The Bluestocking Arms Women's Pub, where women make friends with Beetles, Androids, Cakes, Dragons, Hedgehogs and other women, where wit and wisdom flourish

[inkymoose]

Here at the Bluestocking there's a place for all women. A break from Reality, and many laughs and stories to share. Have your fill of Tunnocks bars and tea cakes, sing feminist anthems, drink as much beer or gin or hot chocolate as you desire. It won't make you fatter or drunken but oh, it's fun. Sit in the garden with our Lion resident or the Quokkas and Capybara. Express your opinions loudly in Pedantry Corner. Ask for whatever you fancy to be served by our obliging Gerbil staff. Come in, all women, welcome!

I saw this on FB this morning, fuzzy, and thought of you.

I must plant some radish seeds.
We just started harvesting our second batch of radishes, however we have a polytunnel, massive help in Scotland.

I don't know about the Chinese leaf, but I think so. Lettuce is very easy. A sensible person would put in a couple of plants of some kind of cut-and-come-again, maybe including a red 'oak leaf' type. New plants every three weeks or so might keep a succession going all summer (hot dry weather is the enemy of lettuce).

If I had refrained from buying two trays of plants the moment they appeared in the supermarket I could have got a few plants from the nice bloke at the Saturday market. Might do that this week anyway, planning ahead.

I also have sorrel, and lots of nasturtiums - both the flowers and the leaves are lovely in salads, slightly peppery, and will grow some borage so I have starry blue flowers tasting of honeyed cucumber to go in the mix. I enjoy salad all year round, but there is something special about growing your own and eating it really fresh.

There's something annoying about people doing a deeply unenjoyable cover of a favorite song. Just stop it, people singing Both Sides Now too bloody slowly.

M&S have cancelled my order for knickers 😭😭😭😭😭

I ordered them on the 22nd but it's got caught up in their cyber attack. They've refunded me but I had a 20% discount as a Marks & Sparks card member. So now I've got to drive to the shops (10 miles away) and buy them full price.

And I asked my SIL who lives a similar distance away but in the other direction if she wanted to come shopping and she said no because of her DM, DS and three dogs. 😭😭😭😭😭

And I know I will make it a trip and do more shopping (holiday on 1 June).

I'd ask about the discount in the shop. They might honour it. It's exceptional circumstances entirely outside of your control.

I've been thinking about the crow I saw in the sunshine in Wales and thinking about how its plumage was almost lit up. The only way I could think of describing it was liked blued steel.

...which got me thinking about Zoolander. I even tried a couple of AIs, to see what they'd come up with if asked to draw a 'blue steel' crow (like Zoolander). They all want me to log in though. I even tried to with Bing but I have the wrong sort of account.

So, could anyone with AI access possibly do me a favour? Pretty please 🙏 🥺

Btw, pak choi seems easy to grow (from seed or from the cut off bases) but, in my experience, it bolts as soon as the weather warms.

not very steely

Gemini's best effort. Took several goes though.

Ooh ooh ooh. I have a green thing in my fridge right now!! I'm not a complete heathen!

🥒 🥪 I think for lunch!

Co Pilots effort

There are some lovely glossy rooks in this

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/animals/birds/rook/

Very impressive that @Boiledbeetle has already eaten a half whole cucumber.

Unless she didn't eat it. Bing seems confused as to where beetles' eyes are.

ChatGPT's version

I will definitely try chinese leaf, @MarieDeGournay - I love all the different options that are available now. I think I grew up with a somewhat jaded attitude to salad, because the variety of salad goods was so much smaller when I was a kid (back in the last century). School salads were especially sad - a leaf of the kind of lettuce that was just like wet tissue paper, a slice of tasteless tomato and a bit of cucumber - and no dressing/mayo/salad cream.

Now I can have peppers, radishes, celery, cucumber, rocket, little gem lettuce etc etc, salads have become a real joy.

My problem is that, if it is cold and miserable, dh tends not to want a salad, even if that's what I've put on the menu - and we do have rather a lot of cold and miserable days here. Basically, around this time last year, I said (out loud - that was a mistake) that I was looking forward to a summer of salads, and we went on to have the worst summer for years, so I am being a bit wary this year, so I don't jinx this summer too!

What sort of things do you put with your salads, @MarieDeGournay? I have some regular choices - ham and boiled egg, steak and blue cheese, blue cheese, pear and walnut, quiche, seafood, shredded duck with orange segments and hoisin dressing - but am always open to more inspiration.

Oh - and what do we think about this suggestion that men should be trained to do mammograms? I think it is coming from their professional body.

I am uncomfortable about the suggestion - I can see what they are saying about there not being enough mammogram technicians so opening it up to men would mean more being trained and more appointments available, but other than that, I can't see the value of letting men in to manipulate and squish women's boobs. I suspect there will be plenty of women who will opt out, if it's a male tech.

People on a thread about this are saying 'well, there are male gynaecologists and breast surgeons, so why is this any different', but given the fact that women weren't allowed to be doctors, and even as late as the 50s and 60s were being discouraged from becoming surgeons, women basically had no choice, and had to be resigned to male gynaecologists and surgeons - but the mammogram service has been pretty much entirely female led for so, so long, that it seems like a backwards step to let the menz in.

We’ve been staying in a cotrage for a long weekend and had a Massive Salad each evening so it’s definitely the season for them for us.

Has anyone here tried growing caigua also known as achocha. We've grown it in the tunnel for a few years now but it would do well somewhere a little warmer and sunnier than West coast Scotland outside. It's a climber, needs only a tiny footprint as long as it has something to cling onto and fruits heavily until the first frost. Very nice stuffed with sausage meat and cooked sitting on some tomatoes, or I've made a variation on jalapeno poppers with them as well. Can be eaten raw while young.

Salads: if I'm cooking chicken breasts I often do an extra one and have a bogus 'Caesar salad' with mixed mayonnaise and Worcestershire sauce as dressing and cubed cucumber and/or nuts instead of croutons. That is actually nicest with a poached chicken breast that has cooled but not got completely cold. Lidl have lovely roasted almonds at the moment as Spanish specials that would be extra nice as 'croutons' - I think their other Spanish special, tuna in olive oil (in jars, not tins) would make outstanding Salade Nicoise.

I make Scotch eggs in the oven or the air fryer. I make (will make, this evening) home-made burgers with herbs, finely chopped onion and mustard IN them, tomato ketchup ON them, and a big green salad with sliced pickled cucumber and sliced tomato instead of chips and a bun.

If you have left-over steak, finely sliced mushroom and onion zapped in the microwave with butter and mustard for a minute or so, then mixed with thin slices of the meat, makes and excellent roll or sandwich filling with lots of lettuce.

basically salad is lovely and if you live alone often much quicker and easier than cooking veg.

I've never heard of Achocha before - I'll look out for them

For the home salad-grower, it's worth remembering that even if your lettuce etc bolts during the hot few weeks of high summer, if you've planned ahead you will then have nasturtiums and borage and marigold petals and possibly chard leaves and beetroot and tiny courgettes and chives and tomatoes and little raw peas and brocolli tips, and the option of adding cooked green beans and little potatoes and lots of fresh herbs, so death from scurvy is unlikely.

I love that season, and somehow missed it last year.

More from Copilot. It is trying to please, but ...

I love salad, and eat a lot of vegetables, but trying to grow my own has been a bit trying. Last year I bought some little broad bean plants and planted them in my new allotment plot. They were immediately gobbled up by slugs and snails. Same thing with everything else I planted, except for chard, which grew so fast there was plenty for the munching pests to scoff as well as lots for me, and tomatoes, which did ok, but weren't in the plot, but near my back door, easy to check up on.

Let's face it, moose aren't natural gardeners. We are too easily distracted.

Photo 1: Where's the allotment gone?
Photo 2: Ah, here it is.

I think CoPilot's first effort wins 🏆 it's the headband 😄

Thank you.

The headband is a masterly touch!

Another one from Gemini. I think it might be a jackdaw.

In deference to the weather, I shall forego my usual hot chocolate. Instead, I would like enough chocolate milkshake to float a medium sized warship please. And a member of the support staff to rant at about feckless bloody students. I don't mind if they don't listen, I just need to rant.