised its occupants to sleep as close to the centre of the building as they could that night and that he would arrange for the City Engineer to make a visit first thing the following morning. Rogan went home to bed, but at 4AM the following morning received a call from the Parish priest to say the back wall of the Penny Tenement had just collapsed…
It was around 3AM when John Kernachan, 27, was awoken by his wife’s screams to find himself watching the back wall of his flat disappearing before his eyes. As he got out of bed, the floor beneath him gave way too. He managed to grab on to something, anything, and pull himself up and out to safety with his wife and young child. The Brocks family, on the third floor, were not quite so lucky. Five year old Catherine fell through the floor and landed in the flat of William Cranston below her. He was able to bundle her up and out the door before his floor too disappeared down with the rest. Catherine’s little sister, two year old Margaret, fell clean out of the flat and onto the pile of rubble forming in the back green below. Her mother, Betty, jumped after her and pulled her to safety before more came crashing down. The pair were bashed, cut and bruised, but miraculously otherwise unhurt and the only casualties.
When the dawn broke it was clear quite what a catastrophe had been narrowly averted. Where once there had been a scrap of back green there was now a pile of four storeys of back wall, floors, windows, furniture and assorted possessions. There were 20 occupied flats (out of 23) at Six Beaumont Place and yet nobody had been seriously injured.
Sunday Post photo showing the aftermath of the collapse.All the adjacent flats on that side of Beaumont Place were evacuated on the spot; residents were advised to go to friends or relations, or offered emergency accommodation in the City homeless centre in the former City Poorhouse at Greenbank. A police guard was put on the street to keep spectators at a safe distance. The City Engineer’s men moved in to clear the worst of the rubble and shore up the back wall with scaffolding. The Housing Committee and Lord Provost came on an inspection, with the City Engineer pointing out the huge crack in the end gable of Dalrymple Place facing the disaster site.
Newspaper photo of the inspection by the Housing Committee behind No. 6 Beaumont Place, with the end gable of Dalrymple Place behind having an obvious crack in it.That crack was inspected closer. On November 27th, 22 families at the end of Dalrymple Place were given 2 hours to pack up and leave. Within days, 100 flats had been condemned in the surroundings streets and 250 people made homeless.
This was a huge headache for the city, but what is remarkable is that the day after the collapse of the Penny Tenement, 18 of the 20 families who had lived there found themselves in new council houses in Niddrie & Craigmillar, with the other 2 declining and making their own arrangements. A huge operation had swung into effect for the other displaced people. Vacant council properties were turned around in a fraction of the usual time.; the Housing Department’s key cabinet at City Chambers was literally emptied. “Let us have every key you can lay your hands on“, the City Architect’s department was told and new properties approaching completion were rushed to finish and made ready for occupation. The gas, water and electric board employees worked round the clock to make the necessary services connections. The Civil Defence sent a mobile HQ to St. Leonards to coordinate operations, communicating with the City Chambers by shortwave radio. The Women’s Voluntary Service sent their Meals on Wheels mobile too, to provide workers and residents tea, soup and sandwiches. The Cleansing Department provided lorries to move people’s possessions to their new houses. By 30th November, all 250 residents in the district who had been evacuated in the preceding 9 days were now in council homes where they wanted them, with 80% of them being kept in their preference of the south of the city.
The City Engineer leeds the Lord Provost and the Housing Committee on an inspection tour through the condemned flats on Beaumont Place.On December 1st, the Housing Committee went on another walkabout tour of the slums. They got short shrift: “Why don’t you drop a bomb on this place?” yelled one resident in Leith’s Kirkgate at them. “Come inside instead of walking about” another demanded from her window in Arthur Street in Dumbiedykes. At the “Grand Committee on Scottish Affairs” at Westminster, Edinburgh Central Labour MP Tom Oswald asked if the Secretary of State would intervene to help speed up Compulsory Purchase Orders and provide compensation to the evicted. He declined on both points. At the City Chambers, Labour passed a motion to try speed up city centre rehousing and slum clearance. The Progressive majority on the Housing Committee defeated it 8-4. Pat Rogan condemned the “procrastination” and stated certain houses were “crumbling and insanitary prisons“. He later gave an extreme example; when they were evacuating the tenements around Beaumont place, in neighbouring Dalrymple Place they found a windowless basement flat with no bed, only a mattresses on a stone floor. Living here they found two young women caring for two babies. Both were working as prostitutes, in shifts, with one out on the streets while the other was in the cellar with the babies.
On the 4th of December, the Edinburgh Corporation served demolition orders at 4 to 8 Beaumont Place. The principal owner was Donald Rosie’s “Bangor Tenement Co.”, but thanks to his “sales”, there were now were 14 other quasi-owners in total. To his credit, Rosie fessed up at the Dean of Guild Court that the others weren’t actually legal owners (despite them already telling the Clerk of Court that they thought they were!). He alone held the title deeds and he alone should be appearing. The owners were given 2 weeks to start demolition, and 6 weeks to complete it – at their own expense. The Compulsory Purchase Order would not come into action for 17 more days, until then they were still liable.
It was as if the slums themselves were now trying to keep up the momentum that had finally driven the city authorities to action. On December 16th the same day (and in a scene oddly reminiscent of recent happenings in Edinburgh) 21 families were given hours to evacuate from 2 tenements in Greenside Row when cracks appeared in the building and the road was closed off by the police…
BBC News Website, 27th January 2024. A tenement in Leith is evacuated after mystery structural cracking appears in its walls.They needn’t have bothered; the tide had now thoroughly turned in Edinburgh against the slums and their landlords. The Scotsman’s editorial drew parallels to the “Fall of Heave Awa Land” back in 1861 and wondered aloud as to how this was happening in the “age of Dounreay and Chapelcross“. The wheels of civic machinery had been set in motion. On December 19th 1959, the Dean of Guild Court petitioned the owners at Beaumont and Dalrymple Place and also Bangor Road in Leith (where Rosie was an owner) for repairs that had not been made. Ten days later, more demolition orders were served for demolition around Beaumont Place where owners were refusing to make properties. A week later, January 6th 1960, Donald Rosie – true to form – appealed to the Court of Session against demolition orders served on him.
The Scotsman, January 6th 1960.He wanted a delay of one month; this would allow the Compulsory Purchase Order on his properties to come into force before anything had to be demolished – he feared that once the bricks and mortar of his “assets” were gone, he’d have no bargaining position regards the price. Dragging his heels in the courts was the only thing he could do here. The Court have him 2 weeks instead. This seems to have sped things up and the CPO went through; the city bought up the slums of Dalrymple Place, Carnegie Street and Beaumont Place and demolished the lot. The owners didn’t get what they wanted, but they got shot of their demolition liability. A year later, the Evening News printed a stark photo (below) of these streets; Beaumont Place is in the foreground, the roadway of Dalrymple Place runs into the distance on the left. In the distance beyond the fence is Carnegie Street and further beyond that on the left is the Deaconess Hospital. On the right we can see numbert 1-23 St. Leonard’s Hill.
Evening News photo of the Carnegie Street CPO area, 5th October 1961The end was nigh for most of St. Leonards and Dumbiedykes. In 1962, tenants were warned not to clean their windows in case the frames fell out of the walls onto the street. One woman narrowly avoided being killed by falling masonry as she stepped into a corner shop. Housewives reported hoarding boxes in case they had to flit in an emergency. Roofs leaked, walls gaped. “HERIOT MOUNT TENANTS ARE AFRAID HOMES MAY COLLAPSE” said the headline. But by now, Pat Rogan found himself chair of the Housing Committee due to local political deadlock and it being a difficult job nobody really wanted. He set about this immense responsibility with his usual single-minded determination and practical approach. His policy was simple (simplistic, even); demolish thoroughly, build quickly. Construction land for council housing was freed up quickly by prioritising the replacement of the low-density, postwar prefabricated bungalows and a crash-building programme of tower block construction was initiated. By 1964, 1,500 houses had been demolished in the St. Leonards and Dumbiedykes area after it was designated a Comprehensive Development Area.
Scotsman Photo, 3rd August 1964 showing the clearance of Dumbiedykes and St. Leonards.On the site of the Penny Tenement, an award-winning new development by Ross-Smith & Jamieson of 63 houses for 200 people was erected from 1964-67 called Carnegie Court (after Carnegie Street). The rest of Beaumont Place wasn’t redeveloped until 1989. At this point, the District Council decided that the street name had been spelled wrong since 1815 and should actually be Bowmont after an ancient landowner here, Robert Ker, Duke of Roxburghe and Marquesses of Bowmont. And so they changed it.
Carnegie Court, looking down Bowmont Place to Salisbury Crags.You may well have got to the end of this thread and yet are still thinking “just where on earth actually was the Penny Tenement?” Well, this composite overlay image might just help answer that:
No 6 Beaumont Place in 1959 overlaid on modern Bowmont Place, looking towards Heriot Rise and Arthur’s Seat. Original image © Edinburgh City LibrariesNote to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret -
Seedy
Hello Friends! I missed posting yesterday because I was busy scrubbing the basement bathroom after our main sewer drain backed up Saturday. We couldn’t run water down the drains or use the bathroom all day until the plumber finally made it out at 8:30 that night. James had to wet vac the basement utility room floor and then I also had to scrub the hallway floor and spot clean the main floor where the plumber left dirty boot prints. And then I got to catch up on the laundry.
The storm was just getting started and snow was sticking to everythingTo add to all the fun, we had a winter storm blow through. James took the bus to work because of the near-blizzard wind conditions. We ended up with 5.8 inches/14.7 cm of snow, which is on the low end of what was forecast. Late yesterday afternoon when it was still lightly snowing and not yet arctic windchills, I ventured out to shovel the walkways, the path to the chicken coop and around the recycling and trash bins because today is trash day and they will skip your house if your bins are not cleared of snow.
This morning I was out before sunup shoveling the additional bit of snow that fell overnight and the snowdrifts the wind had blown across the sidewalks. Cleared a fresh path to the chicken coop and around the bins. Because there was a lot less snow than Sunday afternoon, this took not much time at all.
Now I’m sitting in a suddenly quiet house. The tile guys are here this morning working on my bathroom and the tile saw died. Kaput. So they are off buying a new one and will be back shortly to make more noise.
Last week they got two of the three sides of the shower walls done. I thought a tiny bathroom meant the work would go faster, but it turns out small spaces take longer because they have more angles and require more cutting. But today, after they get their new saw, they should be able to finish the shower wall and the floor. I don’t know if they will be able to do the grout today or whether they have to let the “mud” the tile is set into dry first. Guess I will find out.
Garden planning! I have a lot of seeds saved from last year’s garden. We really like all the tomato varieties we’ve been growing, most of the beans, cayenne peppers, garden peas, butternuts, marigolds, tulsi, and greens, but I always like to try new plants, and there are some plants that I’ve not been able to save seed from because they are biennial and I haven’t motivated myself to dig up carrots and onions and overwinter them in my basement to plant out in spring so they can flower and set seed. I’ve also not found a radish I like enough to save seeds and grow on. Maybe this will be the year carrots and onions and radish all come together?
I’ve got my new garden seed orders sorted out, but haven’t placed the orders yet in case I decide to change my mind or add something. My plan is to order them Thursday, but I’m beginning to think that leaving it open that long might be a mistake because I am not likely to remove anything from the plan, but highly likely to add. And I really don’t need to add anything else. So I’m going to declare it here and y’all can hold me to it and shame me if another seed packet or two somehow sneaks in!
Herbs:
- Cilantro. I decided I don’t like the variety I’ve been growing the last few years, so trying a new one.
- Sweet basil. I’ve been growing Genovese basil but the leaves are so small. This one has bigger leaves.
- Greek Oregano. Mostly perennial but last year’s polar vortex arctic blast killed it. I could buy a plant at the plant sale in May, but we like oregano so with seeds I can grow several plants.
- Broadleaf sage. Allegedly perennial but I have yet to get one through a winter. Instead of buying a single plant I’m going to sprout several and plant them all around the garden to increase the likelihood of winter survival.
- Elka poppy. Poppy seeds! I guess not technically an herb, but I thought it would be fun to have pretty pink poppies for the pollinators and seeds for me to use baking sourdough delights.
Peppers:
- Jalapeño. For some reason, none of the seeds I had been saving sprouted last year and I need some fresh ones.
- Poblano. James really wants peppers for stuffing, so I’m going to try growing these.
- Orange lunchbox. A small, sweet snacking pepper, also a James desire since we’ve had zero luck growing bell peppers and the one time we got any, a squirrel ate them all. Of course.
Roots:
- Early scarlet horn carrot. A pretty standard carrot and supposed to keep well.
- Dragon carrot. Purple on the outside, orange on the inside. Did you know that all carrots used to be purple? We have orange carrots because Europeans decided they were more interesting or something.
- Dakota tears yellow storage onion. I’ve not grown this variety before. It’s supposed to be very strongly flavored, thus the tears.
- Southport red globe storage onion. New to me variety with a slightly shorter season than other red varieties I’ve tried.
- Sora red round radish. Big radish that is supposedly tolerant of summer heat so I can succession plant all season.
- Spanish black radish. A spicy radish black on the outside and white on the inside. To plant at the end of July for fall harvest. I’ve not grown this variety before.
- Macomber rutabaga. I had some free rutabaga seeds from the library last year and the plants grew big and strong but I didn’t plant the seeds deep enough so just got long spindly above ground “roots” I couldn’t eat. Lesson learned and worth trying again.
Other:
- Red Kalibos cabbage. My green cabbage has been pathetic so I’m trying red. If red doesn’t do well, then I’m giving up on cabbage growing.
- Whirlygig zinnia. Birds ate all the zinnia seeds last year before I could save any so I need a refresh. I’ve never had birds eat zinnia seeds before. I will need to figure out how to protect some of the flowers next summer for seeds to plant on.
- Long pie pumpkin. Turns out the pie pumpkin I planted last year was a hybrid variety so I couldn’t save seeds. This one gets picked before it is ripe and ripens in storage. I am hoping to pull a fast one on the squirrel pirates.
- Hidasta shield pole bean. A pretty white bean with brown markings. Grown by the Hidasta people in North Dakota and good for soup and baking. I love growing beans and since I’m not growing disappointing succotash beans again, I have space to try something new.
New! New! New!
- Mother Mary’s pie melon. I’ve not had much luck growing melon in the past but this heirloom is from a woman in Minnesota and is reportedly a sweet melon good for making pie and jam. I have to try it!
- Purple Vienna kohlrabi. I’ve not grown kohlrabi before and the broccoli I tried to grow last year only produced a few small heads that almost immediately bloomed. Disappointing. I thought Kohlrabi might make a good substitute. We’ll see.
- Mexican sour gherkin, also known as cucamelon and mouse melon. Neither a cucumber nor a melon, this vining plant produces small green and white fruit that look like tiny watermelons. They supposedly taste a little like pickles, can be eaten raw or pickled and you either love them or hate them. I’m banking on loving them.
- Green striped cushaw. Also sometimes called sweet potato pumpkin. A large, sweet long-keeping green striped winter squash good for pies, squash butter, pudding, and roasting. I’m longing for the squash butter and the pudding.
There they all are. The garden is really going to be packed come summer. But then I say that every year and somehow end up with large patches of feral arugula because I didn’t have anything planted in that particular spot. Perhaps this will be the year I actually do pack the garden.
I had originally planned to also try growing fava beans after I discovered a recipe for
fava bean hot chocolate. I see the look on your face, hang with me for a second. Creamy vegan hot chocolate is a challenge. We could use coconut cream but then it tastes like coconut. We’ve used medjool dates but then it gets really sweet. Fava bean puree makes it creamy while not tasting beany.Of course I had to try it before committing to growing the beans. Sadly, my food co-op doesn’t sell fava beans, either dry or in a can. I thought to try the recipe substituting white beans instead because there are many vegan recipes that use white beans to make creamy sauces , soups, and dressings since white beans are mild and other flavors cover over the beans. We tried navy beans and it worked! I’ve been enjoying a cup of creamy hot chocolate now and then of an afternoon during my vacation time. Mmmmm.
But still, I thought I might try growing fava beans untilI I found out from the Fedco seed catalog, the only one that had fava seeds, that “In susceptible humans who have inherited a specific enzyme deficiency, within a few minutes of inhaling pollen or several hours after eating fava beans, a severe allergic reaction occurs. Most individuals have this enzyme and are not affected.”
Say what? This might explain why my food co-op doesn’t sell fava beans. I have never eaten fava beans and have no idea whether I have said enzyme deficiency, but given all my seasonal allergies and my inability to eat raw cucumbers and raw onions, I decided to not push my luck. And since navy beans are a cheap and easy substitute, well sorry fava beans.
The tile guys are back. Sawing and listening to music. Currently it’s the Violent Femmes. I haven’t heard them in ages. Blast from the past!
We’ve somehow made it to the end of 2025. What a year. Enjoy safe and happy year-end celebrations! May 2026 be filled will joy, beauty, and peace, as well as the strength and resilience to meet whatever surprises and struggles arise.
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The Final Prize is Soup turned out to be awesome last week. The horror mostly happens off-screen, so I'm not struggling with it at all. Actually enjoying the atmosphere and mystery a lot. Excited to continue playing it!
🕹️ The Final Prize is Soup: https://4noki.itch.io/the-final-prize-is-soup
🧛♀️ Stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyaG3CA7oJ4
⏰ Time: 9 AM PDT, 12 PM EDT, 4 PM UTC -
I'm going to play The Final Prize is Soup for the seasonal spooks. It's a survival-horror yuri visual novel about participating to a life game of some sort in order to not die. Sounds rather dire, but it should be tame enough for me to handle.
🕹️ The Final Prize is Soup: https://4noki.itch.io/the-final-prize-is-soup
🧛♀️ Stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdemW8u8W0g
⏰ Time: 9 AM PDT, 12 PM EDT, 4 PM UTC -
It is No Spend January on the homestead.
This means-- aside from the obvious of not spending money-- that it is time to get creative with what we have in the freezers and pantries.
There is very minimal spending allowed, and it is really only if necessary for fresh produce. This is fine.
I made a batch of potato and onion soup that I have been eating through, as well as having eaten a small piece of the family's pot roast last night. Tonight, they had sausage and potatoes.
While looking through what we have, I decided to make butter with the heavy cream we had leftover from another project... which lead to the next plan of making a crusty Italian bread tomorrow that can be eaten with the soup, dipped in oil, or slathered in butter.
Not one to be known to take on an appropriate amount of projects simultaneously... homemade beef jerky is also on the menu for tomorrow. I figure the jerky is a good protein packed snack that will last for a bit, and even longer if I vacuum-pack it.
Wish me luck!
#cooking #baking #homemadebread #homemadefood #beefjerky #homemadejerky #homemadebeefjerky #homemadebutter #getcreative #nospendjanuary #gardemanger #keeperofthefood #keeperofthepantry #garmo #homestead #homesteading #pantryparty #pantryraid #selfreliant #selfsufficient #fediverse #federated
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Configuring #GuixSystem reminds me of configuring #Emacs, and not only because of the lisp parenthesis soup*.
The similarity goes deeper than the configuration syntax. They both make me constantly question whether I should pin down and declare every last bit of configuration explicitly, or only customize what I need and implicitly use the defaults for everything else. Sometimes I find it very difficult to resolve this tension. But I will try to remain pragmatic and only customize what I need. I need a working system more than a perfect system. And I want to spend more time using said system than configuring it (even though it is pretty fun to run reconfigure commands and see new things right away! it's good to use small hardware that makes these reconfigure operations long and noisy, otherwise I could play with this all night...).
*: Said with all due respect! I actually find this notation convenient when indented/formatted nicely, which Emacs does very well of course.
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My Vision,
When we all live with and show true compassion, respect and love towards one another, we bring dignity to humanity and we as a society can truly prosper.
Creative Visionary Philip A. Swiderski Jr, Is A passionately creative Bi-Polar social outcast, who’s goal in life is to inspire others to overcome what ever is holding them back. My mental issues foster my creativity. They allow me to see the world with an open mind. I have compassion towards others, because I know first hand. How hard life can be.
2nd Shot Photography is about 2nd chances and using my #Passion of photography to #Create a life for myself, while developing a #Vision to #Help others.
2nd Shot Photography is more than #Photography, it is about Focusing on the shot, the name 2nd Shot Photography came to be out of desire to have a second shot, although sometimes we need a 3rd, 4th, 5th, ect, My goal behind this is to provide a moment of rest for those that are broken, suffering, struggling and otherwise displaced in life, Compassion is to actively remove the burdens of another and give them a moment to rest, to provide them with the help they need to get back on their feet, a Second Shot, if you will, so thats the name, the short story behind it, and what I am working on creating with it, you can support at any time, and sharing is caring, stay tuned to see what develops.
Current Needs And Hope To Do: From Hunger to Hope: A Disabled Man’s Plea for Help Imagine the bite of hunger replaced by hope. One click can make it real. As a disabled man living in poverty with bipolar disorder, PTSD, ADD/ADHD, and severe anxiety, I’m no stranger to hunger and hardship. My reality is a constant battle for basic needs, a fight I wage every day. My Story I’m on SSDI, which means I live on a fixed income of $12,000 a year. I don’t have access to healthcare, transportation, or a support system. I struggle to complete daily tasks, and my mental health is declining due to lack of care. I’m constantly worried about what to eat, where to sleep, and how to make ends meet. But There’s Hope Your kindness can rewrite the script. With just a click, you can transform the clatter of an empty cupboard into the melody of hope ringing in my belly. A single donation becomes a shield against hunger, a warm coat against the biting wind, and a bus ticket towards a future brimming with possibilities.
How Your Donation Helps Here’s how your small act of compassion becomes a giant leap towards stability: A Full Plate: Your gift fills my fridge with nourishing food, fueling my body and mind to battle the storm of bipolar disorder. Warmth Against the Chill: Your generosity drapes me in comfort, shielding me from the harshness of the world and allowing me to focus on healing. Mobility, Not Isolation: Your contribution puts me behind the wheel of opportunity, connecting me to crucial appointments and empowering me to manage my health. Stability, Not Despair: Your kindness becomes the cornerstone of a safe haven, a sanctuary where I can dream and rebuild my life, brick by brick. My Vision I want to build a forever home, a place where I can live without worrying about my basic needs. I dream of creating a creative studio, a tranquil RV camping ground, and a community center. I want to restore an old farm house and turn it into a bed and breakfast. I want to create an organic farm, to never go hungry again, I want to be able to set up as many tiny homes as possible on my property, that will be open to those in need of respite and compassion, a place for those that have been battling a losing fight, so that they can rest and find their footing in life, I want to live a life with purpose and dignity.
The Benefits of Supporting Me By donating to my cause, you’ll not only be helping me achieve my vision, but also contributing to a larger impact: Breaking the Cycle of Poverty: Your support will help me break free from the cycle of poverty and create a sustainable life. Promoting Mental Health Awareness: By sharing my story, you’ll be helping to raise awareness about mental health and the challenges faced by people with disabilities and living in poverty. Empowering Creativity: Your donation will enable me to pursue my creative passions and bring joy to others through my art. Building a Community: Together, we can create a community that values inclusivity, compassion, and support for people with disabilities, and those living in poverty.
How You Can Help I need your help to make my vision a reality. Here are some ways you can help: Donate: Any amount will help, whether it’s $1.50 or $10,000. Your contribution will go towards food, housing, and hiring a qualified advocate to help me navigate the system. Share: Please share my story with your friends and family. I need to reach as many people as possible to make my vision a reality. Support: If you have any skills or expertise that can help me, please reach out. I need advocates, social workers, and professionals who can guide me through this process.
Let’s Rewrite My Story Together Please, share my story. Spread the ripple of possibility. And when you’re ready, join me in this fight with a donation, no matter how small. Together, we can turn hunger into hope, cold into warmth, and isolation into community. Be a Hero in My Story Thank you for taking the time to read my story. Thank you for considering my plea for help. I know that together, we can make a difference.
A home one can own, is a home in one can grow, Security, Sustainability, and Stability are keys to healing past traumas and having a prosperous future, A home one can own, ends poverty, and always offers refuge and the opportunity to provide self sufficiency, Owning my own forever home, will allow me so much more than struggling just to barley exist.
So you maybe wondering how exactly I would use $5million if I was to receive it all at once and today, well let me break it down a little for you, of course it starts with actually receiving enough to cover taxes on $5million and processing fees, anyways your wanting info,
I have a plan of spending $2million on purchasing property, hopefully it is between 100-200acres and would have an old farm house on it that is actually still liveable, and of course an old barn, along with the purchase I am hoping to stay within this price range as a total where I would also build my forever home, a small but efficient home and I would like to of course fully furnish my forever home,
So now I have $3million left, I plan on spending $1million on refurbishing the old farm house and converting it into an bed and breakfast, and renovating the old barn and turning into a bit of a community center, with full laundry and bath facilities, a semi commercial kitchen with a full time coffee cafe, that will offer soup and sandwiches,
Now I have $2million left, in which $500k to set up my small organic farm, and cover all the odds and ends I have yet to deal with, leaving me with around $1.5million which I will use to live off of for the rest of my life, which roughly works out to $37k a year for the next 40 years, allowing me to cover taxes, utilities and all the other life costs.
My hopes are that the bed and breakfast will generate enough money each season to help supplement property maintenance taxes, the community center I hope to sell enough coffee, soups and salads to help fund the farm until it can somewhat sustain its self, along with providing meals and facilities to those in need.
Now of course I am very aware of market changes, and cost of goods, and labor ect and know that things may all have to happen in a slower and out of order pace to truly do what I want, but eventually I hope to be able to add a campground that too will bring in revenue that will help the day to day costs of everything, nothing is really for profit, but for maintenance and slowly growing, in where I also hope to set up several small tiny homes, to offer to those in need of compassionate respite,
I have spent many years thinking and planing and I am confident had some said right now Philip here $5million, go do what you want with it, I can make it both a blessing to me, and for others for years to come. I have chosen Northern Vermont or Maine as my destination of choice, as 4 seasons really fit into the whole artist approach I plan on employing through out my endeavor, along with hopefully the property I select will have a healthy stand of maple trees on, in which I would love to harvest small batch maple syrup from to add to my supplies, and well there is so much more, but spilling the beans sometimes is both overwhelming and self defeating so exactly how all this will happen and work as far as the public is currently concerned is going to remain a bit of a mystery,
Now all I need your support to get this rolling, and as a disabled man living in poverty, and suffering and struggling every single day, there is a very real sense of urgency for your support begin rolling in right now so please share this with everyone in your circle and please support now,
Thank You
Philip A. Swiderski Jr,
$5-10-15 It All Helps, via #cashapp at $woctxphotog or via #paypal at paypal.com/donate?campaign_id=…
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#TimeTravelingGhost Part 52: EP 5: Jurassic Era — Rabbits
#Wss366 #MastoPrompt #TimeTravelAuthors 10/25. Saturday excerpt (Word: back)
“That shouldn’t be here,” Emily said, staring at the carving I had discovered.
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said. “But there it is.”
“Humans haven’t evolved yet.”
“There are sentient rabbits and who knows what else that science hasn’t revealed.”
She shivered and nodded. “The rock is foreign too. I didn’t see any volcanic activity.”
“Is that what you think is unnatural here?” I moved to toe the carving, but thought better of it. “It’s positively Lovecraftian!”
Emily looked blank, so I amended my statement to: “Nightmarish and occult, hinting at secrets and things that are better left unknown.”
“Sounds like the Nazis. And on a different subject, there is a ridge with limestone caves that way.” She pointed to the jungle. “There are some rough trails we can use, but be careful; there are big dinosaurs on them.”
I superstitiously covered the cursed stone #back up. I felt it would cause less harm that way.
She pointed at the stream. “Follow that for a hundred feet and you'll find a trail, oh, ‘Girl of the #Limberlost.’ I’ll fly overhead and warn you of any major dangers. Take care and keep your eyes peeled, or you’ll be in the soup.”
For a second, I thought she meant I’d fall into the murky river. I smiled as I deciphered it. It was my turn to be blindsided by period slang. The reference to “The Girl of the Limberlost” especially threw me. But, as a #Johnny-come-lately, shouldn’t I have had an advantage here?
"Roger that," I replied. That was from the '40s, wasn’t it?
“That’s solid. Let’s get this show on the road,” she responded, beginning to drift up.
Note 1: Girl of the Limberlost:
Note 2: Free to read at: -
Mastery-focused players of run-based games (e.g. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Wordle, Slay the Spire) want to compare their skills to other players.
How can they do this when it is impossible to know their exact probabilities of winning, and only observe their results?
Furthermore, we want the early attempts to not matter (they were still learning the game -- as in Go, it is best to lose the first 100 games as quickly as possible,
experimenting with various strategies), and also, we want playing more times to never drop the score (so, after getting a good score, they can still play their
favorite game without caring).Here are some options:
* Block Winrate(\(n\)): Play \(n\) times, count the number of wins. Play n times, count the number of wins. And so on. The score is the number of wins in the best block.
* Rolling Winrate(\(n\)): Similar to Block Winrate, but any consesuctive sequence of \(n\) runs is considered.
* Streak_1(\(n\)): The longest streak of wins, capped with \(n\). After winning a streak of \(n\) games, we have proven ourselves, so what is the point to play anymore?*
* Streak_2(\(n\)): The greatest total length of two consecutive streaks, in other words, like the above, but one loss can be ignored.
OK, then, so it seems we should not only compare the players, but rather, compare the *methods* for comparing the players instead? (1/3)
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The thread about the “Study of the Diet of the Labouring Classes in Edinburgh”; what the poor of Canongate ate in 1901
In 1901, the Public Health Committee of the Town Council of Edinburgh paid £50 to commission a then remarkable and pioneering bit of research: they asked three doctors to go out into the working classes and poor of the city and find out what they actually ate. This study took place in the city’s Canongate and followed the food purchased and eaten over a week by 15 families, totalling 94 mouths. It meticulously catalogued everything that was consumed and discarded in great detail and then analysed it for its equivalent nutritional contents in a laboratory.
Group of Women and Children in the Canongate, 1901. By an unknown photographer from “The Life History of a Slum Child”, from the collection of Edinburgh City LibrariesThe authors were Dr. Diarmid Noël Paton, a pioneer in physiology and its links with nutrition; Dr. James Craufurd Dunlop, a paediatrician, pioneer of combined medical and social research and later Superintendent of Statistics, then Registrar General, of the Registry Office for Scotland and; Dr. Elsie Maud Inglis, one of the first female doctors in Scotland; a specialist and pioneer of the medical care – and medical education – of women; a leading suffragist and later founder of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals in WW1.
“A Study of the Diet of the Labouring Classes in Edinburgh” was published the following year (1902). It runs to 104 pages, but I have read it and summarised some of its key findings so that you don’t have to. So lets go find out what people in the city ate 120 years ago
Cover of “A Study of the Diet of the Labouring Classes in Edinburgh Carried Out Under the Auspices of the Town Council of the City of Edinburgh”The 15 subject families were categorised into 3 classes:
- A. Workmen’s families with irregular wages under 20s (20 Shillings or £1, approximately £98 in 2023) per week
- B. Families with regular wages from 20-23s per week
- C. Families with men in “good” trades and regular wages from 28-40s per week.
There were 15 adult men, 17 adult women and 62 children in the study. Two of the test households were notable for having no man in the house – as a result these were by far and away the financially worst off of the group. The average income of households in the stufy was just under 25s (£1 5/-) a week, about £122 in 2023.
Breakdown of the test subjects, giving occupation (for the man of the house), study class, the numbers of adults and children and the weekly incomes.The make-up of each household was corrected for age and sex of occupants to turn it into a standardised equivalent number of adult men, based on the understanding at the time of the relative dietary requirements of men, women and children of different ages. For instance an adult woman counted as 0.8x an adult man for the purposes of calorie requirements. The weekly spend on food was counted to the nearest farthing (¼d, d being 1 old penny, with 12d to the shilling and 240d to the £). The average spend on food was 15s 9¼d per week (£77.35 in 2023 money), or 79% of household income. Per “equivalent man”, each house spent on average 6¾d per day on food (~£2.74 in 2023).
Standardised equivalent “Number of Men” per test household and weekly expenditures on food
One of the few “advantages” in life that the poor had was just how cheap accommodation was (even if it was in a slum condition) in Edinburgh in 1901. Per household it averaged 37¼d per week, or about £61 per month in 2023. Some families made half or all their rent by their Co-op dividends alone – a measure of both just how cheap the rent was and also how important the Co-ops were to their members.
Women “getting the messages” talking outside a grocers shop at 2 High Street in the Canongate in 1901. By an unknown photographer from “The Life History of a Slum Child”, from the collection of Edinburgh City LibrariesWe come now to what our subjects ate. Let’s just say that their diets were monotonous. 35% by weight of what people ate was bread, a whopping 494g per “man” per day. 80% of everything eaten was one of only 6 food types – bread, potatoes, milk, sugar, beef and veg (mainly cabbage and onion, some carrots and turnips, although the study noted that many of the women didn’t seem to know about any other vegetables than potatoes). For reference, in 2013-15, the average Scottish person consumed just 80g bread (84% less), 64g of potatoes, 22g of beef per day. But milk was almost the same at 201g.
The 6 most important foodstuffs in the 1901 Canongate diet, with total and relative mass and calorific consumption for the study.People ate quite so much bread because it was cheap: that 35% of bread by weight gave them 41% of their daily calories but cost only 19% of their daily food budget. You can read more about the Scottish working class’s love affair with the Plain Loaf in this thread. In contrast, the beef consumed gave just 6% of daily calories but was 23% of expenditure. Clearly this was a luxury foodstuff relative to the others, and it was eaten for the protein content – and mainly by the man of the house. The authors pointed out an anomaly in that the traditional Scottish meat of mutton was largely lacking in the diet, even though it was cheaper and offered more protein per unit cost than beef.
People got about 11% of their daily calories from butter, jam, “syrup” (canned golden syrup or treacle) and cheese, eaten on slices of bread as a piece (an open sandwich, they weren’t closed back then!). Cheese consumption in 1901 was almost identical to Scotland’s 2013-15 average. Unsurprisingly, oatmeal was important in the diet, eaten as porridge – giving 6% of daily calories for 2.5% of expenditure. Eggs were commonly eaten, although they were relatively expensive they offered a reasonable amount of protein. The amounts of suet, dripping, sausages and offal are notably low. Small amounts of pulses and barley were eaten (in soups and broths).
All the major foodstuff consumed in the study, averaged for both total weight and total calorific intake per dayThe subjects ate almost no fruit, except small amounts of raisins and currants in the slightly better off households or in jam. It was potatoes that stopped them getting scurvy. Some teabreads were eaten (a sweetened bread, with dried fruit in it, usually spread with butter), almost nothing was spent on biscuits or sweets. Seasonally they probably did get access some fruit, when there was a glut of cheap apples etc., but it is not recorded. Confections may have been eaten on special occasions.
A woman holds her baby inside a house in the Canongate, 1908. Notice that despite the circumstances of the neighbourhood, the woman, her child and the house are all well kept, with an effort to make the place homely and comfortable; slum did not necessarily mean squalor. By an unknown photographer from “The Life History of a Slum Child”, from the collection of Edinburgh City LibrariesMealtimes were not coordinated or regular, the report called this the old Canongate style. The man usually kept a schedule aligned to his work, with the largest meal in the evening. Children fitted theirs around schooling with lunch the primary meal, topped up with endless bread to keep them full, if not nourished. The women had to fit in between both It has been noted that much of the meat consumption was by the man of the house; in many of the homes, the children and woman made do mainly with porridge, potatoes, broths and soup topped up with and their endless pieces. One house recorded spending 6d a week on lemonade as a luxury, otherwise children drank milk (fresh, canned or buttermilk) but also lots of tea, coffee (from essence) and cocoa. Women seemed to drink a lot of cocoa – they probably needed the sugar content to keep constantly on the go with heavy domestic labour.
Fish, although it was easily accessible from the fishing fleets of Granton, Newhaven and Fisherrow, and long part of the diet of the Scottish lower classes, was not popular or valued. While it was relatively cheap, it was not felt to be a valuable source of daily calories for the money and it was most prevalent with the poorest households. Dried and smoked fish were particularly lowly thought of and very little was consumed.
In many households the women had either part time or “piece work” (usually cleaning, “charladying” and also making bags) to make ends meet. Although they earned much less than men, in many of the households this was the only regular income on account of irregular wages for the man. The two households with no men in them paint a revealing and sorry tale of life for working class women at that time. In the first, a mother (51) and daughter (15) exist on just 8s 4d per week (£41 in 2023). The daughter made a few shillings selling papers, the rest came from a Benevolent Fund as the son/brother was away in the army in the Anglo–Boer War. They existed largely on white fish (3.3kg per week, gotten cheap through the kindness of neighbours), bread (3.3kg/wk), potatoes (3.4kg), cabbage (2kg) and buttermilk (1.1kg), plus 850g sugar and 880g oatmeal.
The other house with no man resident was described as being that of a “poor, small old woman who lived alone, chiefly occupied in sewing“. She was unable to do other work, was “very weak” and her husband was in the lunatic asylum. Her income was unknown, but she spent only 14¼d per week (!) on food (£5.80 in 2023). When standardised, that’s just over 1/3 of average expenditure on food of all the other study subjects. This pittance bought her a meagre diet, per week, of 840g milk, 840g bread (about 1 modern loaf), 310g beef, 300g dried peas, 300g leeks and carrots, 200g barley and 90g butter, and almost nothing else. This was the equivalent of 1123 calories per “equivalent man” day, less than 1/2 of the average of 2900 per day of all the study subjects. The paper noted that 1527 calories per day was the garrison’s emergency diet at the end of the 4 month Siege of Ladysmith from 1899-1900.
This 2,900 per man per day calorific intake measured for Edinburgh in the study was compared to averages for the working classes of other countries. It was:
- 4,170cal in Germany
- 4,080cal in Sweden
- 3,061cal in Russia
- 4,415cal in the US
The working poor of the slums fared better than those in the poorhouses, who in Scotland at that time got 2,380 calories per day, but worse than in the country’s prisons were it was 3,315 calories per day (or 3,717 on hard labour) and in pauper lunatic asylums where 3,435 per day was provided. The Seamen’s Federation at that time had recently secured a diet for men at sea of 4,526 calories per day. This was the sort of intake needed to live comfortably and healthily for a man (or woman) indulging in heavy physical labour.
I do want to keep this thread focussed on food, and I could go on, and on, and on into ever more detail from the study, but this isn’t really the best place for that, so I’ll look at a few more things before wrapping up. Firstly, lets look at relative costs for some foodstuffs when the report was published compared to now. I’ve worked out an approximate inflated cost of the staple food prices to compare and contrast with typical May 2023 UK grocery prices. The differences speak for themselves.
Comparative costs of the same food items in 1902 and 2023, corrected for inflationSecondly – apart from rent and food, what else was money spent on? An obvious thing was coal, required for all domestic heating, cooking and hot water. Many got it cheap through their churches or social groups, who had schemes to buy it in bulk and disburse it at a heavily discounted rate to their members. In winter, consumption of coal averaged about 1.5 bags per house per week, costing 1s 9d (about £34 a month in 2023). Some houses had a gas light and paid for that, but the use and cost was small – about £5 per month in 2023 equivalent. Other houses purchased lamp oil. After coal (and sometimes before it), the next biggest expendisture was on subscriptions to societies. Most households paid a few shillings per week towards such societies; these were either to cover sickness or funeral costs, clothing clubs, or even children’s holiday clubs for a week at the sea or in the country for them. The other main noted expenditure was “soap, black lead, etc.”, i.e. household cleaning products, about half a shilling a week (£2.45 in 2023) per household.
Most of the men smoked (women at this time mainly did not); about half a shilling again per week in pipe tobacco. Some were teetotallers, others drank. In only one family was it noted the woman drank and it was implied that both parents in this household were alcoholics. No costs were given for money spent on drink.
Canongate menfolk outside a pub, 1901. Youngers were one of the two dominant names in Edinburgh brewing alongside McEwans. By an unknown photographer from “The Life History of a Slum Child”, from the collection of Edinburgh City LibrariesIn most families the entire wage was turned over by the husband to his wife to manage, with 2s or 3s a week reserved by him for his tobacco, papers and drink. This was most prevalent were wages were reliable and regular. Where the man’s work was irregular, the pattern was different. His wife often had little idea what was in his wage packet from one week to the next. He often turned over just enough for the food and rent but little else, reserving the excess in better weeks for his vices. Very few of the families had enough to keep anything by for a “rainy day” and lived week to week. It was noted some lived day-to-day, buying items of food as and when they were needed throughout the day. This meant they often paid a premium compared to a weekly bulk buy, a problem just as common now for those on limited incomes as then.
I will finish off with two last points. Firstly, the study probably would have failed without Elsie Inglis’ involvement; it was her and her female medical students who convinced reluctant families – usually the housewife – to allow them to intrude on their lives. Misses G. Miller, H. Bell, Isabel Simson, May Simson, Pringle, Cunningham, Robertson, H. Maclaren and Colly and Mrs Shaw Maclaren were the students credited with gathering the actual study data from each family (down to collecting every discarded bit of potato peel to be weighed)
Elsie Inglis, from Dr. Elsie Inglis by Lady Frances Balfour. CC-by-SA 4.0 Wellcome Collection.And secondly, one little snippet of insight into the life of these families that really gave a lump to my throat when I read it. It came from family number 14, the mason’s labourer, his wife and their 9 children, who lived in a tiny 2 room house, “clean but bare-looking“. The report goes on, “the eldest girl died of consumption [TB] last year. They still keep little frames and bits of fancy-work she was doing. They gave her a grand funeral that cost £10 13s. Black suits had to be bought for the father and eldest boy“. This family had very little, yet they spent everything and more than they had and could afford to give their daughter a decent and dignified send off – over 10 weeks wages – and on account of paying off their debts could no longer pay into their own funeral society. I feet this really hit home how unpredictable life was for people 120 years ago, people living exactly where my own family was living at the time and in exactly the same circumstances. And it brings home a real sense of human dignity to the lives of people in bitter and crushing circumstances, at the bottom of the pile. Their next eldest daughter, 17 but only 4ft 10in tall, now looked after the house and 8 other children when her mother went out to work to make paper bags for 8s a week. Such were the realities of life in the Canongate at the end of the Victorian age and dawn of the 20th century.
Here’s the link to “A study of the diet of the labouring classes in Edinburgh” on Archive dot org for you to read and think about for yourself. I’ve only scratched the surface of it, and there are many other stories and insights contained within it’s yellowing pages.
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Not that this is a Bay leaf tree measuring contest… but if it was, I bet my parents Bay Laurel tree is bigger than yours. 😂 It was planted around 1982. It has completely died back twice in that time due to frost or snow. It is… unperturbed. 🌱 Need a leaf for your soup? 😝 #gardening #BayTree #PortAlberni
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All is ready for my special meal for tonight's visitors. I made the fish stock from Halibut bones on Friday, it is ready to be turned into the soup, which will have beetroot, celery & carrots, along with pieces of Coley (Pollock) marinated in Soy sauce. For the main dish, the casserole of Yorkshire mutton in chicken stock with a multitude of veggies is now in the oven, cooking super-slowly well below simmering, the flavours highly concentrated and super-intense. For the cheese we have Comte and goats cheese. Sharing honest food with good friends, in difficult times, that too is resistance.
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All is ready for my special meal for tonight's visitors. I made the fish stock from Halibut bones on Friday, it is ready to be turned into the soup, which will have beetroot, celery & carrots, along with pieces of Coley (Pollock) marinated in Soy sauce. For the main dish, the casserole of Yorkshire mutton in chicken stock with a multitude of veggies is now in the oven, cooking super-slowly well below simmering, the flavours highly concentrated and super-intense. For the cheese we have Comte and goats cheese. Sharing honest food with good friends, in difficult times, that too is resistance.
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All is ready for my special meal for tonight's visitors. I made the fish stock from Halibut bones on Friday, it is ready to be turned into the soup, which will have beetroot, celery & carrots, along with pieces of Coley (Pollock) marinated in Soy sauce. For the main dish, the casserole of Yorkshire mutton in chicken stock with a multitude of veggies is now in the oven, cooking super-slowly well below simmering, the flavours highly concentrated and super-intense. For the cheese we have Comte and goats cheese. Sharing honest food with good friends, in difficult times, that too is resistance.