Today is Pershilla's moving day. Stephen is down in Watchet and has just phoned to tell me that the Lyndon from Davlyn Marine was there bright and early and that Pershilla has now been loaded onto the lorry and is about to set off on the journey to the Kennet & Avon Marina, her temporary home.
So, boat on lorry & heart in mouth, hoping she fits under all the motorway bridges.
Therefore I need some distractions. Shall I take all the boxes of books to the loft, or shall I make a batch of cheese straws? Cheese Straws it is.
These are known in my family as Nanny's Cheese Straws, as she is the expert at making them. She's just moved into a new residential home, so isn't doing her own cooking any more, so I am baking these on her behalf.
This photo is about a year old now, but I think it's a great one of Nanny, Emma & I.
The ingredients are all kitchen basics and the equipment you need is pretty minimal. I know this, as I decided to make them having spent yesterday packing up my kitchen. So, where I would normally have used a mixing bowl, I used a casserole dish and a highball tumbler substituted very well for a rolling pin.
Ingredients
225g self raising flour
100g lard ) the exact proportions & type of fats aren't important
50g marg/butter ) just make sure you use 150g in total
125g strong cheese, grated
1 egg
Large pinch of: salt, pepper, paprika, mustard powder
Milk
Optional: Poppy Seeds
Thrifty tip: Use a bit less cheese and a bit more mustard powder - mustard powder always brings out the cheese flavour
Method:
- Weigh fats and flour and place into bowl. Rub in the fat until it looks like breadcrumbs
- Add the salt, pepper, paprika, mustard powder and (if using) poppy seeds
- Stir in the cheese
- Mix egg and add milk a little at a time until it is stiff enough to roll out
- Cut into strips or use cutters, as you prefer
- If you want to, you can brush the top with egg or milk and sprinkle with more grated cheese
- Bake at about 200c for about 13-15 mins
This is what it will look like after step 4, with some additional cheese sprinkled on top.
And this is the finish product!
Hope you enjoy making & eating them; I'm off to shift some boxes into the loft!
We have been seriously thwarted by the April weather over the past few weeks. We needed to get Pershilla craned out of the harbour marina at Watchet and onto the hardstanding for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, the underside needed to be inspected, pressure washed and new anodes fitted. Anodes are either aluminium or zinc and are fitted to the underside of the hull to reduce corrosion of the hull itself.
Secondly, and more nerve wrackingly (is that a word?) the overall height of the boat needed to be measured.
Pershilla is currently at Watchet on the north Somerset coast. Now, I love Watchet, but it's a long way round the coast from there to the Thames and Channel ports, which is where we want to start the trip from. It's a beautiful coastline and there are fabulous places to discover all along it.
But, there is a very important reason why we like inland waterways rather than coastal trips - we get seasick. Really, really seasick.
So, Pershilla needs to travel to the Thames by road. But we had no idea whether she would be low enough to fit under the various bridges between Watchet and Caversham.
With George at the helm of the crane (BTW, George features in Shane Spall's book - The Voyages of Princess Matilda, as seen on BBC4) Pershilla was lifted slowly and carefully up out of the harbour
Up and over the harbour wall and safely onto the hardstanding
You can see that the radar hoop has now been hinged, so it can be lowered, reducing the height, but we weren't certain that would be enough, so it was out with the tape measure and a few more nervous moments before Stephen worked out that it was just (and we are talking a few centimetres) within the maximum measurement given to us by our boat transporter, so thankfully can be moved by road, which will take a few hours, rather than by sea, which would take 7-10 days and a lot of seasickenss tablets!
So, packing goes on apace at home (I feel I am living in cardboard city!) and our new estimated date of departure is mid-May!
I have been slacking a bit on the blogging front, but the truth is, not much boat related stuff has been happening. We hope to be off to Watchet this weekend, but are waiting to a better wind and weather forecast before deciding.
So, it's been the normal home stuff - work, home, nursery, chores - truly yawn-tastic stuff.
But look what my lovely neighbour Bill bought for us:
A beautiful new Red Ensign for us to fly when we are sailing!
The protocol is that you fly your country flag (the Red Ensign for UK) to show where you are from, the flag of the country through which you are travelling as a courtesy to them, plus flags/pennants of any sailing clubs you are a member of, so other members can come & say hello.
Fingers crossed that the forecast is good, so our new flag can get it's first outing.
Last weekend was our much awaited trip down to Watchet to see Pershilla - our first visit as owners!
Given that we has quite a lot of snow in Surrey and the weather wasn't much better in Somerset, I did wonder what we were letting ourselves in for. We'd arranged to go down Saturday afternoon and spend the night on the boat, meeting Peter, the previous owner, on Sunday so he could give us a run through of how everything worked.
When we left Godalming the temperature was -3. We arrived in Watchet three hours later and the temperature there was much the same. The boat has a central heating system, plus we'd taken our thickest duvet and two fan heaters, but I wasn't convinced we wouldn't end up making a dash for the nearest B&B late at night!
But, thankfully the central heating worked well and topped up with the fan heaters we were soon pretty cosy (well, we were after we worked out how to stop tripping the power supply!). So then it was straight down to reading all the instruction books. You can see from the picture below, there are a lot of instruments to learn.
Since my parents were looking after Emma for the weekend, we also had the chance for a "grown-ups-night-out". We took the recommendation of the Marina Office staff and decided on the fabulous Star Inn - review in the next post.
