Taste the rainbow

Linda Piggott-Vijeh gives advice on choosing the perfect wine

We’ve had the rain, and plenty of it, but fortunately after the rain, comes the rainbow, and some well deserved sunshine and warmth.

Rainbows are optical illusions, symbolising peace or a new beginning; a sign of good luck and fortune on its way.

With that in mind, a ‘rainbow’ of fizzy cocktails should cheer us all up as spring begins to take hold, transforming our sodden landscape into something bright and beautiful.

I prefer my champagne unadulterated (sacrilegious to use it as a mixer), so I use a good quality brut cava or prosecco. If having a party you could provide the ingredients, all readily available in most supermarkets, allowing guests to have fun mixing their own.

The first recorded use of the word cocktail is thought to be in The Morning Post and Gazetteer in London, England on March 20, 1798, and the first publication of a bartenders’ guide which included cocktail recipes was in 1862, giving ten recipes for drinks referred to as “Cocktails”.

The first “cocktail party” was allegedly given by Mrs. Julius S.

Walsh Jr. of St. Louis, Missouri, in May 1917. She invited 50 guests to her home at noon on a Sunday. The party lasted an hour, until lunch was served at 1pm.

In all cases I would recommend adding between 25cl. and 50cl.

(according to taste) of each of the key ingredients listed to a champagne flute, simply topping up with sparkling wine, garnishing as you see fit.

RED – CHERRY BRANDY

The Crown Inn, Sarre, a pub in the heart of Kent cherry-growing country, launched a cocktail called ‘By`George’ to toast the birth of Prince George of Cambridge.

Locally, the pub is known as The Cherry Brandy House because of its secret recipe for cherry brandy brought over by the Huguenots fleeing religious persecution in France under Louis XIV. It was acquired by distiller Thomas Grant who began making liqueurs in Kent in 1774. Grant’s Morella Cherry Brandy was a favourite with Queen Victoria, holds a Royal Warrant from the Prince of Wales and is mentioned by Charles Dickens in The Pickwick Papers. If you have difficulty obtaining this, just use any other cherry brandy. It can also be served over ice, and garnished with a cherry.

ORANGE – BUCK’S FIZZ or MIMOSA

This cocktail is frequently on offer as part of popular Sunday brunches – part breakfast, part lunch, a good excuse for indulgence. Made by mixing 2/3 freshly squeezed orange juice to 1/3 champagne, it is named after London’s Buck’s Club, where it was invented as an excuse to begin drinking early, by barman Mc Garry in 1921. He also features in the works of P.G. Wodehouse as the barman of Buck’s Club and the Drones Club.

The true recipe, which includes more than just champagne and orange juice, is only known by the barmen of Buck’s Club. The Mimosa, invented in Paris four years later, also contains sparkling wine and orange juice, but in equal measures.

YELLOW – LIMONCELLO

Many of us who have visited Italy will have sampled Limoncello, and it should come as no surprise that a cocktail has been invented using this popular liqueur. For each serving place a strip of lemon peel in the glass and ½ tsp. fresh lemon juice, before adding the Limoncello.

GREEN – MIDORI MELON LIQUEUR

Spring is the time when the wedding season kicks off, and the bright green colour of this cocktail should help put a spring in the step of any young bride-to-be if served at a hen party.

Adding just a dash of lime juice will take the edge off the sweetness, and garnish with a sprig of mint.

BLUE – CURACAO

The flavour of this orange liqueur derives from the dried peel of the laraha citrus fruit, and gets its name from the island of Curacao where it is grown; a descendant of the Valencia oranges brought to Curacao in the 1500s by Spanish explorers. It is too bitter to be eaten, but in making the liqueur the peel is dried, releasing its sweetly fragrant essential oils.

INDIGO – WILD BLUEBERRY

This liqueur, made from a mixture of wild and cultivated fruit, is made locally by Lyme Bay Winery and provides an interesting new take on the traditional kir, made with cassis, that is so popular, giving a lovely purple hue. Why not plonk a few fresh blueberries in the glass first?

VIOLET – PARFAIT AMOUR

Nicely finishing off our rainbow, a cocktail made from Parfait Amour, the dark purple liqueur with a complex flavour of rose and violet petals, vanilla, orange peel and almonds. Adding it to sparkling wine turns the colour a fetching shade of pale violet. It is popular served at weddings, adding a festive feel to the occasion. As an alternative you could use Crème de Violette, used to flavour drinks for centuries.

Original article 

http://www.limitededitionsomerset.co.uk/society/11237941.Taste_the_rainbow/

Bank Holiday Parking - Tickets Unacceptable

I was surprised and very dismayed to find that traffic wardens had been active in Ilminster over the recent bank holiday weekend issuing on-street parking tickets.

I can, to a certain extent, understand the need to keep centre of town roads clear during normal working hours to allow traffic movement, but this kind of behaviour, picking on easy targets, is unacceptable and should not go without comment.

Cameron/Clegg Marriage Must End in Tears

The latest unseemly row over the provision of the funding for free school meals for infants should come as no surprise to any of us in the run up to next year’s general election.

What we are witnessing is an arranged marriage between two partners that were really never well suited, and that has pretty much run its course. Each is caught up in a marital contract that neither is really comfortable with, mostly putting a brave face on it. Every now and again one side wants to exert their influence, by starting the petty name calling, in an effort to persuade others to take their side, as they move ever closer to the inevitable divorce. As many who were witness to the partnership knew from the beginning, it will only end in tears.

Halal Meat

In the midst of all the fuss and bother over the latest food scandal, the use of halal meat in food items sold by supermarkets and fast food chains, I have begun to wonder, not altogether tongue in cheek, whether or not over the years they haven’t been putting stuff in our food to make us all lose a few brain cells. I say this because I would suggest that anyone who has been in the least bit surprised by this latest revelation must be quite stupid; either that or living on another planet.

This wholesale deception has been going on for years in numerous ways. It will continue to do so, as long as we allow these masters of the shopping universe to dictate the dubious rules under which they choose to operate and exert control over our lives.

We should not have been deceived, but this is the price we pay for choosing to shop and eat this way.

I do appreciate that for many of us there are the real issues of convenience, especially if you are working all the hours that God sends, and have the obligation to feed a large family on a very tight budget.

However, does it really matter that much how the meat was killed?

Personally, I’m much more concerned about the life the poor animal led before being slaughtered. If we were all so concerned about this, instead of playing lip service to what is fast becoming a divisive religious issue, then we would surely stop buying battery chickens, sold practically as cheap as the chips that might accompany them.

Many of us choose to take our holidays in countries with predominantly Muslim populations; Turkey, Tunisia and Morocco spring readily to mind, where unless we are vegetarian, during our stay we will have undoubtedly eaten halal meat, and I don’t recall much fuss being made. Likewise, Jews do not eat pork products or shellfish, and not so long ago Catholics who dared to eat meat on a Friday were frowned upon. We all have our own social and cultural preferences, and the religious observance of eating habits and customs has in itself been a cause of controversy since the very beginning.

There is of course the usual cry for better labelling, but to be honest, this is no safeguard. I’d much rather eat food than read about it at length.

The real issue here is having unscrupulous businesses mislead us.

The only answer, if we do care, is to go back to doing what we used to do before supermarkets and fast food chains got us in their stranglehold; shop in person, instead of ordering online, so that you can select items yourself.

More importantly, if we want to preserve the values everyone is up in arms about, shop locally at places you know and trust, and where the local butcher knows the provenance of the meat he sells, and in all likelihood, the name of the animal too.

There's More to Education than School

HE topic of fines issued to parents and guardians for a child’s non-attendance at school continues to rear its ugly head. I fully expect, with the school holidays on the horizon, we shall see and hear much more about it.

Personally, although I think it is absolutely vital that we ensure our children take full advantage of all the opportunities that a free education can offer, I believe this “big stick” approach is wrong.

While I agree that in the past some, but by no means all, parents have had a rather lax attitude towards school attendance, there are circumstances in which absence is not necessarily detrimental. As a society we must look at education in a much rounder sense than just that provided within a school environment with a fairly rigid approach to the curriculum.

Learning and achievement can take many forms and travel and exposure to new experiences is one of the most rewarding. With some “blue sky” thinking schools should be able find ways in which learning can continue to take place no matter where the pupil is physically situated.

There are those parents who choose to home school or send their children to private school, and the inspection regime that so closely dictates the agenda of local authority educational provision is much more flexible in approach.

There is of course the argument that it is the responsibility of parents, in putting their offspring first, to manage their lives accordingly, but this is easier said than done.

For many families, especially where perhaps one parent works away, or in the case of several children being at different schools with different term times, the dilemma of what to do with children during school holidays and when to take any kind of affordable holiday, can be a challenging one to resolve.

What we must do is to have meaningful dialogue at a local level to look for ways in which we can to find an appropriate solution. I’ve seen very little about how and where the fines paid are to be spent by the schools in question, boosting ever-depleting funds I suspect. Surely not?

Wine tasting at Seavington

A WINE-tasting session was held for members of the Seavington Wine Club at the village community shop and cafe last month.

Wine tutor Linda Piggott-Vijeh was invited by fellow Rotarian Brenda Lake to hold the event.

She said: “I was pre-warned that I wasn’t just dealing with amateurs here.

“Many of those present take their wine quite seriously, and read my column in Society magazine each month. With this in mind, I decided to hold a comparative tasting of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir wines from both ‘Old World’ and ‘New World’ countries.

“We tasted 10 wines in all, ranging from under £5 a bottle to £20 a bottle.

“It was interesting to note that the vast majority preferred the more expensive wine. While price is not everything, it goes to show that, by spending that little bit extra, you can have a much better experience.”

http://www.yeovilexpress.co.uk/news/11193816.Wine_tasting_at_Seavington/?ref=rss

Police Crime Reporting

With the release of the Interim report by Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Tom Winsor, highlighting that as many as 20% of crimes reported to the police go unrecorded, it seems to have been a week of yet another round of news stories focussing on our broken society and the failure of those responsible for guarding our safety to report our concerns when they are raised.
Spokesmen were quick to assure us that only 13 out of 43 forces had so far been inspected, which is actually rather disingenuous, as in reality it accounts for a much greater percentage than we were led to believe.
In one interview it was stated that 'the guidelines for recording crimes is quite clear; it is just the difference in interpretation....'
I would argue that if the guidelines are indeed so clear then one would hope they would leave little room for such obvious differences in interpretation. This is of course giving the benefit of doubt to those forces where there is the suspicion that some massaging of statistics has taken place in the relentless move towards meeting targets, regardless of the reality of the world in which we all live.
It is only natural that in a concerted effort to assure us that they are on top of things, there will be those within the police force who will want to interpret reported criminal activity in a different way. This degree of fiddling with the facts may not be right, but it is only human nature when you are constantly lambasted from all sides.
However, the impact of the 14 cases of rape and other serious sexual offences that went unrecorded is unacceptable.by anyone's standards.
What we can expect of course, now that the word is out, is a huge flurry of activity in those forces who have not yet been subjected to the inspection. They will certainly be on their mettle now, and spending an inordinate amount of time on the necessary paperwork to ensure that they come out squeaky clean. This is not policing, this is ticking boxes. I for one want to see our police on the streets, where they belong as a visible deterrent.
This very public failure can only serve to demoralise the bobby on the beat, when locally at least, they seem to be doing their best with increasingly unrealistic expectations of what can be achieved.
The government plays a large part in this too, in wanting to boost their popularity by re-assuring us that crime is down. I for one, may well be happier to see it rise, in the knowledge that at least they are not just trying to paint a rosy, but deceptive, picture.
It all reminds me a bit of Walter Mitty, “an ordinary, often ineffectual person who indulges in fantastic daydreams of personal triumphs".

Old Deanery Care Home Abuse

There was of course, the usual outcry over the abuse witnessed in the Old Deanery Care Home in Essex, during the Panorama programme recently.
This is not the first such programme to highlight the issues surrounding the care of our elderly and vulnerable, and sadly, I doubt that it will be the last.
Despite the sacking of seven staff so far, this is unlikely to get to the root of the problem, which appears to be endemic across much of the care sector.
In an interview shortly after the airing of the programme the owner seemed to want to blame lack of government funding, at which point I was only glad that I was not on the scene at the time, as it might well have prompted me to violence. He asserted that such low levels of funding did not allow him to employ the calibre of staff he needed, which is not the whole picture at all.
There are a number of issues at stake. One is that ruthless care home owners, who let's face it, are only in it for the money, will employ the cheapest labour they can find, which will mean that they end up with staff who will often be poorly trained, uneducated, and in many cases only entering into the care sector for .... the money, because they are unable to find work elsewhere. We have also set too much store by meaningless checks, and a focus on targets. I have on a number of occasions contacted CQC where I have been alerted to issues in care homes and am afraid I have little or no time for them, and certainly no faith in their inspection system, which largely focuses on record keeping and procedures; a tick box system of a list of requirements, not all of which are inspected at the time. So much for the 'clean bill of health' issued at their last inspection of this care home, just six months ago.
We have also seen relatives of those in the care home interviewed, expressing some concern or worry over what they may have observed on visits, and the police will no doubt be entering into an expensive and lengthy investigation, looking for someone to blame.
Unfortunately old people consigned to care homes are often not the easiest to care for, and in many cases this is one reason why their families, if they have any, have put them there. To look after someone who requires constant attention, who may be confused and at times violent, requires the patience of a saint; something that few of us have in the quantities required. I can readily recall two friends who did nurse their loved ones until their death, and it must have been torture for them; where they had to put their own lives, and that of the rest of their family, on hold for sometime.
Until we can find a way in which, as we get older, the appropriate support is provided for relatives and carers to care properly for this sector of society we will, unfortunately, continue to hear the same stories time and time again. Whereas in the past we all benefitted from close family units the disparate nature of our society means that the issue will only escalate.
It is however not just about the money, it is more about attitude, and that is something you cannot buy. The sad thing is that we must be careful not to tar everyone with the same brush; there are many within the care sector who do a fabulous job for little or no reward and who are often overlooked in the wake of stories like this.