Note for the record

Cakes without ale today, that is to say cheese scones. Made, for once in a while, mostly with real cheese, Lincolnshire Poacher, from Neal's Yard Dairy. Although to be fair, it was a piece taken from the rind end.

Plenty of cheese and butter, but no sugar and no eggs, so probably a bit less of a calorie hit than seed cake.

12.5 scones of which one was left for later.

More soup

A cold and now overcast day suggested soup.

Boil up 7oz orange lentils (Ontarian best) in 2l of water. Add about half a pound of chopped onion. Simmer for about 40 minutes.

Slice half a tenderloin into slices maybe 2cm by 2cm by 0.5cm and add them. Simmer for a further 20 minutes.

Add two nests of Sharwood's soft noodles and a quarter of a white cabbage, slivered. I find it best to cut the core out and slice that separately. Simmer for a further 5 minutes.

Add half a dozen button mushrooms, stalks removed and chopped, halved. Simmer for the final 2 minutes.

Served by itself, just the thing for a winter lunch.

Followed up, later in the day, by the first cheese scones of the season, made, on this occasion by BH. One more simple and reliable recipe only rarely found in use in the commercial sector, probably because the scones are much the best when eaten not long out of the oven. Don't stand that well. See reference 2 for what is probably an oblique reference to the last scones of the last season.

PS: Sharwood's medium egg noodles are useful things. Maybe the closest we come in the regular way of things to ready meals. See, for example, reference 1.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/nonsuch-park.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/kitchen-life.html.

More Goldberg

Having wondered, after the harpsicord Goldberg noticed at reference 1, why anyone would bother with a piano, I found myself at a piano version just a week ago now.

The story starts with toggles at reference 2, with a second leather loop having burst a couple of weeks ago, and was replaced with the silk rope, with the second go being a lot faster than the first. The weather on the day of the concert was not very promising and I did not fancy chancing it on a Bullingdon - one can get very wet, for example, going across Waterloo Bridge in the rain - and with the duffel coat being up and running I opted for duffel coat, umbrella and cloakroom - this last being somewhere I generally try to avoid on account of the queues.

With the final touch of the three cheese scones left over from the day before in one of the fine plastic bags they give you at Neal's Yard dairy, in my pocket for lunch, I set off for the station. Rewarded there by a rare sighting of a train which was not a passenger train. Not as big a reward as a proper goods train, it being only a line cleaning set, but a reward nonetheless. Clearly time for first scone.

Victoria Line off for once in a while so I pushed onto Waterloo and Jubileed it to Bond Street. On this occasion the wall of tiles at Debenhams was doing really well, just the sort of thing I imagine the artist had had had in mind, despite there not seeming to be much breeze at ground level. Rain more or less stopped, but coat and umbrella had been the right call.

Into the bar at the Wigmore to take a drop of white and to admire the tasteful arrangement of empty jam jars, nicely setting off the arrangement of equally empty bottle of fizz. Into the hall to find that the flowers had not been changed from the Saturday before. The Radio 3 presenter did get up on stage, unusual for the Wigmore, but she kept things brief, so was OK. Plus I suppose she had the excuse that the sacrosanct one hour duration of a Radio 3 lunchtime concert - this one was going out live - was going to run twenty minutes over said hour.

The young pianist turned out in a very fancy red dress and hair do to match. The available lady sitting next to me did not look the sort to take any interest in the costs of such things, so I did not get to find out anything about that. Just one awkward pause between variations, as if the pianist had come off one variation leaving her in not quite the right position for the next, but she soon got over that. And after this concert, according to her site at reference 3, she is off to do it all over again all over Europe.

I really enjoyed this piano version. What one loses in precision one gains in emotional impact. And despite the loss of precision there was still some very tricky looking crossing hands going on at times. Another feature, to my ear anyway, was a sort of jangling effect from time to time. I wondered whether this was the piano making more of a meal of the occasional infelicities of temperament than the harpsicord. Need to quiz a musciologist.

Having a cloakroom friendly seat, I was third in the queue, a queue which stretched back up the stairs by the time I left, seconds later. To the 'Running Horse' for one of their pork pies and a glass of white - plus a dollop of a lurid yellow pickle which, for once, I tried and rather liked. Then off to the new Phillips auction gallery for prints and such at the top of Berkeley Square. Tough looking eastern European out front, large black gentlemen scattered liberally inside. All kinds of stuff on offer, including, for example a rather bad Picasso lino cut estimated at £5,000. Affordable art by the standards of the metropolitan folk - the folk that is who have just given a bit of a jolt by the folk up north, folk who would have probably something more important to do with £5,000, even supposing they could put their hands on such a sum. Or as Marie Antoinette once said, if they have such a problem finding work, why don't they come and do a few hours dusting my bibelots?

Last two scones in Berkeley Square. After which, fully fuelled up, I set off for Waterloo.

On the way I noticed that for once in a while, the big wheel had stopped. Passed on both the Sherlock Holmes and the Archduke, places I used to use occasionally but never anything so grand as haunts.

And so to Earlsfield to count aeroplanes, or rather not to count aeroplanes, scoring just the one rising in the east. The cloud must have been thicker than it looked.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/goldberg.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/duffel-coat.html.

Reference 3: http://www.beatriceranapiano.com/.

Group search key: gba.

Snack

A pensioner snack for a Saturday afternoon. Although we have to confess that we did leave three of them. Also that the half dozen from the lower tray were returned to the oven to be finished off while we did most of the first half dozen.

Cheese scones being very easy to cook, but something which commercial caterers do not seem to be able to manage at all. Which I continue to puzzle about as it would be easy enough to make up the dough and then to cook them to order through they day, with this last only taking a little more than ten minutes. People would wait that long for the real McCoy and with my understanding being that caterers which still use ovens (rather than microwaves) just keep them on the whole time, so one could just pop a few more in, as needed.