Rosary Crusade

A beautiful sunny Autumn day for it. Lots of people, lots of pushchairs and marshals who say the rosary whilst marshaling.

How often do you get to sing Immaculate Mary whilst walking past Harrods? Not often, I bet.

Brompton Oratory stuffed full of people singing is pretty great too.

Let's hope that has an effect on the passing or not of the HFE Bill.

The only sour note was on the way home when some pupils from my old school shouted, 'There's Miss Leutgeb,' at me a number of times outside the station. I just carry on walking when this happens. London is so crowded and my name so common, who's to say it's me? Maybe other professions get shouted at in the street, but I've never heard of it. Paramedic brother has people shout,' Oi Greenie, who's dead?' now and then, but it's not directed at him personally. I did leave that school over three years ago too.

Crumble

Nigella 'How to Eat' p.46 says

120g self-raising flour (Nigella says plain's OK.)
90g butter, cold and diced into 1cm cubes
3 table spoons light muscavado sugar (I use the really dark brown stuff.)
3 table spoons vanilla sugar (that's way too posh for this kitchen, so I use caster sugar)

To which I add a handful of jumbo rolled oats. Nuts can be nice too. Sultanas ....

Crumble away. Do what you do with your fruity bits. Add a bit of sugar and water? That all depends on what it is and how tart the fruit is -very in the case of my Mum's windfall Bramleys just now.

Gas mark 5/ 190C for 25-35 mins.

Butter room temp or cold? I'm pretty relaxed on that, though never really soft.

My Mum just does the good ol' 3:2:1 method flour:sugar:butter and my Dad has been eating away merrily for forty years on her crumbles. No complints from that end of the table. She says it can be very crumbly or pleasingly shortbready depending on the whim of the cook. Very sweet or not so.

I like Nigella, but the grams thing and then tablespoons.... SI Units for cooking needed here methinks. Also, I have 3 different sizes of tablespoons and that doesn't seem to have messed up the crumble ever. The dark brown sugar is nice though.

So there we are. Anyone else have anything to say on this topic?

Grandma's Anniversary

Grandma died a year ago today. To mark the occasion, my cousin requested a Mass for her, which we all went to, then we had lunch and then we visited her grave which is also where Grandpa is buried, though he predeceased her by nearly 32 years.

Her details have been added to the grave stone, which in typical Irish fashion gives the place and county of birth of each of them, the dates when they died and how old they were - 66 and 90 respectively.

I managed not to notice at her burial that the grave is in the Catholic section of the cemetery, so she is surrounded by statues of Our Lady and Celtic Crosses.

And that's spelt

C major.
not Sea major or See major.

15 years and that's never happened, 'til this week.

Evening Devotions

Evening Devotions (see right) does it again.

This time on the Rosary.

Picture shamelessly borrowed from there.

The Barber Violin Concerto

...currently on R3 in some amateur thing, so good but iffy intonation here and there. (Moi, I'm always bang on the note. ;-) )

Not one that gets played too often, but a goody.

Well worth a listen.

The second movement has one of those great melodies like the Ravel Piano Concerto or the Rodriguez Guitar Conc.

Grandma RIP

Sunday is the first anniversary of Grandma's death.

Spoke to my Mum today who says that my Aunt is inviting us all over and that the 11am Mass in their Parish is for the repose of her soul which we will go to.

Grandma always had a Mass for Grandpa on or around his anniversary for the 32 years that she was a widow.