School’s Out

The schools have at last stopped for the summer.  No longer can I call it “holiday” because, “holiday” around here means leaving home to visit somewhere different during your non-working hours.  I just mean it as time off work.

I love this time of year.  Children are unshackled from the griplike vice of school uniforms.  They are sitting on the road, talking to each other. 

Riding bikes and making up games: 

“I want to be ‘it’”!

“No you can’t you’ve had your turn.!”

“WAAAH!”  There follows defensive explanations drowned out by the cry. 

Zinging around on wheels, climbing the bank into the trees and making secret hideouts, Gentle chat as the football is lazily kicked back and forth, calmly aware of any traffic.  Screaming rage at each other, making friends again, squeals of delight, sharing, not sharing, all ages getting filthy, and looking after each other, in the things they are doing.  Two of them – their mouths speak the music of English but I have no idea what they are saying, no matter how solemnly they look into my eyes.

I love it.  They are good friends.  Children learning how to communicate.  Wonderful. How to work together to get a ball out of a 15 foot hedge.  When to call in a grownup for help (and which grownup to call).  Working it out otherwise.   How to wheedle a participant back into the group when they state “I’m not playing” and stomp into their house. Laughter. Sharing. Human being to human being.

Sound familiar?  These are all the skills they will use as they grow up.  But now – how lucky they are! – they can do so without the “to dos” and “must dos” and “re-do agains” that we face each day.

And the children are doing it without one mobile phone (cellphone) in sight.

Bliss.

Drawings by grandson Damian Rickwood with thanks and amazement that he designed and completed them in under 24 hours. Find him on https://www.instagram.com/damo_does_drawing/….

Green Beans

This is the glorious time of year when gardening friends realise that they have planted too much and we get to “help them out” by saying thank you to their extra produce. It is green bean season — the French bean (string bean) type where you hold two ends and they snap in delightful young freshness, and a flavour so sweet you can almost taste the sugar water that was sprayed on the blossoms to attract the bees.  I have bags of them – beans, that is, not bees.  Time for a new recipe.  The Dairy Book of British Food offers:

Chicken and Bean Layer

1. Have ready: 450 gms (1 lb.or 3 cups)  cooked chopped chicken, 450 gms (1 lb. or 3 ½ cups)  green beans slightly cooked and cut into bitesize mouthfuls, 50 g (2 ozs. or ¼ cup) no-soak dried apricots, chopped. 
2. Make a cheese sauce of 40 g (1 ½ oz 3 tablespoons) butter, 40 g (1 ½ ozs  4 ½ tablespoons) plain wholemeal flour, 568 ml (20 ozs 2 ½ cups) fresh milk, 75 g (3ozs  1 cup) grated cheese, ½ tsp mustard powder, ½ tsp cayenne pepper, freshly ground pepper.  (I added salt.)
3. In an ovenproof serving dish layer the beans, the chicken, apricots and sauce.  Sprinkle with sliced almonds.
4. Bake uncovered in 180C degrees (350F) oven for 25 minutes or so.
5. They say to serve it with baked potatoes.

Verdict: cosy and comforting and filling. 

I never made a cheese sauce with wholemeal flour before.  This time I used a medieval brand of flour grown and ground in the Black Mountains above our valley — quite nutty in flavour. 

They suggested Red Leicester cheese, but I think it needs the more gutsy mature cheddar to handle the cheese sauce. 

Being an onion lover, the next time I make this, I’ll add a chopped sauteed onion into the cheese sauce. 

And, of course, despite its deliciousness today, it will taste better tomorrow.