Hot Sauce

http://www.chillisgalore.co.uk/ are having their first chilli sauce making competition. Check out their forum for details. I have been thinking of what to submit and have come up with a couple of sauces. Subject to inspiration, a third could be on its way...

The competition is at the end of January, so needless to say I am unable to go into any detail as to what might make my sauces different to what others may submit. However here are the labels which give a little clue...

Scotch Bollocks is based on Scotch Bonnets and Purple Haze is made with Peach Habanero. I had put in the sophisticated Purple Haze for our office Food Day Competition with the aim to keep the title (I won last year with a cranberry, mango and chilli smoothie), however though my sauce generated compliments from fellow culinary heat seekers, unfortunately for the rest of the capsaicum challenged, it was a little too much. So the prize went back to the Internet Support team for winning with some scones I believe.

We Don't Often Flood, But When It Happens..

The tide doesn't often breach the quay wall where we are, but when it does the flood results, can sometimes be more dramatic than others. We had a 6.2m tide on Sunday and unfortunately this fishing boat ran aground. He got off on the next tide around 2 am ok. A few houses on the main street had tidal marks on their front gardens, and the pub's basement probably flooded. Apart from that, no great damage done this time.

Hachec Walkaround

Here is some video clips and stills put together to give a taster of what the house and grounds are like.

Vineyards In November

I am slowly cataloguing my photos and video clips of our recent trip to Hachec. Sue and I managed to get an afternoon off and just drove around with a map for a few hours. The main crop in the area we saw, were not surprisingly as we were in the Bordeaux region, vineyards with a few Domaines and a main cooperative. We didn't go further than an hour away in any particular direction. The grapes were mainly concentrated on hillsides - which they prefer of course; whilst on the flat plateau, just hectares of maize - real children of the corn territory. I ventured a little offroad which got a bit creepy to be honest..

Last of the chili's for this year

Picked pretty much the last of the chili's. Some Peach habs Antillais Caribbean a few Thai Dragons, Bulgarian Carrot and some Whippet Tails here. However I have strong hopes for a remaining Rocoto Red to ripen up with a further 5 or so not looking too hopeful. Soon it will be time to work on next years list and start doing some sauce and chutney making to get me through the winter.

TGV Tarbes to Paris

It was an hour and half into the 6 hour trip on the TGV before I was bored enough to start exploring the video editor on my mobile phone. After getting it handled, I decided to see what I could put together before my battery ran out. I cheated and persuaded the barman onboard to plug my charger at his bar so i could get the end. I am only sorry that I didn't get the start of the trip.

Trip to the Pyranees

The New House

Well, we got back fine. Our mission here was to drive the parents loaded Hilux packed with a kiln and the rest of Ma's pottery, down from Faversham to their new house in the Haute Pyranees (65) and help them move in. The trip itself was fine without incident. In all it took us 17 hours to get down over 2 days. Average speed: 48 mph/79kph. The return we did TGV + Eurostar. Left Tarbes 10:45 and arrived Ashford 21:30.

The parents and moving crew

We arrived at the house around 4 pm on the Tuesday 6 Nov, The removal firm had already beat us and were unloading which was great. However, we all stayed in a local Chateau B+B til the following night. We stayed until the Monday, moving boxes around, setting up the main rooms and checking out the local facilities, service suppliers and merchants. Needless to say that quite a reasonable quantity of the local wine was put through stringent quality testing. I am pleased to say they passsed with flying colours.

Another fine D (or was it E?) road the GPS took us down which was not on our map.

I do have some video of the house and land that I shall be working on and will put up shortly. Also links to more photos once I've got them sorted.

I would just like to say thank you to everyone who helped out with the move and also the farewell bash at Twitham.

View from my east facing bedroom window

The Twitham Farewell Party

With no turning back now, the time for the Twitham Party for friends and acquantances came. It was a great do. With lots of food, laughter, musical entertainment, fire show and a moment for meditative reflection. It was great to see a lot of people who have supported and have been supported by Mo and Dave through the 14 odd years they have been at Twitham. A lot of young adults and teenagers I recognised as being small children way back was something else too.

playing with fire

Dream Sequences

This was supposed to be called 'Coming Home' however the movie has morphed somewhat into a kind of dream like state of unconnected images. So now it's called Dream Sequence.

My first movie.