Two purchases from the Manor Green Road butcher on this occasion. Stewing steak and oxtail. The stewing steak went first, taken with dumplings. While here I report on the oxtail which followed.
But the day started with continuing to test for the search visibility of the registration plate 'G08 FOO', first noticed at reference 2. Results a bit better this time, with Google giving car registration plate as an option, even if it did not turn one up. Both Google and Bing found lots of obscure part numbers which included 'G08' and lots of Chinese, mainly Hong Kong, websites involving 'FOO'. Some hits involving both parts of the search clue, but none finding both parts in the same place. I remembered about a search engine salesman years ago explaining that we should test candidates in exactly this way. Load up some obscure text string and make sure that the candidate search could find it some days later. A search which, I should add, was restricted to some large chunk of our corporate database and a very small chunk of what was then a much smaller Internet.
Prepared the oxtail and into the oven at 100°C at 07:50. Interestingly, the telephone did a much worse job at accommodating the black spots on the oven window than the human eye. The spots, seemingly on the outside of the outer of the two glass panels in the door, appear to be a matter of appearances rather than function, the idea being that this part of the front of the oven should appear to be a reasonably uniform black, which it does unless you look straight it from a reasonably short distance.
At this point I received by email the first of what has become a series of pdf files containing popular undergraduate textbooks, albeit a few editions old or a few years old, which does not matter for my purposes. And mostly proper copies, rather than a scanned version. In this case, a proper copy of the second edition of Mesulam's 'Principles of Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology' from 2000. Perhaps the copyright holders do not fuss about this too much so long as sales hold up, with most serious readers wanting the latest edition, despite their often coming in at well over £100.
Then off around Jubilee way, to find lots of activity outside the new Lidl HQ. Gardens and car parks - these last in addition to the multi-storey behind.
Next item was Digital Realty, a block I have passed many times and given the fancy fence, often wondered what it was about. But today I got around to checking and it turns out to be a serious data centre operation, offering what appears to be the full works. Whole halls, cages, uninterrupted power supplies, serious connectivity, including being hooked into something called the London Internet Exchange. See references 3 and 4. And on subsequent passes, I could see that it was quite a big operation, with serious physical security and with power equipment visible just inside the main gate. Who knows what vital operations are hosted there.
More mundane, this striking weed at the junction between Jubilee Way and Cox Lane.
Drained off most of the fat & water and added the mushrooms at 16:15.
Served at 17:00, with white rice, white beans and green salad - a version we have not tried before, but what I had been given when I was first introduced to this way of cooking oxtail, back in what had once been the Wheatsheaf in South Lambeth Road. With some more of the golden anniversary wine first noticed at reference 1. We thought the oxtail was spot on; succulent and with just the right amount of chewiness.
Not quite all done at the first sitting, with their being enough left for a snack at some point the following day.
For dessert we had semi-wholemeal mincemeat and apple pie, semi in the sense that BH ran out of white flour and didn't care to use my bread flour, of which there was an ample supply. In any event, all very satisfactory, taken with hot yellow custard. The existence of other sorts being something by way of a rather feeble standing joke.
Lost at Scrabble by a modest 20 points, despite going out.
Oddly the fat did not set overnight, although the jelly underneath did. BH took most of it on toast. I tried it, but did not much care for it, beyond noting a resemblance to the flavour of pig's brawn. Same sort of boiling up I suppose.
As it happened, I went on to read in 'Ulysses' later on that, according to Bloom at least, in early twentieth century Dublin, dripping was what people who could not afford butter put on their toast. While I remember that FIL was quite nostalgic about the stuff, from his fairly pinched childhood in Portsmouth's old town - not that we ever gave him any. Maybe the odd bit of marrow.
Winding back, the day of the oxtail closed with another go at searching for 'G08 FOO'. More Chinese restaurants, this time including a noticeable number from Australia and New Zealand. My impression is that these search results are very dynamic, varying every time according to the circumstances of the moment. Not replicable at all. Tried adding 'car' and then 'jaguar' to the search term, but neither addition succeeded in recovering the original post.
References
Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/11/second-oxtail-of-2021-2022-season.html.
Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/an-odd-block.html.
Reference 3: https://www.digitalrealty.co.uk/.
Reference 4: https://www.linx.net/.
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