How To Make Or Buy An English-Style Crumpet - Photo by Trevor Sharot

Home Made Crumpet With Melting Butter and photo by Trevor Sharot, photographer. Copyright Trevor Sharot.

Problem
How do you make the holes in crumpets? Where should I cook them? This has puzzled us for years. Trevor, who is a keen cook, sent me a photo of a ciabatta he had made. I had just read about crumpets. I complimented him on his expertise in making the ciabatta and asked him, "Could you make a crumpet?

Answer
When I set my husband, Trevor Sharot, this task, I knew he could do it. He can do anything. His major skill is research. He is also very practical. He prefers maths to English, because you can get 100% in a maths exam. He is good at research and also practical, a good combination of qualities.

You can see we are different types by the way we write. I would say, "It tastes delicious, yummy, the butter melts into the holes, it is soft on the inside and crisp on the edges and chewable."

He said:

'The holes are due to the raising agents. I used every available raising agent, yeast and baking powder."

So baking powder had the power. (I got that nice bit of alliteration from a typo. This proves there's a silver lining in every cloud.)

Ingredients
Flour
milk
water
a little butter
raising agents: yeast and baking powder

The sequence is

 batter after raising for a couple of hours

3 tbsp of batter in the ring

after the 10 minutes cooking

flipped over to show the base and for another 5 minutes upside down

flipped back when done

cross-section

Where to buy

Crumpets are made in the UK by Wharburtons. You can buy crumpets in supermarkets such as Tescos. Or chat to your friendly home baker, or make your own.

Author

Angela Lansbury

Travel writer and phtographer

Author and speaker

Interesting websites:

Trevor Sharot photographer 
http://trevorsharotphotography.com
http://grapedeal.com
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/crumbs-so-thats-how-british-make.html

Flowers to photograph in Singapore: how and why to take photos

Problem
Ho can you capture and preserve the flowers you pass? We don't yet have the ability to record and reproduce perfumes and aromas - I've read that this is being researched and one day will arrive - but you can record the flowers. Some tilt up, some tilt down. They may open at night, or open in the day to see the sun and attract the bees and close in the evening.

Answer
Here below are my flowers seen and photographed on the walk from an MRT station back to a condo. If a walk is tiring or boring, you can brighten it up by taking photos. (If your long-legged friends are walking too fast, you can stop them by taking a photo.)

A few days later it's lovely to look at the photos. I spin up and down, seeing something different in every photo each time. Looking at photos of flowers is like meditation, a distraction form stress, calming. Maybe that's why painters, in the days before photography and TV and films, provided still life paintings. From the point of view of a photographer, a flower is easier to capture than moving people, vehicles, animals, birds and butterflies. If you can add a human being, an animal, a bird, a butterfly, even a shoe or piece of litter to m contrast, show size, you are more likely to create a photo different from there average and win a competition.

I went to a lot of trouble to get the flowers without leaves which were turning brown or eaten into holes. I wanted a pretty pictures. I should have taken one with holes, for an article on what is eating your plants, or for some philosophical point about plants are food for insects, or into every life a little rain must fall and some nasty insects as well.

Another way to create a set of interesting photos would be to take the same flowers at dawn and at dusk, or in sunny and wet weather, or in a country which has seasons, in spring and autumn.

Also see my previous post showing a bird drinking nectar with its beak in an aloe vera plant on my balcony in Singapore.
Author Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Author and speaker.

Flower photos by Angela Lansbury.
Copyright Angela Lansbury
All rights reserved

Safety At Sea: What To Do When Sinking Like Titanic

After a lesson at a gym I got talking, as usual to a retired policeman I shall call 'Ed'.

Ed watched a Youtube video of a wealthy couple sailing the world on their two-person yacht. At night the husband sleeps and the wife wanders on deck filming herself, for the entertainment of all, but, Ed says, tutting, without a life jacket, helmet, or the two lines of ropes tied to herself.

'An ancient waiting to happen,' says Ed. I frown, 'But why is it dangerous? Surely a lot of people would do that?'

'Yes, but they shouldn't.' Ed shakes his head. 'She looks over the side, or she's hit by a swinging sail, the boat lurches and she falls off. He wakes up three hours later, miles away. He takes three hours to sail back to where she was - assuming he knows what time she fell and where. How will he find her?

'Look at the ceiling. Imagine falling from their into water, even perfectly calm water. How will she survive? Even falling from more than six feet flat into flat calm, water, it hits you so hard, it knocks you out, so you can hardly breathe, or float, or swim.

'It also depends on the water temperature. In some places you'd only survive half an hour. In others less than ten minutes.'

We ponder. 'So what should she, or you or I, do on a boat?'

'I've told you why you need a life jacket. You need the helmet in case worthing swings and hits you. Of you fall against something. Then you need two ropes. The small one when you are near something like a steering wheel. The bigger one when you want to go to the far side of the boat. The bigger one is longer and stronger, thicker. If you fall overboard, not only does it keep you near the boat so others can help you, you use it to pull yourself back up. It has knots at intervals all the wall up so you can pull yourself up it.'

I object, 'But if the boat is sinking, the rope attaching you to it will pull you down with the boat.'

Ed laughs. "You shouldn't be sinking. You should be on the boat baling out and stopping up any hole.'

'How do you stop up the hole?'

'Anything - even a blanket.'

'But the flow of water pushes it into the boat."

'You get a piece of wood or a couple of pieces like a cross bar to hold it in place?'

'Where do you find the wood. Say, you're on a cruise ship, like the Titanic. You don't have any tools to hack at the wood.'

'You take whatever wood you can find. A deckchair. A dining chair. Anything to hold a piece of canvas or blanket over the hole. The water rises up to the level of the hole and then the pressure of water keeps the blanket in place so no more water can flow in. Meanwhile you are baling out. On a cruise ship you have a thousand passengers. And dozens of crew. Get them all to help you.'

'The ship might still sink.'

'Yes, but, that gives you another three of four or five hours. Meanwhile you can be building lifeboats, floats, anything to throw into the water. You might not save everybody. But you can save some people. It's better than nothing.'

'How do you know all this?'

'When you are on police duty in London, for a big event, you have time off to eat and rest at a central police eatery - eating place. Around the walls are safety instructions. I look at them. Especially the ones about boats and boating because I sail.'

'Thank you for telling me. Now I know what to do.'

Please pass this post on to anybody who might need it or be interested.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author, teacher, speaker.