Sunday Dinner

Couple of quick recipes for you, but not much in the way of ingredient measurements

Braised Pork Chops:

Depending on how hungry you are and on how big the chops are, so this was for Ishbel and me:

4 small to medium pork chops, Ishbel likes the fat off I don't mind

2 or 3 small onions sliced

About a tablespoon of finely chopped fresh ginger

A handful of fresh chopped coriander ( cilantro )

nob of butter and Olive oil

A glass or two of red wine

Chicken Stock

Take an nice deep pan and add the nob of butter and a couple of tablespoons of olive oil melt down.

Add the pork chops on a medium to high heat and brown on both sides.

Once the chops are nicely browned add the onion, ginger and coriander and cook on a medium heat until the onions are soft and just beginning to brown too.

Once the onions have softened add a glass or two of good red wine and turn the heat up a little.  Once the wine starts to bubble add chicken stock and reduce the heat.

You can cook this on the hob on a very very low heat or in the oven at say 140 to 160 for an hour to an hour and a half.  Keep an eye on it and if need be add some more chicken stock as it will be reducing as it braises the chops.

Once ready served with veg of choice and mashed potatoes,  Today's mash had a table spoon (or was it two) of Southern Comfort.

Enjoy!


Rhubarb, Apple and Raisin Pie 

Don't suppose you need me to tell you how to make one of these, and I am lousy at pastry, even when I buy the damned stuff I end up getting holes in it or breaking it up, go figure, but there you go....


So, today I took

five stalks of rhubarb stripped of outer skin

Two large braeburns

Large cupful of California raisins

Two Tablespoons of cognac

Four tablespoons of Demera Sugar

Some grated nutmeg

Cup of water

Combine all the ingredients in a pan and reduce down until the fruit is soft, remove from heat and leave to cool.


While the fruit is softening line a pastry dish 

 Add the cooled fruit to the dish














Cover the fruit with some more pastry and brush with melted butter












Place in a preheated oven at 180, best not to use the fan, and bake for about 35 - 40 minutes


Remove from Oven and allow to cool, sprinkle with icing sugar, slice and serve, with fresh cream, custard or ice cream.

Mrs Pearce, aged 83 has a Complaint

While out for a walk on Saturday 2nd June I was walking along Deveron Gardens in South Ockendon when I bumped into Mrs Pearce. She is 83 and walks slowly with the aid of a walking stick.  I stopped to talk to her and she then started talking, complaining, and she had a right to, about cars parked on the pavements, forcing her into the road or onto what could be slippery grass verges.

Now Deveron Gardens is a street made up, primarily of single story small homes for the elderly , as you will see from the video below, two vehicles were parked right across the full width of the pavement.  This is not unusual and it even gets worse on Sundays and at other times when the Belhus Park Independent Evangelical Church has a meeting on - go figure that one for Christian community spirit - when they roll up to services and block the pavements in their posh cars!

So this is what Mrs Pearce had to say and she would like Thurrock Council to take a more proactive approach in dealing with offenders who block the pavements with their inconsiderate parking.

What say you Councillor Smith, Portfolio holder for Highways and Councillors Kiely and Johnson, ward councillors, what can you do for Mrs Pearce and the rest of us who are forced into the roads or on to slippery grass verges because of these people?

I shall send a link to this post to Cllrs, Smith, Kiely and Johnson and let you know, what if any response there is. buit should you want to email any of these councillors there addresses are:

ajsmith@thurrock.gov.uk

bjohnson@thurrock.gov.uk

akiely@thurrock.gov.uk

Now what did I do!!!!!!!!

I just can't win sometimes......

Missy Stronach went for her Saturday morning bathe, yes I do believe she bathes on other days too as sometimes when I face time her from the office and maybe it is getting close to lunchtime she is still in her goonie (dressing gown for the more discerning of you) or wrapped in a couple of towels, yes I know lunch time but what can one do or say .....

Anyway as she went for her morning bathe I went for my morning walk.  While out walking I was thinking of what I could do for Saturday Lunch which invariably turns out to be a late one and into an early dinner, but there you go.

I had a plan and had a look round the shops as I wanted some nice chicken thighs on the bone and with skin, some asparagus and some good seedless oranges but alas couldn't find anything decent in any of the shops or the market.

On the way home I bumped into 83 year old Mrs Pearce who was, quite rightly going off on one at the cars parked on pavements in the area, so I shall do a blog on that later.

I then bumped into 76 year old Alan who gave me a graphic description of his knee and thigh problems including the fact that he had just had the kneecap on his left leg 'washed out' don't know what was wrong but it sounded painful  but the thing is that both Alan and Mrs Pearce are still highly active and are out and about in the village and trying to keep busy, in fact Alan had just been to the motor factors and bought some brake pads for his large 4 x 4 that HE was just going to change......

Anyway, got home and Missy was out of the bath, I had been out two hours, and was 'putting her face on' I really don't like to see her without it, reminds me of a George Romero zombie, but who am I to judge (I will suffer for this later no doubt) and there we were then sitting at the kitchen table and I say,

Me "Think we might pop to the supermarket"

Ishbel, "Why" (We really don't purchase much from supermarkets)

Me, " Iwas thinking of getting some chicken thighs and doing a spicy marinade for them and then to serve them up with some griddled asparagus (no bloody ketchup Jules) with orange quarters sprinkled with brown/demera sugar and grilled, with maybe a broad bean and bacon salad"

Ishbel, smiling, "That sounds wonderful"

Me, "in fact I think I've changed my mind, how about fish fingers beans and chips"

WHaaaaaaaat was that look for, honestly I have no idea.

Update:

 So this is what I eventually made for Missy Stronach:

Chicken thighs marinaded in Sweet Chilli sauce cooked in the oven for 40 minutes with a side of char grilled orange with brown sugar melted on top

Char grilled Asparagus

Long Grain Rice and Peas

The Difference between a Labour and Conservative Run Authority

You will recall that I posted yesterday on my trial and tribulations on trying to make a call to Thurrock Council to enquire about a mysterious local road closure, this is what I said in an email to the Councillor responsible for Highways;

While you may not be directly responsible for the telephone system or it's operators you may like to enquire, on my behalf, as to why Thurrock residents are ignored and treated to such an abomination of a service. Is it an unspoken directive from the ruling party in power that if residents can't get through and make enquiries/ complaint then we (the Council) can't register those enquiries/ complaints? It then stands to reason that they will not form part of any figures for comparison on official statistics on such enquiries/ complaints being made, or is it that I am again being far to cynical? Or is it just a question of:
a) poor performance by operators,
b) not enough operators to deal with the quantity of calls
c) not enough departmental employees to deal with the quantity of calls
d) lack of interest by council employees dealing with members of the public's enquiries/ complaints*

*The last one is based on the fact that when I did get through on the 652 652 number the FIRST time I selected option 3 for Highways. I waited 11 minutes and eventually the call was answered by, it sounded like Tracey, but when I asked the woman to repeat her name (I do like to make a note of the name of the person I am speaking to) the call was cut off!

I called again ignoring all the options and after 7 minutes the call was answered by an operator. I explained that I had previously called, that I had selected option 3 for highways, that eventually the call was answered and that when I asked for confirmation of the name of the person I was speaking to, the call was disconnected! The operator apologised and stated that she would put me through, that she understood all departments were experiencing heavy call volumes (See, b), c) and d) above !) but that she would remain on the line until my call was answered.

You've guessed what's coming now haven't you? Yes, I waited in silence for almost 5 minutes and then I heard the click, signalling that the call had been disconnected. Just what on earth is going on in Grays that makes the Council and it's staff so unhelpful to it's residents?

Now this is what happened today when I happened to phone Basildon District Council, who are a few miles along the road:

I wanted to Speak to Environmental Health, guess what;

The call was answered on the first ring, I asked for the dept and the lady operator thanked me for calling, put me through and lo and behold, the call was picked up immediately by a nice helpful young chap, who thanked me for calling after listening to what I had to say, informing me that an EHO would get back to me tomorrow!

It might only be a few miles along the road, but they are galaxies apart in their response to callers – Thurrock could do well to emulate this approach, Oh! And BTW I did make enquiries and found that the operators and other staff were employees of the Council and not some faceless company earning millions?

Is it, that Thurrock are Labour controlled and have outsourced, it seems, all of their resources to a Faceless International Company who go by the name of Vertex and who get over £400 million pounds of Thurrock taxpayers money for providing such an appalling service and who are providing (presumably previously direct employees of the Council)such an appalling service to callers to Thurrock Council, while the Conservative controlled Council in Basildon still employs staff directly?

On the question of Vertex, my blog is reproduced by a local web based paper and yesterdays blog was picked up by them and this is what the editor said in response to my comments on Thurrock employees:

 EdMay 29, 2012 - 9:55 pmI doubt you spoke to any Thurrock Council employee – probably one of the Vertex employees?
In 2005 Vertex won a £427 million contract to run the following council services:-
•Administration services
•Business accounting and financial services
•Customer services
•Engineering and transportation
•Facilities
•Human resources
•ICT and e-Government
•Payroll services
•Procurement and property services
•Revenues services
So the person answering the phone will be a Vertex employee and the repairs to the bridge will be handled via Vertex who will probably sub contract the work out.

I have to confess I was ignorant of this companies existence until I saw this and popped over to their web site, you can visit it here .  Now before you visit, if you are from Thurrock and have ever tried to call  the Council, I don't want you laughing at them (otherwise you will cry) when you look at the site, because under the heading of: Public & Citizen Services it states, Making it easier for citizens to interact with government.


Well, there you have it fellow Thurrock residents VERTEX are making it easier for us to interact with our local Government, what do you think, are they?

I should also say that there is a link on the same page to a 'Thurrock Council Case Study' I assumed that I was going to be directed to a page telling me how wonderful Vertex are and what a magnificent job they are doing in 'our' service, for the paltry sum in excess of £400 million pounds that they are getting, but alas we get 'PAGE NOT FOUND' I wonder why that is?