It’s been a quiet week at the Zeddary. LT had various things to do back at our other home and I had things here, so we went our separate ways. He’ll be back tomorrow, though. In the meantime, I’ve had a tooth capped, been to lectures on Shakespeare in opera and ballet, cancelled a music lesson because I didn’t feel up to it and had a dinner postponed because the hostess was ill. My main achievement of the week has been the Great Annual Ironing Session.
I have a lot of napkins and tablecloths. And they need ironing, most of them. But ironing doesn’t happen unless it has to and it’s only really essential when I’ve run out of something. In the case of napkins, once a year is about right. Some of them, if smoothed and folded as soon as they’re washed, don’t really need ironing, but the thirty linen ones I used for our wedding party about wiped me out of best ones, so I reckoned it was about time. I also, most unusually ironed all my washed summer clothes. So, unlike this year, I’ll be ready when the weather changes in about … oh, eight months time, for a week or two, when I want summer togs.
Also, with LT away, I’ve been watching television (nothing live, always the risk of accidentally catching a news report, which I can’t face right now) and reading. Tim, I gather, has been mostly listening to music. I’ve got too much of a radio backlog to catch up on for that, except in the car. Either I listen obsessively, it seems, or hardly at all.
The next piece of bacon is ready to come out of its cure, to be rinsed and hung up in the attic. I should have done it today but it was late by the time I’d finished the ironing and I couldn’t be bothered. Tomorrow morning will do fine. And it’ll hang for two or three days and then be sliced. I have a small queue of people hoping for a rasher or two…
Mr BW does a lot of (cold smoking). If you look at his blog (don’t want to post a public link, but let me know if you can’t find it) he’s just written about it. I’m sure bacon would smoke beautifully…
Dick Strawbridge’s book (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Curing-Smoking-Made-at-Home/dp/1770850775) is the best simple and comprehensive account that I know on the subject.
Mr BW has a blog? I’ve known you for the best part of eleven years and I never knew that!
Ssssshhhh, it’s a secret. It’s only been going since he retired, actually. We don’t want to connect the two of us (hence why I, and the couple of others who know, haven’t linked to it in any way), and his is mainly a, erm, ‘promotional tool’ shall we say.