Mmm . . . sounds like it could hold a lot of pretzels.

(pen) I'm building a telescope. It has a 5" lens that someone gave me but of course you have to mount it, as Andy Gray would say.

The weather is lovely here, now that it has stopped raining. For the moment.

Im just going to say something so KagomeShuko's portrait of Father Christmas finally disappears off the top of the page.
This may involve gratuitous line breaks

or even spurious paragraph breaks
but who cares?
In other news, it's fair in Rotterdam this morning - sunny, blue skies, 8C, and the hellebore in the garden is about to bloom - for the first time in 2 years.

It worked!

Now you can go fishing by crushing the hellebore and throwing into a pool. I am unreliably informed this will 'stun' the fish.

A quick bit of market research. If you went into a cafe/bar at lunchtime for a panini, what filling would you want?

If I went in just once then probably something in the Ham & Cheese line - if I went in regularly I'd want a selection. Last Saturday Mrs INJ and I shared a Mushroom and Gorgonzola and a Tuna Melt.

[Phil] Generally, anything containing no cheese and not full of glop. Sweet Chilli Chicken, Ham and Piccalilli and Smoked Mackerel and Salad are the things I've had recently at a cafe I often go to for lunch at the weekend. The Ham (when they have it) is proper ham, of course, not vacuum-packed water-filled slices of reconstituted mechanically recovered meat. The Piccalilli might also have been homemade, not poured from a jar of clonmult.

[Raak] Salad in a panini? I assume that Phil's intending these to be served hot, whereas your suggestions sound like excellent sandwich fillings.

Marvellous Raak. I love the "BECCLES (pl. n.) The small bone buttons placed in bacon sandwiches by unemployed guerrilla dentist." It reminds me of two things about my younger sister. She had a throry that you only get those buttons in bacon when there's a Labour government. She also had a lot of difficulty one weekend evening in the pub (many years ago, of course) when a handsome young man told he he was an 'armydentist'. She tried to fasten the two words together, like 'taxidermist', and couldn't understand what the job was.
Re; panini ham'n'cheese is the default filling, but I'd also go for perhaps hot roast beef with wholegrain mustard, and the smoked mackerel sounds good too. Can you lift the lid afterwards to stuff some watercress in?

Some colleagues of mine had to go on a trip to Flums (a town somewhere in darkest Switzerland) recently. The name seemed horribly familiar for some reason, but I couldn't think why I might ever have heard of the place. Eventually I tracked it down to the Meaning of Liff. FLUMS: Women who only talk to each other at parties.

Interesting from the responses I've had so far, here and elsewhere, that no-one has suggested anything vaguely Italian (with the exception of funghi con gorgonzola).

[INJ] Now I think of it, the Smoked Mackerel one was an untoasted baguette, but the Sweet Chilli Chicken is a toasted panini, and includes some lettucey things and chopped gherkins.

[Phil] I suspect it's because the Italians would never take cheap bread and squish it between hot plates to make it palatable, let alone consider it a delicacy. It's a rather recent lunch-comestible-vendor's invention.

[pen] Neither would my favorite Norwich café. Only the best ciabatta!

panino

[rab] thank you

[Phil] Brie, bacon and tomato is a personal fave when I'm feeling evil.

[pen] I used to get my lunchtime panino/i in a food court in Dublin, cooked by Italians. They had a choice of 4 each day, and were various combinations of parma ham, bresaola, aubergine, olives, mozzarella, basil, pesto, sundried tomato etc. Always delicious, and great with a large espresso.

[Phil] If I was feeling mean, I'd point out that you may have just described immigrants selling a bastardised version of what Dubliners might consider foreign food. But I'm not. I'm just hungry. It's the last of the proper British pork chops tonight (ie more than 4mm thick), when the windy miller finally gets home.

Anything that doesn't involve potatoes and/or coleslaw counts as foreign food in Ireland :-)
The reason I asked in the first place is that I have a "Panini Grill" which does great toasted sandwiches, but I want to take advantage of the lunchtime panini market. My personal preference for fillings seems to be miles away from what other people want/expect, for which information I'm very grateful.

[Phil] I'd suggest going round a few of your local coffee shops just before lunch time and see what they have most of on their shelves. You can be sure they've done the research. The only difference about your trade is that you could probably go a little dryer and saltier.
Mind you this definitely sounds like 'teaching your grandmother'.

[INJ] This assumes that supply = demand. There are at least two canteens that I've encountered that would run out of certain things very quickly on a daily basis and never increase their order of those things. You could even ask 'Do you have any more X?' and they would say 'No, they always sell out really quickly'...

[Phil] Geez, Phil, are you running a pub or trying to make your eatery some sort of 'up-market' restaurant with fancy names for ordinary dishes? Surely a panino is just a bread roll into which, like a couple of bread slices, you can insert anything you damn well like? What's wrong with marketing a 'Salad Roll' or an 'Egg and Bacon Roll'?

[Dujon] In order: Yes and no; yes; and nothing. I just found the article interesting
I'm revamping my menu, with an eye on relaunching the food side of the business to create some lunchtime trade in the area. Everyone's feedback has been very useful. We already do sandwiches and toasted sandwiches, but I've found that people charge a bit more for something that doesn't come in traditional English white or brown bread; more importantly, people seem willing to pay a bit more, for something that doesn't really cost any extra to produce if it's in, say, ciabatta rather than two slices of fantastic, locally baked bread.

[Phil] Sorry if I sounded a bit abrupt.
I do understand your viewpoint and, if that's what your customers want and are prepared to pay for, then I wish you all the best. You wouldn't be a businessman if you didn't explore all avenues in order to satisfy your clients. I like your comment on locally baked bread. Around my neck of the woods we have a plethora of bread varieties marketed in bulk to those of us who see bread as a staple. It's probably a couple of decades ago now, but at that time I noticed a severe decline in the quality of bread on offer. After testing just about every 'brand' available I gave up on bread for a goodly time (they all tasted 'plasticy' to me). I'm a slow learner and not very observant at times, Phil, but then I realised that there is a small local bakery in our small local shopping area which is a mere 400 metres from Maison Dujon. My bread now comes exclusively from that wee shop.
I suppose I'm saying that fresh is good. Do you intend to bake your own stock - or can you coerce one of your local bakeries into doing so? Ullage is always a problem when it comes to perishables so I'd guess you'd have to build in a wastage factor when pricing each product.

Between them, Greggs and Tesco have all but killed the traditional baker in the UK, so loaves that actually taste of something are now 'premium products' with price tags to match. See, for example, this place that opened round the corner from the flat we just moved out of.

[Dujon] The other issue is price. The large, white tin loaves that I get from the bakery are £1.54, from which I can get about 5 sandwiches per loaf. I can buy frozen ciabatta for approx 30p each. I do like the thought of the local baker making my bread, but I'd need to be doing serious volumes for them to make something specially for me, I'd imagine. Maybe when I've a few minutes on monday I'll have a natter with them.

Don't get me started on bread. There are two sorts of supermarket bread here - the 'baked elsewhere' kind, which is passable, and the 'baked-off in-store', which is good if you eat it within 20 minutes. After that, it doesn't even make good toast - it's way too dry. But we also have two bakers in the village - one of them is excellent, if you like a proper wholemeal loaf - which we do. Sadly our breadmachine is a little under-used, although I do a lot of other baking. If I can stand to have the kitchen full of smoke, home-made naan bread is a real treat.

I'm not bread's biggest fan. As a student, I find a loaf too big, as I'll buy it when I fancy toast, and then come back to it a few days later to find it completely unusable. I wish they would do mini mini loaves, with 6 slices each.

[FGZstar] If you're only using it for toast then freeze what you dont use - already sliced. Most toasters will toast it ok from frozen. When working away from home I make bread on Friday or Saturday and then slice whatever's left after the weekend and freeze it for Mrs INJ to use, a slice at a time, during the week.

I suppose, but it seems whenever I consider that, I suddenly will find myself wanting a bacon sandwich, and having no unfrozen bread.

You can toast from frozen in less time than it takes to grill bacon - but it would take a little longer to just thaw the bread, unless you use a microwave.

Freeze a loaf in pairs of slices? Then you can hammer them (in pairs) into the toaster slot and put it on the 'barely stiffened up' setting to *just* thaw it to the perfect state for wrapping around your bacon sandwich.

I freeze thinly sliced granary loaves from a good local baker, and I generally find I can 'peel off' individual slices whenever I need to, although I do sometimes need to use a knife to split them apart. Individual slices defrost in around 20-30 minutes if you just separate them and lay them out on a plate, and 30 seconds in a toaster does the trick too. The key part of my technique is using thin-sliced brown bread which lets me split slices off while the loaf is still frozen solid - but if you can find bread like that it does save the faff of splitting it into sections before freezing.

I keep bread (from Waitrose, Sainsbury, or the baker up the road) in the fridge, and it stays as fresh as when it was bought. Why are people keepng it in the freezer?

1. That way it keeps for weeks if necessary.
2. Not enough spare room in the fridge!

What INJ said. I/we usually use about 1/3 to 1/2 of a loaf while it's fresh, then after a couple of days freeze the rest and eat it gradually, interspersed with other varieties of bread. We seem to have a reasonable variety of good bread here, although it IS expensive. As long as the loaf wasn't squished, the slices snap apart fine, and can be toasted from frozen or a tiny zap in the microwave if you don't want to wait a few minutes for the slices to thaw naturally. I have a bread machine and make about a loaf a month or two, usually when it can be taken to family sunday lunch, because it does not keep as well as store bought and I find it very difficult to slice a loaf myself, so the slices are too large

In other news, I think our summer might be over already. not that we really had much of one, but still, it was warm for a couple of days there.

I buy a loaf of bread every day, more or less. The hardest problem with making it last is not eating it :-)

I freeze my bread which works fine for us. We buy a toast sliced wholemeal or granary bloomer or raised tin made by a local artisan baker. We mostly use it for toast although I sneak the odd sandwich. I find that this quality product, cost about £1.40, freezes much better than factory bread.

I buy bread about once a week. None of it comes wrapped in plastic. There's only me eating it, but I eat a lot of bread, so it does occupy quite a lot of space in the fridge. I also got a panini press a few months ago, which is excellent for a warm meal when I can't be bothered actually cooking.

Went on holiday in December. Had an accident. Broke my back. Spent 2 weeks in Swiss hospital. Came home. Had operation. Back at work now. 'S'life, innit?

[Kim] Ouch! Trust it will all heal completely.

[Kim] That'll teach you, old egg. I do hope that you're not now wheelchair bound. If not then a couple of months and the surgeons' knives have served you extraordinarily well. Good luck.

[Kim] Yes, ouch. Poor you.

Aye, best wishes Kim. As an aside, I've just seen real flu for the first time - the windy miller is just starting to pick up a little after three days of eating nothing, drinking very little and being unable to move out of bed. He ate half a strawberry this afternoon. It's terrifying.

[Kim] oh my. I hope you make a swift and full recovery.
[penelope] Yes, it is; I'm sure you're keeping a close eye on him, and I hope he recovers soon. I've only had it once, and that is more than enough. I lost about three weeks in a haze of coughing, vomiting and other unpleasantness. I had a lot in reserve so wasn't worried about not eating :o) .

[pen] My sympathies to the windy miller. I caught the 'flu for the first time in about 40 years and it completely floored me. I am just beginning to get back to normal now. I have had more days off work sick this year than in the previous 10. On the up side I have lost nearly a stone (6.5kg in netherlandsspeak) which has a beneficial effect on revitalizing my wardrobe!

Thanks all. Today might be the day he actually eats something other than chicken broth or yogurt. Luckily I only work part-time and I can spend some time at home. And the washing machine is now mended... a household of flu and having to wash things by hand for two weeks wasn't much fun.

Happy birthday, Chalky!

Hi Chalks, how goes it with you? Any sign of revitalizing your visit?

Hurrah! MC5 works on my mobile! Android rocks.

Though it seems the preview makes a full post impossible...it won't go after that...and the whoops button is missing...

Got the previews back...still no whoops.

[pen] However, I advise that he does not eat any chicken yogurt.

Off-hand, I can't think of any circumstances where eating chicken yoghurt would be a good idea.

I anticipate cooking chicken in yoghurt within the next 3 days. Nicer than just cream in a sort of supreme-ish using up roast chicken leftovers dish.

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Sant

Down the pub tonight, Rosie?

Oooh, yeah. Grilled chicken (in cubes, on a wooden skewer) marinaded in spices, yogurt and lime juice, served with a satay sauce... I think that's one for when the windy miller has his appetite back.

(Softers) Of course - life goes on as normal. Not sure where to park the dragon. The former licensee, a young woman from New Romney, is the only purely English person I have met who can pronounce the Welsh "ll" properly. She'd lived in S Wales for a short time. All you need is to have heard it.

I think Uncle Korky has just won the Holiday Anagrams game.

(INJ) Yes, best yet provided it comes from his own head, though the previous one, from Softers, gave me the best guffaw.

Apols for multi-posting. Got carried away.

Sorry about the outage there (not that anyone will have noticed) - major system upgrade.

It's the end of the working week for me, and the beginning of Pig Week. Does anyone have plans for the weekend?
The windy miller is slowly getting back to form, and we will be going to the mill together tomorrow morning - for the first time in three weeks. Not sure what we'll do in the afternoon. The weekend will also include laundry and ironing. And possibly a bastardised version of Robert Carrier's Normandy pheasant, using Dutch cooking pears instead of apples.

Off up to Leeds for a friend's birthday party on Saturday and staying over. Unfortunately it's fancy dress, themed on 'Songs from the Shows' (she's keen on amateur operatics). So we're in 'South Pacific' mode, though Mrs INJ insists on wearing another skirt below the grass one and didn't seem at all impressed by my idea of a coconut shell bikini.

Well, they're not exactly short of food-miles are they? Perhaps Mrs INJ was thinking of something grown a bit more locally. Swedes, perhaps.

[INJ] I'm sure you'd look rather fetching in one.
[pen] Long weekend here, working part of it, mooching around catching up on sleep otherwise, hoorah! And I got a haircut today. Ever so much fun to be had.

Excellent time had by all - reunion with a lot of old (in both senses) walking friends. On the costume front - we looked pretty good, but were upstaged by Sally Bowles.

Anyone got shares in British Energy or EDF?