better a mile wide than an inch deep

My family and I held a coffee morning to raise funds for the hospice that provided nurses to look after my dad while he was dying. Thanks to the generosity of the people who showed up, we raised well over a thousand euro. :)

1 cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 banana, peeled
quarter cup soy milk
1 tbsp sugar, optional
handful of strawberries or other fruit to serve
maple, agave, or golden syrup to serve
oil for frying

Put the flour, baking powder, banana, soy milk, and sugar in a blender and mix until smooth.

Heat a frying pan and drizzle it with sunflower oil.

When the oil is hot, pour half a cup of batter onto the pan for each pancake. It's quite a thick batter so it's possible to cook two or three pancakes at a time.

When the pancakes are bubbly and glossy on top, flip them over and brown them on the other side.

Serve with syrup and fruit.

Makes four to six pancakes.

1 tablespoon sunflower oil
4 large leeks
4 large potatoes
4 stalks asparagus
2 litres (8 cups) vegetable stock
a good grinding of black pepper and a pinch of salt
1 carton plain soy yoghurt or a cup of soymilk (optional)

Trim the root ends and any dead leaves from the leeks, and cut the woody ends off the asparagus. Peel the potatoes.

Rinse all the vegetables, and then either slice them thickly or run them through the large grating plate of the food processor.

Warm the oil in a soup pot and add the vegetables, sauteeing them over a medium heat for a few minutes, stirring often, until the leeks soften.

Pour in the stock and turn up the heat.

As soon as the soup boils, turn down the heat and leave it to simmer for ten or fifteen minutes until the potatoes are tender.

Ladle the soup into a blender and puree the soup until very smooth, being very careful with the steam, and then pour the soup back into the pot. Or puree the soup with an immersion blender, but I think a regular blender works better.

Add the pepper, salt, and yoghurt or milk, if using. Add extra water if the soup's too thick. Simmer a minute or two more, and serve.

Notes:
- Slicing or grating the potatoes too finely will make them stick to the pot.
- Don't use white asparagus. White asparagus needs peeling which is a drag and it doesn't taste quite as good.
- It is possible to make this soup without oil; simply put the prepared vegetables in a pot with the water and proceed as per recipe. The finished soup isn't quite as richly flavoured but it is still terrific.

This soup makes six to eight bowls and came out so well that everyone, even the people who dislike vegetables, had second helpings. I named it in honour of the enormous bucket of frogspawn that Liam and I rehomed from the garden pond to the forest pool today.

Well, that was mental.

I had forgotten how crazy live gigs can be. I was right in the middle, ten foot from the stage, and it was moshpit central, although security kept trying to break it up. But good luck to them even trying to get in there in the crush. I'd have thought that being in a heaving mass of sweaty strangers would be unpleasant, but I just threw myself in and elbowed anyone who was aggressive, and actually it was fun!

My Chemical Romance are fantastic live. They played it like they meant it. Frank Iero is incredibly rock and roll, even in a dodgy green cardigan; Ray Toro is amazing and note-perfect; Gerard was excellent; and Mikey was cool. They came out in Irish football shirts for the last song, which was well-meaning but kinda bizarre. The new drummer guy, whoever the hell he is, was fine; even the two support acts (LostAlone and The Blackout) didn't suck.

The music was such a rush. I danced and sang and screamed my guts out for four hours, and now my face hurts from smiling and I ache all over.

Brilliant.

I was cleaning up my hard drive and came across a text file of Seven Sunday Mother-Daughter Mornings by Hradzka (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles). I just read it again. I can see why I saved it. It's a short and not exactly cheerful story, but well worth reading, in my opinion.

Here's a poem Carol Ann Duffy wrote when the last British veterans of the Great War died in 2009.

Last Post


In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin
that moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud...
but you get up, amazed, watch bled bad blood
run upwards from the slime into its wounds;
see lines and lines of British boys rewind
back to their trenches, kiss the photographs from home-
mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers
not entering the story now
to die and die and die.
Dulce- No- Decorum- No- Pro patria mori.
You walk away.

You walk away; drop your gun (fixed bayonet)
like all your mates do too-
Harry, Tommy, Wilfred, Edward, Bert-
and light a cigarette.
There's coffee in the square,
warm French bread
and all those thousands dead
are shaking dried mud from their hair
and queuing up for home. Freshly alive,
a lad plays Tipperary to the crowd, released
from History; the glistening, healthy horses fit for heroes, kings.

You lean against a wall,
your several million lives still possible
and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food.
You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile.
If poetry could truly tell it backwards,
then it would.

I had to get my car fixed today, which took two hours. Conveniently, the cinema is beside the garage, so I got to see Made in Dagenham, in a cinema which I had all to myself. It's a well made, life-affirming, inspiring film about women's fight for equal pay for equal work in England in 1968. I heartily recommend it to you. I laughed, I cried, I cheered... I took no crap off the mechanics while I was picking up my car afterwards. :D