Storing fresh herbs and a few updates

We have a couple of pots of herbs growing on the kitchen windowsill. The plants were bought from supermarkets who tend to pack them into the pots, great for immediate use but not so good for keeping longer term. I generally transplant them out into bigger garden pots but there seems little point at this time of year. I noticed yesterday the pots of parsley and chives which are kept outside, round the side of the house are starting to die back as the Autumn sets in.

Usually I just revert to the store cupboard and use shop bought dried herbs when I’m cooking, this year I am going to have a go at keeping my own. I am relaibly informed that most herbs freeze well so I am going to freeze parsley, chives and thyme but also have a go at drying some thyme.

I chopped up the parsely into the size I would cook with and filled half an ice cube tray, it packed down much more than I thought it would, then I did the same with the chives and about half of the thyme. Taking advice from several internet sites including St Delia (Smith) I half filled the trays with water and popped them into the freezer. The idea is to top up the freezer trays later, this allows those floating leaves to be submursed fully to keep them fresher.

The rest of the Thyme was divided into three bunches and tied up with string. I now have a bunch hanging in the dining room, living room and kitchen,  each one hung over a source of heat.

Updates

The fir cones I had been keeping around the house have now all been burnt as kindling. They burned wonderfully and do make great kindling, I now can collect fir cones to my hearts content.

My August planted turnips have lovely white bulbs about 2 inches across. I pulled a few yesterday and we had them mixed in with our homemade potato wedges and burgers for dinner. They were very sweet and quite delicious.

My strung up chilly peppers which I was drying have turned mouldy and are destined for the bin. This makes me very sad after the love lavished on growing them, I have a few chillies left and I’m thinking of trying to dry one above the woodburning stove and put the rest in olive oil.

How to remove an Allen key from a hand – NHS Version

Hi It’s the Wilf one here wanting to give you an update on my situation and the course of events from Monday evening

I very stupidly worked on tightening a rotary saw with an Allen key without removing it from the electric supply and ended up having the Allen key impaled in my right hand followed by a trip to the local A&E department.

We arrived at the hospital and started to register, the receptionist asked me what I had done so I showed her my right hand complete with Allen key. She immediately went to get someone, however three quarters of an hour later she saw me waiting and asked if I had been seen yet.

Soon the nurse collected me, told me I’d done a good job and went to fetch the doctor. There we sat for another hour until a doctor appeared, he politley enquired about my accident and when I started to give him the details he said ‘ I’m not here to treat you, I’m just getting some things I need from the cupboard.’

Then a nice lady doctor appeared, she looked, she advised a tetanus and then sent us for X ray. After an interesting trip around the hospital with Sam pulling me around on a wheelchair that only worked backwards we managed to get the Xrays and return to A & E. The nice lady doc wasn’t keen to remove the Allen Key but did phone an orthopeadic surgeon to have a look at it. This all took another hour

 My Xrays were produced very quickly (it’s all done via computers now, wonderful isn’t it?). The bone had not been broken. A very nice orthopeadic surgeon appeared but he wasn’t happy to remove it feeling it may be an operating theatre job. He also added that this might be a problem as for reasons known only to themselves, the hospital didn’t like to open the theatres out of office hours.

When his boss arrived and viewed both the Xrays and the injuries he instructed his surgeon to remove the key manually under local anaesthetic, clean the wounds up, stitch me up where possible, send me home and have me back in three days to make sure I was OK.

Eventually they managed to get the allen key out and the cleaned the wounds thourougly. I was then supplied with loads of pills, had two lots of anti-biotics injected into me and sent home.

This was all very good NHS stuff but it has left me wondering about a couple of things.

 – Why wouldn’t they open the operating theatre out of hours?

 – How the NHS manages to keep going on what I believe it generally described as NHS time.

The staff were lovely and I got home all patched up and in good shape.