The Bluestocking - Best Pub on the Internet

[EdithStourton]

Welcome to the Bluestocking women's pub. Excellent (if sometimes wilful) gerbil bar staff, varied cocktails, splendid cakes, cracking Sunday roasts...

Voted Best Pub for the umpteenth thread running, join us for conversation about tractors, units of measurement, films, wildlife, and even, sometimes, women's rights.

Just keep Glenda off the gin.

Any men, you can trot along to the Staunch Ally just up the road.

Gosh Boily you look....epic in that picture, I can hear a very deep male voice saying in a mid-Atlantic accent:
She's out. She's dusty, She's looking for a quick dust down with a hand held vacuum. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
😧

That's so weird. The voice over gerbil (Gavin, an American gerbil on a work visa, who works the late shift in the kitchen at the Staunch Ally. He's smoked 60 a day for a week in order to get the voice right) has just recorded those exact words for the film trailer!

Spooky.

I seem to have missed some excitement this morning. Glad you were rescued @Boiledbeetle

And @MarieDeGournay I think the voice you can hear is James Earl Jones. He cornered the market in the deep and menacing stakes.

Just popped in for a break from more fence painting. I'd like a large hot chocolate please, gerbils and some crumpets with honey.

"OK, cut! That's a wrap. Can someone clean up Ms Beetle, please?"

I think she's even scarier when she's shiny😬

She is magnificent, with a heart of gold.

That's the sequel sorted.

Beetle always comes up smelling (of) roses…

You mean a bit like Kindergarten Cop?
Boily powers her way through several concrete walls and past a number of exploding cars - to gently catch Gráeen the baby gerbil who had fallen out of her cot before she reaches the floor?
Final scene is Boily the Terrifying sitting in the middle of the greche [gerbil creche, obvs] while little baby gerbils playfully climb all over her...
Is that what you had in mind?
Or Dust I and Dust II - Revenge of the Dysons maintaining the fear factor for a while, before going all cutesie?
Maybe a prequel about her as a tearaway youngster - 'Living it Larval'

We have to manage Boily's image carefully don't we...😁

O Rose art thou glad
and less likely to squirm
cos it's Boiledbeetle on your petals
not the invisible worm?

Probably Morgan Freeman, @MarieDeGournay.

Re cake: best recipe for Victoria sponge I know is weigh your eggs then weigh out equal quantities of butter, sugar and SR flour (plus an extra tsp baking powder if you just chuck all the ingredients in the bowl together to cream them, which Mary Berry reckons is as good as the way I was taught as a girl). Also vanilla essence or other flavouring of choice.

re beetles, JBS Haldane says God has an inordinate fondness for stars and beetles, so that’s two Stockingers in his good books. And I used that quote as an epigraph to a poem about beetles that got accepted yesterday, albeit only in an online blog so yay for that.

Sorry if I'm late. I've been successfully baking scones! A first for me. Cherry scones and chorizo and manchego scones. Thank you for the new thread.

Gillian is still being off with me since I accidentally upset her in the last thread.

My Marguerite Patten cookbook was her Everyday Cook Book. It has a recipe for what are now called cloud eggs in one of the Recipes to Impress subsections. I actually tried that one when I was little and left alone, unsupervised, in the house. I was afraid to use the oven though so put it under the grill. I got a brown skin of cooked egg over a lot of raw, unsweetened, meringue. It was inedible. Although when I tried the cloud egg recipe again a few years ago it wasn't much better even after being properly baked. Honestly, fried, boiled or poached eggs are far superior without all the faff.

Have I remembered rightly that Myrtle has an interview this afternoon?
Hope it goes well, Myrttlle😄

I make rather good cheese scones, or I do say so myself. The secret is to put far too much cheese in, and then a bit more. They lose all structural integrity and become slumps rather than scones, but they taste delicious.

Chorizo and manchego scones sound lovely, @lcakethereforeIam.

They are. Masses of grated manchego dumped on top to melt down the sides and give them a lovely, crunchy, cheesy skirt.

I've found a recipe for apple scones with blackberry compote that I might try next week. Fresh blackberries are likely to be hard to find, and expensive, but frozen should do fine.

Fingers crossed for you @MyrtleLion

Thank you! Interview at 2.30. Sofa guy coming at 3pm.The Walrus also has a call from.2-4pm but apparently he can just logoff at 3pm and deal with sofa guy.

I'm planning cheese slumps tomorrow, with spelt flour. Out usual coffee morning pub is (temporarily we hope) closed so we're using the Hall instead, which means self catering and a late start, so I thought I'd enjoy something savoury and lunch-like.

Late because during our usual coffee morning slot the Hall is full of ladies doing physical activities. Very nice ladies. Very active.

@MarieDeGournay - Gráeen the baby gerbil! Isn't she a little love.

The voice you're probably imagining is Don LaFontaine. He's the Trailers Voiceover Bloke. He's done about 5,000 movie trailers.

"In a world where the Gerbils dared to capture Beetle, it's time for vengeance.
"With a side order of Tunnocks."

Very best of Blue luck 🤞

Oh fucksocks. Forgot to change from Puzzle Thread name to Bluestockings name.

Tarnation!

Today on X I learned that, following the Anglo-Zulu War, there was a minor fashion for children (mostly girls) to be named "Zulu". It seems parents giving their DC daft names is not as recent a trend as we thought.

It reminded me of a story I read a few years ago, about local elections in Namibia, where one of the victorious candidates had the first names Adolf Hitler. I find it heartwarming to see disadvantaged people succeed in life, and who could be more disadvantaged than a black man called Adolf Hitler?

Oooh. I like that!

Oh for a foolproof scone recipe. I can't make a decent one especially since family member is coeliac.
Savoury or sweet, I love them all, but a special fondness for cheese scones.

Wonder if the gerbils can rustle one up for me??

This is the recipe I followed for the chorizo and manchego scones

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/chorizo-manchego-scones

I just used milk (semi-skimmed) because I forgot to buy buttermilk* and I added a half teaspoon of baking powder.

*I think you can replicate buttermilk by adding vinegar to milk, low fat milk would probably be ideal, but I didn't bother.

@FranticFrankie

For sweet scones :
So - 500g of plain flour and 6 tsp of baking powder
OR
500g of self raising flour and 2 tsp of baking powder
50g of caster sugar
75g butter

Tip it into a food processor and blitz it until completely combined.
Put the mix in a bowl for the next bit.

Add 300ml of milk. If your milk is on the turn, all the better. You can swap out 50ml of milk for yogurt if you have it in, you can sour your milk by warming it slightly in the microwave and sloshing in a dash of lemon juice, or just use it as is. It's totally fine.

Here's the important bit:
Mix the milk through the dry ingredients until there are no pockets of dry flour. I use a butter knife, you can use a wooden spoon if you'd rather, but do it S-L-O-W-L-Y. No muscle power, no energy, just barely mix it. If it's not quite come together, use your hands to gently bring it together into one big sticky mess. It will look a right flipping state but don't worry.

Tip the mess onto a very well floured surface. Pat it gently with your (wet) hands until it's approximately even. Don't use a rolling pin. At a guess I'd say about 2-3cm thick for 12 scones.

Dip your cutter into some flour, cut out your scone by pressing down, NOT twisting. You can give it a little shimmy if it's sticking, but promise me you won't twist it. If you twist you are sealing the top and bottom edges together which dramatically affects the rise.

Brush the top of the scones with beaten egg and bake at 220 C for 10 to 12

Gluten free flour does work but you need a bit more moisture for that.