Easter celebrations

This being late notice of our Easter celebrations.

With the necessary shoulder of lamb being collected on the Friday previous - a very holy day when very few shops would be open when I was a child - certainly not butchers, bakers and candlestick makers - along with the trio of pies previously noticed at reference 1. It weighed in at just over three kilos or 6.6lbs or 6lbs 9.6oz.

Now according to the record, we took our last shoulder on 6th February. Weighed in at 6lbs 6oz and cooked for 4 hours, including resting. It was at the well done end of range, but good. The one before that on 2nd October last year. 5lbs 5oz for 2 hours 30 minutes, including 10 minutes resting. Spot on. The record further alleged that this was all done at 190°C, although after the event BH said she always went for 160°C. We decided on 3 hours 30 minutes at 190°C, starting at 10:15.

At which point, I was off around Jubilee Way, returning at around midday, when the lamb was smelling more cooked than it ought to, more than an hour before forks down. Wound it down to 175°C. At 13:00 down to 150°C. Oven off at 13:30; shoulder rested and then started at 13:45.

At which point it was indeed rather overcooked, but it still went down pretty well, with a drop of San Leo Nerello Mascalese Rosato NV in the first instance. A nice novelty for us, not doing sparkling very often, let alone pink sparkling.

So wrong call at 12:00, when I should have pulled lunch forward, which would, as it happened, have been quite straightforward.

Towards the end of the first shift. Moving onto the next bottle for dessert, although I would not say that we go as far as 'desservir'ing the table for this purpose, as I suppose one ought, if one was being pedantically French about it. Although thinking about it some more, perhaps we did. Perhaps it is enough to remove all the plates and dishes for the main course. No need to move everything else as well. No need to shake out the table cloth.

The next bottle being another go at Zorjan's 'Dolium' white from Slovenia. Plus rhubarb crumble (traditional variety, no oats in the toppings), peanuts from Sainsbury's, chocolate oranges from Terry's. What passes for Easter eggs in this household.

Over the first chocolate orange we pondered on the fate of Cadbury's, Fry's, Terry's and Rowntree's. With Terry's now being part of a French confectioner called Carambar, owned in turn by a French private equity operation called Eurazeo. I wondered whether Carambar was anything to do with caramel chocolate bars, in the way of a Caramac, a bar I ate occasionally as a child, finding it a bit sweet for my taste - and reference 2 does include the Carambar, which might well be the same sort of thing. Presumably a big brand in France, the one that gave its name to the company.

We then moved onto thinking about where fire stations ought to be, something which the local Liberal Democrats are getting very exercised about. Maybe they ought to do with fire engines what they do in the ordinary way with ambulances, with dynamic computer allocation sending most of the ambulances not on a job to strategic points around the area, with the aim of minimising the mean distance the ambulance will take to respond to a call. Something I learned about years ago at TB. No doubt they have got neural networks on the job now.

Scrabble cancelled on this occasion, but after a pause I moved onto dancing water, with the jug of warm for the bowl and the glass of wine for me at the ready. On this occasion it took me a while to get the dancing underway, but I had an interesting time with the various noises from the handles and the bowl. Quite loud, a sort of whining, whistling noise. Last outing for the bowl possibly nine months ago, noticed at reference 3.

Failed to find the moon, even after I went to the bother of asking the computer where it was.

Wound down with the first part of the arty new Romeo & Juliet from the National Theatre. Not our sort of thing at all. In my case, only serving to remind me that not using proper swords in a play which makes a lot of use of same does not really work.

Day two cold. Crows a bit late on parade afterwards, but they must have nipped in when we were not looking, as the fat was all done at closing time.

Day three cold again, but taken with braised celery and onion. Rather good.

Day four, getting a bit low, so taken with soup. We did put aside some fat for the crows, but somehow it went missing. We never did find out what had happened to it.

PS 1: generally speaking blog search works very well. It includes, for example, posts in searches more or less immediately after posting. But today, not for the first time, it has behaved oddly while searching for 'steak kidney', with the first two or three attempts missing reference 1. But once I had reached reference 1 by other means, 'steak kidney' started reaching it. Maybe it is a relative of the Windows search feature in that it does not include offline files in searches, whatever offline might mean in the case of Google's blogger database. I associate to restaurants and public houses, which I tend not to use if I cannot rely on their posted opening hours. Except in this case, I can't easily not use.

PS: I ought to add that we are both rather averse to underdone shoulder of lamb. Much too fatty a joint for that to work with us.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/04/no26-final.html.

Reference 2: https://www.carambarco.com/fr/. Something not quite right here, but it does work if you persist.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/06/dancing-water.html.