Tuesday roundup

[caddyman]

I am quite enjoying this working from home malarkey today. I'm not entirely sure how productive I am being and I'd better get a passle more done before I knock off later, but I do have to nip out in a few minutes to post my sister's birthday card and purchase some more milk etc. I also have to put the laundry in the washing machine and set it off. Such a hard life.

My parcels have now all arrived. Yesterday while Furtle was off, the two CDs and book arrived. Today Amazon outdid themselves and my second book arrived quicker than expected, which rather made up for the slight delay in receiving the former.

For those who may be interested, the books I took delivery of are: Resistance: Memoirs of Occupied France by Agnès Humbert, which has just appeared for the first time in English translation despite being available in France since 1947 (I think). It garnered strong praise in The Times last week and the late author sounds like a remarkable woman.

My second purchase, which I placed on pre-order some months ago after buying Harry Patch's autobiography, The Last Fighting Tommy is by the co-author, Richard Van Emden: Soldiers' War: The Great War through Veterans' Eyes. What with one thing or another, I have a fair amount of stuff to get through!

Last night we decided that we should make and feast upon Lasagne. Not having all the correct ingredients, we mix and matched with great success. Of course, not having any corn flour for the sauce was a little awkward, so melting cheese into milk seemed the way to go. To thicken it we added a little cheese sauce powder, which seemed to work. Furtle pointed out that we were supposed to include mustard in the mix. Well, we only have American burger mustard, which is tasty, but rather less strong than English (or French) mustard, so I added a little more than was strictly required. Furtle tells me that the lasagne smelt of mustard when we put it in the oven, but I think she exaggerates. I must admit though, that there was an additional and not entirely unwelcome piquancy to the taste of the finished article. Most impressive, however, was the fluorescent and unearthly glow that the the combination of cheese sauce, American mustard, grated cheese and milk provided.

Mmm. Fluorescent mustard pie. Recommended.

Comments

[mezzogiornouno.livejournal.com]

To make a roux, sans cornflour: a couple of tablespoons of plain flour into a big knob of melted butter. Stir it in till the flour/butter is the consistency of virtuall dried mud, then cook it in the pan (you have to put this in a pan, did I say?) for just a minute or two, over a medium heat. Add milk, jack up the heat, stir the while until it thickens, then take it off the heat, and start adding your grated cheese. You'll be surprised how much cheese it will absorb (or not, if you do this regularly). Mustard is good too. So is nutmeg, and black pepper.

[fencingsculptor.livejournal.com]

From the list of things Paul is not allowed to do at work:

# 31. The correct term for part-time workers is ‘flexible workers’. It is NOT ‘slackers’.


....it bloody well is though !

[bluesman.livejournal.com]

That book about the French Resistance sounds jolly good.

[failing-angel.livejournal.com]

Mme Humbert was mentioned on the Today Programme very recently.

**Edit**
Ah, I see I hadn't posted that piece yet, here it is:
From the Today Programme - the Musée de l'Homme network of the French Resistance
That stifling summer, in a leap of blind faith and reckless courage, she and a handful of her distinguished colleagues at the Musée de l'Homme - eminent ethnographers and Egyptologists, linguists and librarians - formed what was almost certainly the very first organized Resistance group.