Shopping for Easter candy has been an interesting experience here in the UK. Back in the States, chocolate bunnies are the big thing. I remember growing up, we'd come downstairs and find on the dining room hutch one bunny for each of us children. US stores are full of chocolate bunnies. Sure, Cadbury Eggs and Robin Eggs and jelly bean and many other items are available, but the chocolate bunny is the king of Easter candy.
Not so here in the UK, if the local stores are stocked properly. Here the chocolate egg reigns supreme. Every chocolate company (and most chocolate bars) offer Easter eggs in their flavor and in a variety of sizes. Some are almost as large as volley balls where others are as small as, well, chicken eggs. We've decided to embrace the tradition and have this to offer on Easter morning after we get back from church:
Unfortunately, Lucy was with me when I made the purchase and she begged and begged and begged for the Disney Princesses egg. The Thomas egg was right next to it, so that will be Jacob's. The Belgian chocolate will be for Mommy and Daddy to share.
We did not make it to church for Maundy Thursday Mass. Dinner was a little delayed since we were making roast leg of lamb and unleavened bread. It took longer than we thought so neither my wife nor I were able to slip out to church before the bedtime routine started. In the interest of sharing, here's our food and recipes:
Marinating lamb and dough ball, i.e. the meal before cooking
The grilled lamb recipe we use (I don't remember where we stole it from [UPDATE--we stole it from the simplyrecipes.com blog post for grilled butterflied leg of lamb and I have modified the text so it isn't an exact duplicate of the wording of her recipe (it's still the same ingredients and procedure, so don't worry, but go check out the blog anyway, there's lots of good recipes there])...
Ingredients:
1/2 onion
4 cloves garlic, peeled
2 Tbsp fresh or 1 Tbsp dried rosemary leaves
Zest from 1 lemon
1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 Tbsp olive oil
Kosher salt and ground black pepper
1 boneless leg of lamb (5-6 pounds) butterflied
Directions:
Put first six ingredients (onion to olive oil) in a food processor. Pulse to combine. (No food processor? Chop the onions, garlic, and rosemary very fine and combine with the other ingredients in a bowl.)
Sprinkle a lot of salt and pepper over the leg of lamb. Put marinade and lamb in a 1-gallon freezer bag. Be sure the marinade gets on all sides of the meat. Close the bag and refrigerate for 1-2 hours.
Remove lamb from the refrigerator and let it return to room temperature (this should take about 20 mins). When ready for grilling, remove the meat from the gallon bag. To help turning the lamb on the grill, put two skewers through the meat crosswise.
Prepare the grill. For a charcoal grill, use "banked" grilling--have a double layer of colas on one side and a sparse single layer on the other. For a gas grill, turn all the burners to high at the start. After the meat is browned you reduce the heat.
Put the lamb (fat side down) on the grill on the double layer side (which is hotter). If flareups happen (which they probably will) have a squirt bottle or some cups of water for flame control. (the blogger's brother shakes a bottle of beer to squirt the coals when they flare up!) Sear on one side for four minutes, flip the lamb over and sear the other side for four more minutes. Then for a charcoal grill, move the lamb to the other side of the grill (with the sparse coals). For a gas grill, set the heat to low. The temperature should stay at 300-350°F. Cover the grill and cook for another 35 to 45 minutes until a meat thermometer registers at least 130°F in the thickest part (that results in a medium rare roast).
Move the meat to a cutting board with a well to collect the juices. Cover with foil and let rest for 5 to 10 minutes. Remove skewers if applicable. Cutting across the grain, make 1/4 to 1/2-inch thick slices. Serve on a warm platter with meat juices poured over the slices. The blogger recommends serving with mint jelly or horseradish. The meat should serve 8-10 people.
Our modifications:
We didn't need to serve 8-10, so we had a 0.86 kilo (1.9 lbs.) butterfly cut from the lamb's leg. In case you don't know, a butterfly cut has the bone removed and leaves a layer of fat on one side of the meat. Cooking still took 35 minutes.
I forgot the skewers. Since the cut was smaller, it was easier to turn on the grill. I think last year we had a four pound cut and the skewers helped a lot.
We left our food processor behind (having the wrong plug for UK outlets) so I chopped stuff up. It wasn't too hard but it also wasn't as fast.
No mint jelly or horseradish for us. Also, we don't have the cutting board with a well, so we used a plate.
We didn't waste any beer on flareups on the grill. Using fingers to sprinkle water from a cup worked fine for me.
Roasting on the "cool" side of the grill
For the bread, we used a recipe from a church group we used to belong to. They make their own bread for the Eucharist, from a very simple recipe...
Ingredients:
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour (King Arthur brand is what they insisted on)
1/2 cup warm water (very warm, i.e. as close to boiling as you can stand)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit (~140 Celsius)
Mix the ingredients
Knead the dough until it is soft (at least 10 minutes)
Roll out dough into a circle shape about half an inch thick
Put on a cookie sheet and poke the bread with a needle or toothpick in several places
Bake for 30 to 45 minutes, flipping it every ten minutes
Our modifications:
My time on kneading the dough was a little inconsistent since I was going back and forth with the grill at the same time.
I forgot to poke the dough. I remembered when I first went to flip it and saw air bubbles forming. I poked the half-cooked dough and that seemed to do the trick, so don't despair if you forget.
Not very circular but still satisfying
We also had one of those pre-mixed-and-washed salad bags as our "bitter herbs" in imitation of the Passover meal/Last Supper. I forgot to get some Kosher wine. We continued with our currently open bottle of wine.
Both the lamb and the bread turned out very well. Jacob was reluctant to try it but said he liked it (even though he only ate the one bite). Lucy was much more enthusiastic, eating several subsequent bites. They both used dipping sauce for the lamb--our favorite barbeque sauce.
We always think we should make lamb more often since it is so tender and delicious. Now that we are in England, we have lots more reminders around us that lamb is an option not to be overlooked.
Now that Easter is almost here, we had our third snow storm. After a week of high 60s/low 70s (Fahrenheit) weather, the cold damp has come back to Yorkshire. Here's some proof:
Early April or late January?
Lucy and I made an interesting train track layout while Jacob was at school. At least I thought it was interesting enough to take a picture of it:
Can't imagine what sort of town this layout would service
This track is the first layout to integrate the four-way bridge and the roundabout. All the ends are ramps or blocks, so there's no unfinished ends. I may be the only person excited by that.
In other exciting news, we had some Jehovah's Witnesses come to the house a few days ago. I was caught a little off guard, as were they, I think. They were a nice looking elderly couple who were surprised that I answered the door on a Monday morning just before lunch. They gave me this invitation:
The guy on the end looks like a mash-up of Charlton Heston and Ted Danson
I thanked them and wished them a good Easter. They moved on to the next house. I'm not sure if it's okay to invite such folk in or even if they'd welcome the invitation. We used to get lots of visits in Maryland though our conversations were limited to the front porch. I've always hankered for a more in-depth discussion. Maybe next time I will try it out.
I will not, however, attend the Thursday meeting. Today (April 5, 2012, as I publish this) is Holy Thursday and we plan to be at our local parish for Maundy Thursday Mass.
We also reconnected with our playgroup friends on the recent trip to America. The group has switched to Thursday mornings, which was no problem for us as our schedule was entirely open. We managed to go twice and see almost everybody from the old gang.
The first play date, Jacob was still a bit jet-lagged (or "jet-legged" as he called it) and just sat around watching everyone else play. Lucy was happy to hang out with old friends and play with new toys. We had a grand time on the first play date but had to leave a little bit early. My my wife had a half day of work and we set out for Virginia before all the afternoon traffic started up (which is usually 2:30 p.m. in Washington, DC).
The next week, we got together with some of the playgroup to revisit the ever-popular Pump It Up. It's a playground of gigantic inflatable climbers. We had a grand time even though they changed one of the mazes in favor of a rather tall and rather steep slide.
New mega-slide--climb the middle, drop down the side
A favorite climber, though seemingly impossible to reach the top
Friend Zahra comes over the top
Jacob was also over the top
Lucy was inbetween
The family that climbs together, stays together!
That Thursday, we again had a wonderful play date. One nice thing for me was that two of the moms are fans of The Walking Dead TV show. We could catch up on the latest episodes. The one mom said her older daughter watched too and once came to her worried. Uh-oh, how to explain that a zombie apocalypse probably won't happen. The daughter said, "What about the animals, do they turn into zombies?" That led us parents to speculations about a spin-off series, The Clucking Dead.
We sure missed our playgroup friends and were glad to see them so many times on this trip home. We look forward to future returns!
Book Review: The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer
A guest review by my lovely wife! N.B.: The UK version (i.e. the one we own) spells it "...Traveller's..."
Brief overview of content:
For me, one of the most enjoyable parts of being a tourist is the planning stage. Usually, when I'm traveling to a country I've never visited before, I go to the library and load up on guidebooks, historical guides, and fiction set in the target country. Even if I only make it to a fraction of the places I plan to visit, I feel like I've really experienced a new place through my reading. Recently we visited Mount Grace Priory. I loved seeing it, but wished it was even more immersive. I wanted to spend a day living in the monk's cell, going to Matins and mass, and working in the garden. Alas, that's not part of the tour. But, in the gift shop on the way out, I spotted this book. By pretending that we have the chance to visit medieval England, the author makes history vibrant and immersive. This book isn't about kings and wars, it's about clothes and manners and sanitation. For me, it was a real page turner and I think it will make all my future visits to medieval sights much richer.
Author overview:
Blurb from the book: "Ian Mortimer has BA, PhD and DLitt degrees in history from Exeter University and an MA in archive studies from University College London. From 1991 to 2003 he worked for Devon Record Office, Reading University, the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, and Exeter University. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1998, and was awarded the Alexander Prize (2004) by the Royal Historical Society. He lives with his wife and three children on the edge of Dartmoor, in the southwest of England."
Recommendations:
1. Read cover to cover vs. consult as needed.
If you do have a time travel machine (contact us!) then you might want to keep this in your Tardis to consult as needed. However, for the rest of us, reading cover to cover is recommended. The book has sections on What to Wear, Where to Stay, What to Eat and Drink, and lots of information about the medieval character. I had to skip a few paragraphs about medieval diseases because the writing was so evocative that I was getting a bit overwrought. However, someone without my high sensibility would probably be fine.
2. Readability.
Brilliant. This book is just fascinating and fun to read. There are kids books in a series where the titles start with "You Wouldn't Want to Be a" that describe different historical periods according to how awful they were. This is the farthest thing from that. Yes, he gets into the grotty stuff about sanitation and disease but he also has a real respect and admiration for the people who lived then. He makes their decisions seem rational. For example: "How do you define cleanliness? Most people, when asked this question, tend to define it in terms of personal experience. They know when their kitchen work surface is clean because everything which makes it dirty has been cleared off and it has been wiped down with detergent. What they are thus defining is the completion of a cleaning process, not a state of cleanliness itself. Medieval people do much the same thing, only using different processes." That makes you feel the human connection across time. The book also is filled with wonderful details of our differences: "Attitudes to hair are more complicated. Men expect their womenfolk to comb their hair for them, often beside a window, allowing them to see any lice and to remove them. However, excessive combing of hair among men is frowned upon. Moralists write diatribes against the practice, castigating the Danes, who are supposed to be so vain that they comb their hair every day and have a bath every week."
3. Helpful to a parent tourist?
I definitely wouldn't want to travel to Medieval England without this book. For example, consider the question of where to stay. You can't just pull up booking.com and look for a family room. However, monasteries offer hospitality to travelers, right? They even run hospitals (hence - hospitality). Let's see what the book has to say: "The small Maison Dieu at Ospringe is perhaps more typical of the sort of hospital at which you might stay. Situated on the main road from London to Canterbury it is expressly for the benefit of pilgrims and lepers...As you may gather from the idea of lepers and travellers staying together and sharing the same bed linen, their priority is not the comfort of the guests. A large hospital might have its own kitchen and refectory in which one of the brethren will read a lesson aloud during the meal. If not, rye bread and a thin vegetable soup or pottage is likely to be your repast. Unless you have a particular craving for straw mattresses with torn sheets, rye bread, watery ale and a pungent leper in the next bed, it is worth considering staying elsewhere."
4. Did we use it?
No, since we do not have access to a time travel device, we have not used this book. Or maybe, we have, but I can't tell you, dear reader, about it, because then everyone would want to borrow our time machine.
Sample text
In the chapter "What to Do" the author describes the pastimes and diversions of Medieval England. One of the pastimes of the wealthy was reading or, more commonly, listening to books read aloud. Ian Mortimer picks some top authors from 14th century England and passionately recommends them. This section describes an unknown author who wrote Gawain and the Green Knight as well as The Pearl and several other poems.
"The greatness of this poet lies in his range. He can describe the inside of a whale in a vivid poetic manner. And he can describe, with great tenderness, a little pearl, neatly enclosed in gold, which is beyond comparison with any to be found, even in the East.
So round, so radiant in each array, So small, so smooth her sides were, Wheresover I judged gems gay, I set her singly above them all. Alas! I lost her in a garden, Through grass to ground she fell away. Wounded by love, by love forsaken, I mourn that pearl without a flaw
And only as you read the following stanzas do you realise, with a tender but painful shock, that he is not talking about an actual pearl but about his infant daughter, Marguerite, who has died although not yet two years old. She is the one who has fallen 'through grass to ground'....Not many poets have the ability both to convey intense personal emotion and to write entertainingly and meaningfully on a popular subject for a wide audience. That an unknown man can do both so brilliantly is something of a marvel. And so it is astonishing that almost no one knows these works. If you wish to pick up a copy of Pearl or Gawain and the Green Knight, you will ask the copyists in the London and Oxford bookshops in vain. Just one manuscript survives down the centuries, in the dark and quiet, keeping this poet's genius alive."
Okay, I try to stay out of politics on this blog, but this message is too important not to pass on to as many people as possible. While I agree with what are identified as problems, I don't agree with the solution presented. But these problems are important, people!
On our recent trip to America, we visited with many of our friends who we'd only seen in the past few months through Skype or Google Chat. It was great to catch up with them. They were terribly generous with their time, their cooking skills, and their willingness to engage in Jacob and Lucy's favorite pastime, visiting playgrounds.
Our friends Brian and Teresa were awesome. We visited them for dinner more than once and they provided more than excellent food for us to eat. We saw our godson and how much he has grown. Playing with him was not nearly as much fun as watching our children play with him. It's exciting to think that our children will be as good friends as we are.
We also went one day to a nearby playground, Schooley Mill Park. They had the usual assortment of interests along with fabulous sunshine and warmth.
One set of climbing/playing fun
The other set of climbing/playing fun
Jacob took advantage of the porta-potties
Jacob goes up
Lucy swings like never before
Lucy swings with her god-cousin?
Our friends BJ and Amy were awesome too. We had dinner at their house and met up a couple of times. They even held luggage for us while we went on the Minnesota leg of our trip (more on that in a later post). We are godparents to their child as well and went to a playground nearby their house for fun.
Dismounting from their rides
Jacob stayed on his ride (once he got the chance)
Lucy swings while Jacob rides
The other godson loves swinging too!
BJ and Amy also hosted a farewell for us that included the guys (and their families) from guys' night, but more on that in a future blog posting.
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