Is squirrel the perfect austerity dish?

Asks the BBC. That will be an emphatic yep from me. Thumbs up to Mr William Hovey Smith from Georgia a man after my own heart........

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11834184

All American hunter William Hovey Smith showing off a fine cut of squirrel meat all dressed and ready for the pot.

Click on the link for some helpful recipe tips but if you fancy a more traditional Cornish supper

here is old Granny Mannings' recipe for squirrel pasties. You will need the following:

140g squirrel meat cut into 1cm cubes; 100g sliced potato; 100g sliced swede; 50g diced onion; 30g smoked bacon; 15g chopped hazelnuts; 75g butter; 5g chopped parsley; a good pinch of salt and pepper

Method · Egg wash edges of pastry circles. · Place the potato, swede, hazelnuts, parsley and seasoning on to each circle followed by the bacon, squirrel meat and, finally, the onion. · Place butter in each pasty, then fold over the pastry and crimp the edges. · Put the pasties on to a greaseproof baking tray, egg wash both pasties well, place in a pre-heated oven at 180C or gas mark 5. · Bake for 45-50 minutes. The juices should start to boil and the pasties should be able to move on the tray with ease Serve with a glass or two of Hancocks' latest vintage Enjoy me luvvers!

Barum Library now offers a view upon the world

Due to the climatic upheavals of the last few days I have been spending more time than usual in the Library on the computers. Infact yesterday I was marooned in there for the best part of the day. However, this was not time wasted as they were holding a workshop designed for us senior users on navigating your way around the new system that they have installed. This was all very interesting but when I went back up to the terminals I discovered that they have gone and put Google World on the system. Now this was a discovery. Of course I'd heard about this before but what was new to me was the Street View function. Someone, forget now who it was told me that they had seen a van with a weird little device on top of it circulating throughout the town back in the summer. All you have to do is click on the little cameras and you are taken to a photo of that location. I was glad to see that Barum had a little camera on it so  I zoomed in and took a little tour around the town. It was bleddy amazing. I went down Boutport Street right outside the Marshalls,

Outside the Marshalls

St Mary's Road

across the Square, along Taw Vale right up Victoria Road, I had a 360o peek at Forches Cross and see who was in the Borough Arms beer garden before carrying on up Constitutional Hill passing by Our Lady's school down Bear Street turning into Bicton Street stopping at Zephyr Cresent before climbing up to Gorwell and then back down to Frankmarsh. I turned into St Georges Road taking in the newly done up Co-Op before heading back to the library via Rolles Quay. Fantastic.

Forches Cross

It really portrays Barum as a busy little place full of people going about their day to day business. I could see Ian Sokey's grandson with beys hanging about outside the Co-op.
I caught a glimpse of me common law brother in law Michael Trout coming out of Warens.  I was also a little puzzled when I spied Ken Tisbury's  Granada outside of Annie Cawood's place in the middle of the day.  After this circumnavigation I decided to venture further afield and headed due west from Barum zooming across the bar heading out to sea. I soon lost me bearings like the ancestors often did when following this course and ended up on Furse Island in Cork Bay. I re-calibrated the little compass and set out again across the Atlantic towards the Newfoundland fisheries winding up in St Johns. They didn't have a little camera so I flew off down the coast to Barum's homophonic namesake Barnstable Massachusetts where I was able to pick up street view and take a peek around. Pretty little place but there didn't appear to be anyone about. The streets all looked very neat and tidy but they were deserted. I reckon it's a bit like Appledore full of second homes and blow ins from the East Coast cities.
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=51.071015,-4.0613236&z=19&t=h&hl=enhttp://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=51.071015,-4.0613236&z=19&t=h&hl=en

Zephyr Crescent

Have a flutter on a ferret - It could be you

Well three cheers is what I say. it's that time of year again, it soon comes around and before you know it, it's upon us - the ferret racing season. Friday night sees the first classic of the year, the West Down Derby which takes place out at the village hall with the first race on the off at 7.30 on the dot. It's a wonderful event and a highlight of the ferret racing calender bringing together as it does ferret fanciers and some of the top ferret breeders from all over. There was one fella there last year who bought a litter of much fancied and heavily backed novice kits all the way up from Kilkhampton. I am glad to report that these Cornish whipper snappers proved no match for our Devon stables and against the odds and a little engineered  home advantage they were soundly beaten through the pipes and had to beat a retreat down the A39 with their tails between their little legs.  To my mind there is nothing quite like the spectacle of ferret racing at this stage in the season, the atmosphere is bound to be highly charged and there are guaranteed to be a few suprises. It is also a proper village occasion like the ones we used to have years ago, of course it goes without saying that there will be a pay bar no doubt stocked with a few barrels of Barum and a plentiful supply of Hancock's current vintage. I gather that you are welcome to bring along your own ferrets as long as you keep them on a lead just to show them off like, as under the auspices of the League you cannot race an unregistered ferret and unlicensed ferret racing although it does happen in some of the more isolated communities in the area is not something to be encouraged. Also free bowls of warm milk will be available for all. So how can you resist the odds are much more favourable than anything Camelot can devise to take your money off you on a Friday night. Come along and make it a night to remember. It could be you!

Meself I have another motive for going along as I am looking for a replacement for my dearly departed and sorely missed ferret Fluff who passed away at the ripe old age of twelve during last winter's cold snap. She was a fine specimen and is much missed, but you've got to move on. I've heard along the grapevine that my ex-common-law brother-in-law Michael Trout has a young kit he's looking to sell on who has looked promising in a couple of novice races earlier in the season. So I'll have a word and seeing as we are family he might let me take him off his hands. He really does look like a promising proposition as he has the same pedigree as dear old Fluff and comes from a famous line of ferret thoroughbreds. Happy days. Thrilling that's what it'll be.



Find out here about all you need to know about ferrets here. If you have a mind to keep ferrets, breed them and ultimately race them you will find the club's website a true mine of very helpful information.
http://www.britishferretclub.org.uk/
 I have to admit that the logo does look like a recruiting emblem for fascist ferrets but don't be put off us ferret fanciers are a fairly liberal bunch and I am assured that the club operates to serve the interests of all ferrets no matter what. I think it's emblematic of purely geographical factors rather than genetic. Hopefully ferrets are reclaiming the flag from the strident nationalists amoung our previous committee members

Feelin' mazed as a rattle

It's a wild night tonight down on the foreshore at Ashford Strand. A dirty old night as me Granfer used to say, when you'll find only the devil and fools abroad. Still time and tide waits for no man so regular as clockwork I have been down and put me night lines out. It's a bleddy evil evening down there what with the wind, relentless it is, I reckon there must be a 100 mile an hour gusts. My thoughts go  to all of those out there, at peril on the sea. Lights 'ave started flickering now, the curtains are billowing and the rain is drashing down, rain made brackish by ocean spray spuming miles inland. Oddly enough though me fuchsias have to decided to re-bloom! All this proper meddle and caper and strange goings on  has left me feeling as mazed as a rattle.

Unpatriotic dog - Death sentence repealed

Not often you get some good news although I did manage to fix me freeview box and watch the release of the Chilean miners. I bleddy knew how they must have felt as not too long ago I got stuck in the old iron ore workings at Pinkworthy pond. I digress. I am glad to report that Phoebe the terrier is not going to be put down after she bit the jogging soldier's ankle out at Umberleigh. Apparently, the fore-said member of the armed forces, otherwise referred to as our Heroes and may God bless 'em, decided to prosecute the matter. He'd been out on a jog around the lanes of Umbers heading up towards Chittlehamolt when he was confronted by the terror of Phoebe. That's what happens when you go up river, the Terror, the Horrror. As he was jogging by the farmhouse where Phoebe lives she came bounding out to greet him and must have had a quick over excited nip at our heroe's ankles. Now I'm not usually a doggy kind of bloke but from being out and about in the lanes that's that's what farm dogs do.  By my reckoning, they tend to do it all over. When I was lost in France every bleddy other house had some gurt barking dug in it.

Phoebe in better days

So our brave boy phones the lads at the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary and that's it. Phoebe is taken off to the local remand kennels where she had to await her fate. She was refused bail as this was not the first time this had happened. However, once her day in court came around the Judge decided that he did not want such matters in his courtroom and dismissed the case post haste. However, by law, under the auspices of the dangerous dogs act he could have had the poor the little whipper snapper condemned. It is cheering to find that good sense prevailed and after much discussion in chambers Phoebe was released back into the community having served her time on remand. Judicially speaking, it turns out that in order to placate our hero he did recognise the trauma that the brave lad must have suffered via his ankles and that he will not be returning to his regiment somewhere outside Kabul until he gets the go ahead from BUPA.

Cautionary note: Phoebe is very much alive and well and she hasn't learnt her lesson as she grabbed one of me bootlaces as I was cycling past the other afternoon. Even though I found meself tossed up in a ditch I did not call my old mates at Devon & Cornwall Constabulary not being a Hero and also having an arms length of previous I just thought I'd let it lie. Jus' like a sleeping dug

Slovenia - God's own country

Slovenia: the land of my maternal ancestors. Tucked away as it is on the top of the Adriatic sea. My old Gran who was apparently as English as they come ignoring the fact that her parents were Jewish tailors from Peckham, her always said that there was a I quote" a touch of the tar brush in the family". Of course on the old boy's side I hail from the bogs at the source of the Tamar and we can trace ourselves back to when surnames was first invented. But on me mother's side turns out we are all Slovenian. I chanced upon this information after I posted a freedom of information request asking for me DNA details from Devon and Cornwall Police who took a sample after I was arrested, I hasten to add that I was completely discharged at Exeter Magistrates Court,  after the fracas me and Damian had with the bleddy jobsworth Station Manager at Exeter St. David's . Hirsty got done for it, he took the wrap so they say. Mind you it was him who bought the bottle of fancy Scandanavian vodka from that Sainsbury's on Paddy Station up in London.
So all CSI like I had been profiled and I now have the little chart. Fair play I have a lot of markers on the Celtic fringe 49% it is but rather weirdly I have 51% of me markers in and around the Adriatic mainly Slovenia. Fancy that!

Please follow the links below to find out more about the wonderful country of Slovenia. I am saving up for me coach trip next spring.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovenia

http://www.slovenia.info/

Looks bleddy lovely