Round 2 – Pub Quiz Matters Medical in which……..

All of the questions relate to Doctors of various kinds. As before if you post your answers as a comment I will let you know how you are getting on.

p.s. For those who follow me via twitter we have power back, sorry for the enforced delay – country living don't you know.

1	The Doctor in the House Books were written by?
2	Doctor Who was first shown on the television screens in which year?
3	Doctor David Owen was a former Labour MP and founder member of the SDP was an MP in for which parliamentary seat?
4	Doctor Finlay's Casebook was set in Tannochbrae, what was the name of the doctor whose opinions he regularly challenged?
5	Doc Martens footwear has been associated with which football club?
6	Which Doctor performed the first successful human heart transplant?
7	Dr Strangelove was played by whom?
8	Who was the High Court Judge appointed to oversee the Shipman Inquiry?
9	Who was the author of Dr Doolittle?
10	Dr Crippen was arrested in which country after fleeing England

Round 1 of the Pub Quiz – IT in which………….

I did say the round titles might not help. Round 1 is IT in which all of the answers contain the letters IT in that order. Please put your answers as a comment; I will let you know how many you have right full answers will be posted after the second round.

1	An 1842 book by Edgar Alan Poe, in 1961 it became a film with Vincent Price and features a giant pendulum
2	A technique used in macramé, pigtails, braiding, corn dolly making and stringing onions or garlic
3	a style of printing type patterned on a Renaissance script with the letters slanting to the right
4	Yes Minister and Only Fools and Horses are examples of this type of comedy
5	This gland is at the base of the brain, about the size of a pea and weighs approximately 0.5g
6	The soft spongy substance in the centre of the stems of many plants and trees
7	a brand of smokeless fuel invented by Thomas Parker in 1904
8	a form of iron oxide that is usually a silver grey or black/steel colour. Its metallic appearance is brought bout when the material is polished, if it were to be ground or cut up it would look red or red brown. If heated it can become mildly magnetic
9	The government recommend that you have five of these a day
10	a process for calculating a desired result by means of a repeated cycle of operations

Good luck, remember post your answers as a comment and I will publish as a group. Deadline for completed answers is tomorrow evening at 10.30pm

Pub Quiz

It always seems a pity to put in a lot of work creating pub quiz questions and then they are not used again. So just for fun I thought I would run the quiz here for a few days. There are ten rounds of ten questions; no prizes, just your own personal glory, after all I cannot tell if you phoned a friend or used a wiki. So first choose your joker round, if you have ever taken part in the quizzes O/H and I set you will know that the headings for the rounds may or may not be useful. If you put your answers in the comments section I will publish them all together after 24-48 hours. It may or may not help you to know that the questions were set for the Old Mill House, pub in Saxtead, Suffolk.

Choose your Joker rounds from:

	Round Name
1	IT
2	Matters Medical
3	Seek and Ye Shall Find
4	Keeping up with the Jones's
5	First and Last
6	The Name's Bond
7	Cloak and Dagger
8	Many hands make light work
9	The Play what I wrote
10	Kings and Queens

Pea Gleaning

One of the joys of living in the country is the opportunity for ridiculous levels of frugality. One of my favourite activities is pea gleaning. Pea harvesting around here is done at industrial strength; visitors are surprised when at 3.00am the viners, lorries, drivers etc pitch up with their lights on and start trundling up and down the fields, because the moment is right. The peas are carted off to be processed all within minutes of picking.

So where does gleaning come in and is it worth it? Birdseye and others could argue that the peas they sell in the shops are at optimum condition and they are probably right; but the whole something for nothing, picking, shelling, blanching and freezing for yourself makes it worthwhile. After the pea team have left the field it is left looking brown and forlorn, with little sign of life. However, adjusting the eye to see the areas where peas might have been left untouched, it is possible to see tracks where plants have fallen into the grooves where tractors passed earlier in the season, or edges of the field where the harvesters can not quite reach. It is backbreaking and best done in the early morning or evening on hot days and certainly within 12 hours of the pea team leaving. The resultant haul was one large canvas bag full, four hours shelling resulted in about four and a half pounds of peas, which are now blanched and in the freezer. The pods went to the hens, they enjoy picking at them, nothing is wasted. Is it worth it; of course it is, all part of life, a bit of fun and a few cheap eats even if it is quite a lot of effort.

Blackcurrants, jam, cassis and frogspawn

This time of year the soft fruits are coming in thick and fast. I love to take handfuls for breakfast and lunch; this is an ideal use for small quantities as they reach ripeness and fascinates the children who think I eat frogspawn when in fact it is white currants. I used to be fearful of jam making thinking that it was a large quantity affair with jars sitting on shelves going hard or mouldy depending on the sugar levels. However, I have changed my tack and with soft fruit and now adapt a preserve method, which works well for small quantities. The trick is to heat an oven to 110^oc and put in two separate containers an equal weight of sugar and soft fruit. Leave in the oven for 20 minutes until the fruit starts to 'bleed'.

Remove from the oven and stir the sugar into the fruit until fully dissolved. Do not underestimate the heat, the two will cook together and the resulting preserve can be put into jars at this point; this version is likely to be a soft set and only keep for four weeks in the fridge, but ideal with raspberries for scones or yogurt.

A further trick is to continue heating either in the microwave or on the hob to a more traditional setting point. The whole process is quicker than

traditional jam making and results in a fresher fruit jam. I used this technique for blackcurrant jam and a mixed summer fruit jam of gooseberries, red currants, strawberries and raspberries.

Also in production from the blackcurrants is the cassis. Based on Larousse I have used currants, a few of the leaves, a small piece of cinnamon and a clove. The pictures show progress so far, the currants are rising like the little oil bubbles in a Galileo thermometer, I anticipate straining and rebottling when they sink back down to the bottom, the colour is improving but it looks a little thin so I may add a thicker sugar syrup later.