Veggie Thursday

Some months ago now we instituted a veggie Wednesday, a day on which we were also to avoid alcohol, chocolates and credit cards. This went on for a while, but has now rather languished.

However, last week, BH, who is not exactly a power user of her smart telephone, lifted a veggie recipe from YouTube. We were all rather surprised about this, but it turns out the recipe was pushed at her when she switched the thing on in the morning, along with the weather and dubious titbits of news, and did not involve her actually calling up YouTube.

As I recall, the recipe involved a lot of white cabbage, plus eggs and cheese. A  modest amount of grated carrot. Not that unlike a cabbage version of the potato pie which is a family staple. Finished off with a quick turn in a hot oven to brown the top a bit.

It did us very well, with the modest amount of carrot delivering a surprising amount of flavour. No idea how many it was supposed to feed, but we did most of it at the one sitting, leaving just a modest slice to be snacked on some other occasion.

A couple of days previously, it had been my turn with sausage stew, that is to say saucisson sec from Bastides via Waitrose. Getting a dose of e-numbers and so forth in before the veggie to come.

Oil (on this occasion, rather than butter), garlic, onion, celery, tomatoes. Simmer for an hour or so, longer if there is time. Water not usually necessary, there is enough in the vegetables - including a surprising amount in the mushrooms at the end. One needs to take care. Add in the sausage and the sliced mushroom stalks. Add in the mushrooms less than five minutes before the off.

Greens from Sainsbury's.

It did very well too, with enough left for a meal for one - when BH was out - the following day.

The only serious error being adding too much water before warming the left overs up in the microwave. I would do better to stick with a saucepan, which does not seem to be any slower and where one can see what one is doing. Not all guesswork.

PS 1: a slight niggle: when BH's phone was on mute, I had thought that was it. No sounds at all. But if you click on a YouTube video, we now find that that seems to override the mute and give you the tiresome 'music' which decorates a large proportion of such videos. Maybe there is some system setting which will enable us to stop this.

PS 2: the archive suggests at reference 1 that veggie Wednesdays were invented more than two years ago. I did not attempt to guess how long ago, but I was still surprised to find that it was as long as that. So while I can still remember stuff, my memory of when it happened is decidedly shaky. I wonder what will happen to the power memory of the lady - Jill Price - at reference 2 as she gets older? Presumably, it will start to degrade eventually, just like with the rest of us.

[WHSmith has focused on its outlets at airports and train stations in recent years © Anna Gordon/FT]

PS 3: it looks from reference 3, as if WH Smith is gearing up to pull out of the High Street to concentrate on its much bigger travel flavoured business, with a management buyout not seeming to be on the table. Rather a private equity, asset stripping job. One supposes that this will lead to a massive thinning out in fairly short order, if not outright closure of the chain and the sale of (presently) valuable leases. Outsource the messy business of getting rid of large numbers of people - some of whom might have been working for you for many years.

From where I sit, a rather odd shop, but one which does have it uses, and I will miss it if it goes from Epsom. When I was young, a place where you could buy decent but cheap classical LPs. I probably still have some. 

I wonder what will happen to their wholesale newspaper business - one of the bêtes noires of the chap who runs our fine Costcutter in Manor Green Road.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/11/embassy.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/04/remainder-shelf.html.

Reference 3: WHSmith in talks to sell its UK high street shops: Company is exploring strategic options and may concentrate on its travel business - Laura Onita, Ivan Levingston, Financial Times - 2025.

Reference 4: https://www.annagordon.co.uk/about. For the photographer who does shops. And prime ministers - but these are copy protected - up to a point.