A quick weekend update. Game update to follow.

Cheers

We have had two dodgy batches of easy peeler oranges from Tesco in recent days. They look and feel perfectly fine until peeled, then they rear their sorry-looking, dehydrated segments. Compost, then? Nope. When life gives you crappy oranges, juice them. Today they have gone into a Sunrise Sour. This bourbon-based cocktail combines whiskey with simple syrup, lemon and orange juice, and grenadine for dramatic effect. The grenadine is poured over the back of a spoon to layer neatly on the bottom. It’s a pleasant juicy take on the traditional whiskey sour, and looks great too.

Sunrise Sour (Recipe from The Spruce Eats)

1 1/2 oz bourbon

1 1/4 oz lemon juice

1/2 oz freshly squeezed orange juice

1/2 oz simple syrup

1/2 oz grenadine

First, chill your glasses by filling them with ice. I’ve used an espresso martini glass here. Place all of the ingredients (apart form the grenadine) into a cocktail shaker. Add ice and shake hard. Pour into the glass, then slowly pour the grenadine over a spoon touching the inside edge of the glass. This allows the denser grenadine to fall without mixing into the rest of the drink.

On reflection, a tall glass would be a better aesthetic finish, although the taste remains great.

Occasionally I go back to my roots and make some traditional Irish recipes that I grew up with. Soda bread was one of my favourites that mum made all the time. It was only ever a few minutes away, and served warm with butter melting on top, it was hard to beat. For some reason I rarely make it, although this morning there was no excuse as I hadn’t baked any fresh bread for the weekend. My soda farls didn’t turn out perfectly, but they weren’t bad considering how long it had been since I’d last made them, and they tasted great.

We’ve started watching Billy and Dom Eat the World on Amazon Prime with Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan (Pippin and Merry from Lord of the Rings). One of their food explorations involved a roast dinner, and the controversial approach of making Yorkshire puddings with a cold tin. I had always believed the key to making the puddings rise sufficiently was smoking hot oil, and managing the tin in that state was a challenge. Apparently a cold tin achieved as good a result according to the show. This was challenging my central cooking dogma, but being a scientist at heart, I endeavoured to keep an open mind.

Cold tin. Cold oil. What do you think? I was quite impressed with the result. Although I didn’t do a proper test of the two methods on this occasion, I can confirm that it works from cold as well as I would typically expect. I do not claim to be a master of the Yorkshire, though.

Gardening

I spent some time working on the garden on a rare sunny afternoon this weekend. The zen corner is coming along slowly. I left off with the geotextile fabric still exposed at the border with the grass, with the aim of creating as seamless a transition as possible. Autumn started to prove slightly challenging as leaves are already falling and covering the stones. Luckily the maintenance of a zen garden involves raking…

I was leaving the fabric trimming as long as possible to ensure there was enough material while the stones were being positioned. Once they were in place and the outline looked okay, I cut the material with scissors (it’s easy to work with), and I also trimmed the plastic edging that I used to define the area. It was also remarkably easy to cut considering it is fairly heavy duty. The edge between the grass and stones now looks quite natural. There is still much to be done in this corner including a stone wall and updated steps at the back, but we’re making progress.