Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

I can’t explore Ireland every weekend, there’s clothes to wash, yoghurt to make and, if I’m staying here, shopping to do. Actually, there’s some shopping to do anyway as I’m running out of linseed. I find a health food shop in Midleton, though, so that avoids having to order anything online. To Ballycotton Seafood again where I have a plaice filleted and buy a chunk of salmon, thence to the Farmer’s Market where I have the now traditional bacon and sausage bap before buying some fresh peas at the Ballymaloe stall and finally to Tesco’s (a convenient place to leave the car) for staples such as milk and to recycle my San Pellegrino bottles (there’s a €0.25 deposit for each one).

It’s my second trip to Midleton of the morning as one of my fellow Pennywort residents missed his lift there to catch a train to Cork for a shift at Proby’s Kitchen, run by a former teacher at Ballymaloe. C is questioning his life choices when I find him by the door; he’s rather amused when I say that if he doesn’t like the work at the kitchen he’ll be questioning them even more. Fortunately, he does like the morning’s work which makes me regret not having signed up for a shift there.

No pictures of the yoghurt making, but here’s proof, à la Darina, that I, too, can make yoghurt that you can turn upside down without it falling out of the jar.

Whilst the milk is cooling, I head off to the greenhouses for lunch—it’s a sunny day but a little chilly to be sitting outside to eat for my taste and there’s a picnic area perfect for the purpose.

Taking a look at my sweetcorn, I see that staking the second one hasn’t been enough to ensure survival, but the first one I planted is doing well, at least.

Homework after lunch as I move my drying round on the clothes horse which I think will be safe enough outside. And then plaice with peas and sautéed potatoes for dinner, accompanied with some anchovy aïoli I made at school.

After a meeting with my CERN mentee, it’s time for more chores on Sunday—post-washing ones and, as I’m on duty this week, hoovering and tidying the common areas in the cottage. Then a bike ride for lunch. Rather than putting the rack on the car and driving to Mogeely for the nice ride to Youghal, though, I make two of the ~16km laps around the school, take a detour to the Garryvoe beach towards the end of the second…

… and have lunch at Ardnahinch Beach to the south as a little extension before returning to the school.

As you can tell from the sky, the weather has improved, but the temperature is around 20°C, not the 30°C+ heatwave elsewhere. Let’s hope it continues like this; I’m making puff pastry tomorrow and that needs a cool kitchen.

Back at school it’s time to decant another batch of water kefir, cherry and mandarin this time:

I also check up on my kombucha. I think the SCOBY is growing, but it’s a bit difficult to see with the jar up on the top shelf.

And the physics? T, another student here, said early on after we’d all introduced ourselves that she’d like to know more about particle physics. As we were neighbours in the demo kitchen last week we agreed to meet today to go over the standard model diagram.

My claim is that if you understand this diagram you understand particle physics. A couple of T’s fellow cottage residents were also interested so I said T should try explaining it to them—the best test of whether you really understand something. I really wish CERN would produce a T-shirt with a picture like this on the front rather than the Lagangian.

Stephen Hawking was apparently told that every equation included in “A Brief History of Time” would reduce the readership by 50% so he had just one, everyone’s favourite E=mc².

I guess CERN visitors are just happy to have the T-shirt. But if both were on offer, which would you buy?