Toad

We celebrated the start of September with a good looking toad-in-the-hole - which the time stamp on the snap above - sometimes visible if you hover over the picture in question - suggests was over a minute late on the table. I shall have to have a word with cook.

We thought also it was time to sample the latest offering from Alexandre Bain, the vigneron from Tracy-sur-Loire. He seems to turn over his wines quite regularly, so the Mademoiselle which we liked has vanished and has been replaced by La Levée 19. Various meanings offered by Littré, mostly to do with lifting of one sort or another. One lifts turnips but picks grapes, but I suppose a bit of poetic license would allow lifting the grapes of 2019. Whatever the case we liked it. Two bottles to go and I dare say we shall get some more from the people at Guildford, to be found at reference 2. Hopefully they do not depend too much on the branch of Terroirs at King William Street, sadly now closed for good. Maybe we will make it to their branch at Battersea Rise.

There used to be a rule for family eating when I was a child that said your plate should be turned so that the meat or fish was directly in front of one - veggies not having been invented in those days. But this snap seemed to work better the other way around.

There was a dessert but neither BH nor I can now remember what it was. Possibly orange jelly - something I rather like and which is more or less unobtainable from cafés and restaurants. With or without the cream - which I prefer to do without with jelly.

Some days later: in the margins of something else, I now discover that OneDrive failed to collect some of the photographs from my telephone which might otherwise have served to job my memory. So there has been some updating after the event, something I usually eschew.

It is now clear that dessert was indeed orange jelly assembled by BH, supplemented with the previously noted, addictive, nearly raw peanuts from Sainsbury's.

PS: the handsome green vase top right is one of a set of three, wedding gifts for BH's parents. Denby. A pair from one friend and a singleton from another. Lucky that they were the same model and the same colour - but perhaps there was not that much choice in the 1940's. While the striped apron, hanging on the door behind, was made from material which I think was originally bought from Heals of Tottenham Court Road (the place last mentioned at reference 6), perhaps in the late 1970's. Repurposed at least once since then. Apron mostly used when baking bread.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/03/toad.html.

Reference 2: http://www.lescaves.co.uk/lescaves-welcome. With this wine getting: 'Deeply coloured and very rich in style partly due to its late harvest. The palate is wide open, with juicy chlorophyll, lifted floral notes, tomato and fresh Virginia tobacco. This is not normal Pouilly-Fumé – it is decadent and delicious'. What are the people that write this stuff on? I certainly missed the Virginia tobacco. And then, did they mean Kerbside Virginia or the other sort? Not that there is a lot of the first about these days; need to keep one's eyes peeled.

Reference 3: https://www.terroirswinebar.com/home.

Reference 4: http://alexandrebain.over-blog.fr/. A blog which allows you to pay not to get advertisements. I don't suppose I shall be paying, but I may take a proper look later today. Later: the blog appears to have been inactive since 2013, but I have learned something about his plough horses. No proper website that I can find: perhaps he is too close to nature to bother with that sort of thing.

Reference 5: https://en.over-blog.com/. Something else to take a proper look at. But I would be surprised if I were moved to move off the Google Blogger offering after more than ten years of it.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/08/st-thomas-hanwell.html.