Perfect Beef Casserole with Mushrooms

decided to make a Beef casserole today with Mushrooms.

Took One punnet of large chestnut mushrooms cut into quarters and added to hot pan with large dollop of butter.

Added: finely chopped red peppers, chilli, Garlic, Mint, Coriander and some dried tomatoes.

Crushed some Cumin and Carraway seeds cracked black pepper, sea salt   Paprika  and some Brown sugar and finished off with some dried rose petals

Sweated it all down in the butter and added a few dried rose petals

Set aside once cooked and mushrooms tender.


Beef:  Has been marinading in Worcester sauce red wine, cornflour and Paprika with salt and pepper and any dried herbs that take your fancy.

Nice hot pan and some oil: Brown of the meat in batches, not to much in the pan at one time and don't worry about the pan sticking, it tends to do this when you are browning off meat with cornflour, reduce the heat if need be.

Remove each batch of meat once browned.

Once all the meat is browned , pour in half a bottle of nice red wine and begin  to de-glaze the bottom of the pan and get all those bits of it but leave them in.  Add the meat and the mushrooms back to the pan and bring to a quick boil on the hob to burn of the alcohol.  Turn off the heat Boil the kettle and top up the casserole with boiling water. Add a couple of bay leaves.

Place in oven at 50 to 100 degrees and slow cook for a couple of hours and I guarantee you will have the tenderest casserole EVER

Sorry that there are no measurements, never use them I just add what I think will go well together and taste as I go along, usually works for me......

The whole thing took about 35 mins to prepare, cook on the hob until ready to go into the oven

Beef and Mushroom Casserole

The Caspian Gates (Warrior of Rome 4) A (provisional) Book Review

I discovered  Harry Sidebottom  a couple of years ago after the first three Warrior of Rome novels had been published, so came to him late.  But, as is usual with some books that you stumble upon unexpectedly I was impressed and quickly took to Ballista the central character and his familia.

I have to say, to begin with, The Caspian Gates was a bit of a disappointment.  It wasn't just the irritating insertion of hyphens in names and words where previously there was none, e.g. Hippothous became Hipp-othous and then back to Hippothous. Vinegar became Vin-egar, these are just a couple of examples and I don't know if that was down to poor proof reading or in translation to Kindle format but irritating it was.

But it was the story telling itself that I found well below the standard of the first three novels.  Dr Sidebottom, to give him his proper title, is a Fellow and Director of Studies in Ancient History at St Benets Hall, and Lecturer in Ancient History at Lincoln College, Oxford.  And he clearly approached the first three novels with these lofty credentials using his immense knowledge to draw out the characters and the descriptions of the various parts of the Roman Empire where Ballista was fighting, but while drawing on his immense knowledge his lecturing and teaching credentials were tucked away and hidden from sight writing the novels as an author intent on bringing to the reader a collection of stories full of reality.  The hierarchy and inner workings of the Senate and the Empire, Roman fighting tactics, humour (great humour), and loyalty.  All of this interspersed with homilies and nods to the great writers and philosophers of the day a great combination, well written and gripping, keeping the pace at a level that made it difficult to put these books down.

So, Harry Sidebottom clearly set out, as an author who wanted to give his readers a gripping tale and he succeeded, but, in No 4 I think he forgot to take of the College Dons robe and began to write this one as a lecturer, as Dr Sidebottom, and therein lies the problem.  If you read any great or even good novel the writer writes in a way that is engaging to the reader.  The characters have a dialogue with each other and the central character has a dialogue with the reader, much the same way as Michael Caine has with the watcher in Alfie however in the first 6 chapters of The Caspian Gate the dialogue is as sparse as pimples on a new born baby's bum.  A novel with characters telling a story should be dialogue heavy it should be like a teenagers acne riddled face, you can't see the features for the plooks and spots and we shouldn't be able to see the page for the interaction between the characters.  In this book so far, I am really struggling not to just close it down on my Kindle and move on to something else.

I have just read Julian Stockwin's latest offering, Conquest, and Michael R Hicks's latest from the In Her Name series, Dead Soul.  Both are writing about a central character and both have written a number of books in the series and as always the characters engaged the readers and their books were gripping and I resented having to go to work, or go to bed, in fact to do anything that we should be doing in our daily lives, that would take me away from these books, and that is how I felt about Harry Sidebottom and the first 3 books in the Warrior of Rome series.

I've never done this before, not that I have done many reviews, but, I just felt that I had to come and do an early review of this one as I do feel let down by it.  I will not stop reading it and I will come back to this review  after I am done, when hopefully I will be able to update it with a much more positive review.

Mr Fat and the Doctor

I visited the doctor today, that's four times in the last week.  Now if you have read my blogs you will know that I am not one to visit the doctor if I can avoid it, it's a man thing, stupid.  But in my case there is another stupid reason, I don't really get on with her.

I have a fine relationship with the main receptionist and with the nurse who normally sees me for my asthma, but the doctor, no not really.

And three of the visits weren't actually visits to the doctor  but visits to the surgery.  Let me explain, I had heard a report on the BBC saying the at the NHS was not going to spend millions on advertising that the flu season was upon us and urging those at risk (me with my asthma) to go and get our flu jab.  Now again, I am normally on top of this and I usually contact the surgery in Sept at the same time as I am due my MOT for the Asthma, you know the one where you blow into the cardboard tube, have your blood pressure and weight taken etc.  Well I had the MOT and my blood pressure was normal and I was losing weight (well we all know that right!) but I forgot to ask about the flu jab.  Well, with all that nice weather we had been having it hadn't been at the forefront of my mind.

Anyway I then heard the report about the NHS not promulgating the need for it this year but that they expected the local GP's to contact their patients directly.  Well I don't think I have ever been contacted by them, but that's another story. so I decided on Monday 3rd October to pop in and ask when they would be available.  I was informed between 11 and 12  that coming Thursday or the same time on the following Monday (today 10th October).  So I began to ask when would we have been informed but without actually saying anything, I knew from the look, that they were not going to spend any money on postage or phone calls or text messages either!

Never mind, I called in, I knew, so off I went on Thursday to get my jab.  Now as it happens, on the Wednesday I had started to get an extremely painful back in the area of my right kidney and it was as if a knife was being stuck into me.  The pain had got so bad by Wednesday evening that I considered going to A and E, but I had loaded myself up with painkillers which had given some amelioration to the pain and so I thought I would just wait until Thursday, flu jab day, and see if I could get an appointment for Thursday night, or Friday.

Long story short, I spoke to another receptionist who I did not know and explained the symptons, she gave me an appointment for today, 4 days later.  I then spoke to the usual receptionist who was on queue control for the multitudes attending for the flu jab.  She then said, "hang on",  disappeared and came back with a sample bottle telling me to pee into into in the morning and come back at 9.30 am to see the nurse!

Friday morning, peed in bottle, attended the nurse who tested it and said that she couldn't find anything wrong, "although it is rather cloudy" and with that said she would send it off for testing.  Now between then and today I still had a bit of a twinge, a twinge I was aware of, but one that I would normally ignore, but having made the appointment and had my pee sent of for testing, rather than cancel the appointment I would keep it and so we come to today.

I arrived 15 minutes before the appointed time, kindle in hand, and waited.

Eventually, I got the call, went in and was told to sit down.  As usual no eye contact was made, she never makes eye contact:

"Your tests have come back, there is nothing wrong with your kidneys", says she, looking at her pc screen.

"Good" I reply, "and I can report that there is only a little bit of tenderness still there, so it was probably nothing" says I.

"Pull up your shirt and with one finger point to the area" says she. And I do.

"You probably pulled a muscle, just take some ibuprofen or something like that", she continued.

"Now we need to do something about your lifestyle", she then launched into. "That chap who was in just in front of you has a similar lifestyle to you and he has just had a heart attack", still hasn't looked at me.  "Empty your pockets and step on the scales please", she continues. I do, still fully clothed and wearing my shoes, asthma pump, step counter and car keys out of pockets!

"You are still to heavy and don't seem to be losing any weight" she says as she sits back down at her desk, "and your blood pressure is still too high", she continues.

"No, I don't think so" I respond, My weight is coming down and my blood pressure when the nurse took it in September, was normal, you haven't tested my blood pressure this morning, how can it still be high?  And as for my weight, how can you say I am not losing any weight, in the last two years I have dropped three waist sizes, the slacks I am wearing today were cleaned at the weekend and haven't been worn for over four years, even you must recognise that and also that I am not wheezing like a horse who has just ran the grand national"

"My scales aren't wrong", was the reply, "They do not have springs in them like yours at home and they are calibrated every year"! She went on. "Just look at your BMI here on the screen your ideal weight should be between 8 and 12 stone.  I pointed out that at 5' 11 inches or thereabouts that if I were 8 stones I would be anorexic. "Well it is 8st 13lbs, nearly 9 stone....." "Well that makes a difference, 13 lbs", says I and went on to point out that;

My scales did not have springs in them either, that they were digital, like hers, and they certainly showed me when I was not losing weight and when I was losing weight, but she wasn't having any of it retorting, "Well if you want to take the negative spin from my comments.....", and I am thinking 'How can I take it any other way.  With that she turned to her writing and pushed a script across to me for a blood test and turned back to her screen without another word.  I assumed we were finished, but thought I would ask and was given a peremptory dismissal.

Dear Amazon Kindle

My wife bought me a Kindle as a Christmas Gift last year .  I bought her a tablet for her birthday and she has downloaded the Kindle app to it and in a couple of weeks has already got a dozen books on it.  One of our children also has a kindle as does her husband.  We, and our daughter and her Husband have  hundreds of 'written' books and we regularly borrow books from each other.

Once we purchase a book we are pretty much free to do with them what we want, including lending to friends and family or giving them away!

The one thing, and it is the only thing that does bug me with my Kindle is, that if any of us in the family circle buy a book, unless we are prepared to borrow the device from the other family member, that's if they would allow us to borrow it, which even in my close family is doubtful and impracticable, we cannot 'borrow' the book to read and we then have to 'purchase it all over again'.

This is something that surely Amazon can resolve by setting up a separate section in the manage Kindle page where family members can be linked and books shared!

I look forward to your comments on this.

Regards

UPDATE

This is the reply that I received.  Now 10 out of 10 for the fairly quick response, but what they are effectively saying, unless I am reading it wrongly,  is, that if, as a family you are going to have multiple Kindles or you are going to download the app to your tablet or phone,  then you should register them under one user and of course that means one credit/bank account for all purchases!  Now I love my daughter and my wife but I refuse to pay for every single book that they might want to buy and I suspect that they would feel the same, and why should we.

They do say however, that, "we look forward to offering this feature in the future."  But, how long is a piece of string, so I find that part of the reply unsatisfactory.  I am no technophile, but I would have thought that this is something that they would be capable of putting into effect fairly easily, even if it was a simple case of the original purchaser of the book flagging it in the 'manage your kindle' area of the site with the name and email address of the family member who can access it on their device.  Amazon could then send a message to family member B stating that family member A has made one of their books available for transfer to their device, or am I just being to simplistic?

Hello Tom,

I understand your concern in this regard.

Lending of Kindle books is not yet available for Kindle or Kindle reading applications on Amazon.co.uk. We look forward to offering this feature in the future.

I am extremely sorry for the disappointment and inconvenience caused.

One of our aims is to provide a convenient and efficient service and I realise that we have not met that standard in this case. Please accept our apologies.

Customer feedback like yours helps us continue to improve the service and products we provide, and we are glad you took time to write to us. I have sent your comments to the business team.

Please feel free to forward further comments and suggestions about Kindle to kindle-feedback@amazon.co.uk . Each suggestion will be read and taken into consideration.

However, if you wish you can register multiple Kindle devices under your Amazon.co.uk account.

That means you can download and read your books on multiple Kindle devices as long you've registered each device to the Amazon.co.uk account where your Kindle library is stored. All available content will appear in the Archived Items of each device/app.

You can see all your Kindle content and send downloads to your registered Kindles or Kindle applications from the "Your Orders" section of the Manage Your Kindle page www.amazon.co.uk/manageyourkindle.

There is no limit on the number of times Kindle content can be downloaded to a registered Kindle device or application. Publishers determine how many copies of each title can be downloaded to different Kindle devices or applications at the same time so there may be limits on the number of devices (usually six) that can simultaneously have a single book or Kindle active content title. If the limit is less than six Kindles for a specific title, you'll see the message "Simultaneous Device usage: Up to X simultaneous devices, per publisher limits" on the website detail page. Currently Kindle subscriptions cannot be automatically delivered to the Home Screen of more than one device. You can download your Kindle subscription to another device from the Archived Items on that Kindle if both devices are registered to the same account.

The options for transferring content, and instructions for each option, are available in our Help pages here:

www.amazon.co.uk/kindletransfer

I hope this information helps.

Thank you for your interest in Kindle.

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Warmest regards,


Balaji B.
Amazon.co.uk
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