Elevensies

Well, I'm meant to be putting the finishing touches to my presentation as I'm meant to send off the PPT for it this afternoon. It's at times like this that procrastination makes me more productive than ever at just about anything besides the thing I'm meant to be doing. Right now, I'm enjoying a rather luxurious elevensies snack which is usually much needed by this time of day (I have to get up absurdly early):

What you're looking at there is a cup of that awesome coffee of yesterday's eulogy fame, paired with my own homemade bread, buttered and topped with Norwegian gjetost which is a weird sort of cross between cheese and caramel that I saw at Myer's, had a try of and had to indulge in for the sheer novelty factor. I've just finished consuming this little lot as I write, and it's certainly done its job as far as pick-me-ups go. The flavours go surprisingly well together.

I'm on St Helen's goat's butter at the moment, which I found at Tesco for £1.90 a packet and which comes from just over the Humber. When I can get my hands on the Lincs Poacher brothers' fantastic raw butter, I do so, but the short shelf life, restrictive regulations around it and the fact I can only get it by driving miles up to their farm or waiting for the once-a-month farmers' market in Boston means it's never likely to be our staple - unfortunately. We've tried various organic and otherwise British butter that's readily available locally, and St Helen's is the one we're unanimous in preferring for flavour.

And while I'm at this trade lark (at least the flour in the bread is local!), what with the coffee and the Scandinavian cheese, I had a craving last night for the kinds of sweets I used to find on offer at the Eid festivals at the mosque - halwa, barfa and baklava in particular. The craving was still strong this morning, so the search was on.

I remembered when my dear friend Khalid from Oman had a gift tin of the stuff sent to me, and went in search of the tin to find out where it came from. I found it in a cupboard, full of small bottles of various food colourings and flavourings, tipped it upside down and Googled the name I saw there. I soon had a basket full of stuff on the way from Ambala foods, which is a British company but it counts as trade because I'm reasonably certain that most of their ingredients aren't produced in these isles. 

Moving back to Lincolnshire though, I've found a source of soap in Kettler's Cottage Crafts. Also, since I spend a lot of my time with my hands covered in various substances, I tend to go through quite a bit of hand cream, which I'm pleased to see they can also furnish me with.

I've long preferred bars of soap to the liquid type everyone seems to be using these days. The only argument I've heard in favour of liquid soap is that it's "more hygienic", and while that might be all well and good if you're in the health or food industries, I don't see why good old fashioned soap - which lasts a lot longer, is generally a lot cheaper and typically contains less to none of the weird chemical mixtures of liquid soap - shouldn't be good enough for us at home.

The fact I can buy Kettler's at Boston Stump gives Boston a chance to redeem itself as it let me down badly this week when I went there for some groceries (as I was there already for other reasons), only to find Mountain's was shut and there was apparently not a single greengrocer in the entire town centre. I left in contempt for Horncastle, which satisfied my every desire despite being a much smaller town. A case in point of what happens to towns when they get big supermarkets!

And now I really better had get on with that presentation.