water and recipe

splashingsparkling
sparkling and splashing
And for two days, hardly any of it rain. That's what I like :)

Oh and I don't know if you wanted the actual recipe for beef olives. It's really quite nice and ever so adaptable and undemanding.

For two.

-You do need some very very thinly sliced beef. Quite nice and lean and not too many stringy bits. About 2 to 3 pieces per person, 12 centimetres approx square (or round or irregular) about 1/2 centimetre thick. Butchers will slice it for you but you need to check the piece they're slicing off. Or just say, it's for beef olives and see if they look blank or not :)
-Enough made up stuffing to spread all over the beef slices (I use ready made dried but no reason why you shouldn't make your own if you like)
-olive oil for frying - Oh about a tablespoon or two.
-Half a small onion, chopped or sliced,
-Half a big carrot cut into rings,
-A stick of celery sliced,
-One or two cloves of garlic crushed,
-1/4 pint of beef stock,
-1/4 pint of red wine,
-A generous squeeze of tomato puree,
-A bay leaf and a nice casseroley herb like thyme, oregano or marjoram. (fresh or dried :)
-Some water,
-Salt and pepper to season (though you might not need it if your stock is salty).

Preheat the oven to about 160C
Beat the beef with a rolling pin or a meat beater until it's even thinner and a bit bigger in area.
spread the stuffing over it.
Roll up each piece of beef with its stuffing and use cocktail sticks to sew the sides up and to fold up the ends so the stuffing is sealed in. (about 3 per olive*/paupiette - the french recipe uses needle and thread but I'm allergic to those. Actually I did once use cotton and tied them up into little parcels but really, cocktail sticks are easier).
Heat the oil in a nice solid casserole (Oven and hob safe) and brown the olives very quickly all over(ish - well they've got cocktail stick ends sticking out all over, you can't be fussy about doing them all over).
Put them on a plate and fry the onion, celery and carrot till the celery and onion are soft and slightly browned then add the garlic and fry for a few more seconds.
Put the olives back, add the herbs, wine, stock, tomato puree, herbs, salt and pepper and add enough water to cover the olives.
Bring gently up to a simmer and then put in the oven. Cook for, Oh, half an hour to an hour and a half depending on the quality/tenderness of the meat and what else you've got going on (like blogging) and who's not back for dinner yet and who's back and starving hungry right now and how long it takes to cook the potatoes and veg.
Check the amount of liquid every half hour or so and gently slosh the olives around so they don't stick to the bottom of the casserole - at that temperature they shouldn't but you never know.

You can add mustard to the flavouring of the gravy if you like (along with the liquids). You can skip things like wine, garlic and tomato puree. (but make up the liquid with water or stock). You can use stock cubes or home made.
Nice with mash or boiled and a not too watery green veg. Or roast veg.

*Like I said, not an olive in sight. The 'olives' must be the meat parcels...I expect paupiettes means something like - Oh well here we are. A definition.

Got to turn off now, there's a thunderstorm approaching a bit faster than I expected!
Back later :)

OK, so it's 08.11 on a Sunday morning

And everything was packed up ready to go late last night.

The rain is falling steadily but quite gently.
I've made soup and coffee and packed a dozen plastic sacks and a quantity of plastic sheeting and everything.
Can't help wondering what exactly constitutes weather bad enough to cancel the event! Because if the event had been cancelled, I could still be asleep in my warm bed.

So I am just a tiny bit peeved when a phone call comes to tell me that this is exactly the sort of weather that's bad enough and the event is cancelled. I just wish they'd got up as early as me and looked out at the rain before I got to this stage.
Oh well. Next week at Oxford Market then. I don't think they cancel that except for hurricanes and blizzards...No, don't say it! I absolutely refuse to tolerate hurricanes and blizzards in June. (Or indeed to toerate them which is what I typed first by mistake. Spell-check thought I ought to have typed 'toe-rate'. Picky! Anyway I refuse to toe-rate it either so it had better be sunny and bright.)
I was going to take a picture when I set up but fortunately decided to have a dry run at home last night so this is how it was going to look. You have to imagine the park railings behind the red blanket and a plastic sheet draped cunningly over the top (or suspended from the trees above with little bits of string and selloptape). Oh and a soggy, plastic shrouded figure, clutching a cup of soup, next to the stall)

Thing is, now I will be able to join Barney and all my other Bampton friends in a field in deepest Oxfordshire in time for the Sunday afternoon campers' BBQ on the field. Isn't that wonderful! And then I can spend a wet afternoon dodging in and out of tents and huddling damply in the pub, later. This will be at least as much fun as sitting in the rain, with my feet in a plastic bag, wondering how to stop drips from going down the back of my neck whenever the member of the public turns up to buy a card :).
Ah well. Soup and a sandwich for breakfast and a quick shower before packing up all the stuff we forgot to pack for camping and unpacking all the stuff I packed last night! Present wrapping for Youngest (her birthday always falls on a Bampton weekend so it's always a bit of a puzzle, how to celebrate it. Possibly the best ever was the time Nigel blew up 15 balloons and tied them to her tent, all secretly, so they were all there when she woke up).
I imagine that the campers are busy at this moment, frying up an enormous breakfast for er, 17 I think it was going to be this morning and dashing from tent to tent with cups of tea and coffee.

Just a few more pictures
Of Mr Drake....trapped in the lock with our boatMrs Duck and family, anxiously awaiting his escape (yes, it's alright, he did escape, though seeing as how he came into the lock riding cheekily on the front of the boat he was lucky beyond his deserts to do so)And in case you haven't heard quite enough about water.......
Hey, I just realised that now I won't have to spend all next week frantically replenishing stock. Or I can spend the week making more cards with different pictures. Got some ideas :)

See you soon. er, keep dry!