Bath!

[juliet]

Spent yesterday in Bath, visiting the beer festival & meeting assorted nice folk. The Porter is a very nice pub, having as it does an entirely veggie menu (& about 50% of it vegan, yay) & also Old Peculiar, of which I am rather fond. The beer festival was ace - much nice beer consumed. The one I remember best was the Barnstablasta, which was 6.6% & *lovely*. There was also one which tasted like washing liquid, but thankfully I didn't get any of that myself, merely tried someone else's & thus was Warned in advance (it had Chinese stem ginger in, but I can't remember the name & can't be bothered going to find the programme from my bag). Everyone else headed off to Entropy at around 9, but sadly I could only stay there for half an hour or so. Bah. Got back to London safely, though, so. (cheers to marnameow & shadow_jess for worrying about me, & apologies for being a bit stressy at you)

Today I have been doing Useful Things, such as cleaning the ratcage & doing the washing up & taking the bottles to the recycling. Pete is off to Florida for the week tomorrow morning, so I shall be All Alone, sob.

V good dinner tonight - baked sweet potato, fried courgette, steamed cauliflower, & an artichoke.

Having won some black cotton yarn on Ebay for a fiver, I am currently in the process of knitting this. Done about 12" of the back now (since Friday evening when I started), & about to start on the decreasing bits. Feeling pleased with myself.

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Knitting! I haven't knitted anything since my ITV digital monkey which was the unofficial mascot for BNC's University Challenge team. That was my 2nd year I think.

[juliet]

I should add that I am knitting the thing in all black, rather than the two-tone purple in the picture (not that I have anything against purple. I just like black.).

I haven't knitted anything much in about 10 years, but it appears to come back remarkably quickly, & is all looking rather even & tidy & suchlike. Gosh. Finished the back last night, hurrah. Knitting is a nice soothing activity, & unlike sewing you don't have to keep your eyes on it all the time so it goes well with watching TV or whatever.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

*spots Juliet talking about food*
Aha! You will know. Does soya milk turn into white sauce in a similar way to cow milk? I've been wondering this sort of thing since Duncan had to go wheat-free for a while (in case it was a mild wheat allergy making him tired, but it wasn't) and I realised it's even more of a complete pig to avoid things like milk and wheat, than it is to avoid the few additives that I do.

[simonb.livejournal.com]

The problem with most white sauces is the rou you make up from butter and flour which is used to thicken it.

You could *possibly* get away with using cornmeal, potato flour or maize meal (all of which are available from Daily Bread or the decent health food shop in Cam). The problem would then be what to use instead of butter/marge...

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

there are vegan margarines - would they not work?

I think unless he's severely lactose-intolerant, the small amount of butter or margarine needed to make a white sauce shouldn't be too much of a problem.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm not cooking for a he. I'm just plotting for if I were to want to cook a white sauce and have no cow milk but lots of soy milk. Or possibly if I opened a restaurant (v. unlikely!). Or to unexpectedly have to feed people who had various allergies and preferences. As well as just curious about Stuff Working.

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

The problem with white sauce is that IT IS WHITE. The only allowable white foodstuff is WHITE BREAD and PERHAPS the occaional indulgence in white chocolate otherwise NO NO NO. Tartar sauce NO mayonnaise NO bread sauce NO ect ect ect usw til DEATH.

[juliet]

What about milk? (or in my case soya milk) Or plain yoghurt?

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

And sherbet.

[juliet]

Vegan marge works fine for making the roux, and soya milk will do fine as a dairy-milk replacement (although the unsweetened kind, rather than the sweetened!).

[simonb.livejournal.com]

although the unsweetened kind, rather than the sweetened!

However if you were making a sauce for a sweet - say brandy sauce - you could use the sweetened kind :)

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

You can use corn flour, but its a bit non-linear in its thickening effects compared to wheat flour.