Spotlight Nor'East
In the March edition of the Newsletter:
- Chenda Chats
- Change of Editor
- Spotlight On Line
- Regional Wayzgoose
- Two Supper Delights by Jon Bemrose
- Wortley Top Forge by Geoff Theasby
- Where was Geoff?
- PLUS Crossword
Chenda Chats
I've always felt a bit of a misfit in Mensa, because I feel a bit too normal (in my humble opinion!). Well, I don't have any oddball hobbies or collect anything bizarre. I don't spend my weekends reprising the civil war or gazing lovingly at power stations. I don't collect things, like sticks or comics. Well, not in any discriminatory sort of way, anyway. I don't think failing to throw things out counts as collecting, does it?
One of my non-Mensan friends refers to us as the SAS (sad anoraks society). He does perfectly normal things, like going for walks with a folding saw in his pocket, so that he can plunder hedgerows when he sees branches he likes the look of. He then takes these home and adds them to the other two hundred or so in his stick workshop. (I keep trying to get him to do the Mensa test. I'm sure he's one of us).
However, I think I've now got the potential to be a genuine member of the SAS. I've found something I want to collect. I'm going to collect oxymorons. (Here I have to digress for a moment because this stupid software has just underlined oxymorons with a red squiggle and suggested I might like to substitute oxymoron's. Maybe that's where all the greengrocers went!).
So now I can be just as nerdy as the rest of you and really feel as though I belong. I even like the boring, politically incorrect oxymorons like working man and woman driver. But I prefer the more imaginative ones, like civil engineer and Microsoft Works (see brackets above!). And I especially like new ones that I've never heard before, (haven't got any examples of those yet). So do feel free to help me get my collection started. I'd love to receive any oxymorons you care to send me. It won't even cost you any postage if you email them, (although, if you were to write them down and post them, it would give me another used stamp or two for my charity collection). Or you could send them via this newsletter and Jenny and Kathy could use them to fill any blank spaces they happen to have. Maybe they would like a designated blank space as a regular feature, and then we could put other odd stuff there as well, a bit like the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.
I still feel a bit of a fraud in the SAS, though. I had sort of accepted that I would never make the grade as a nerd. If I really wanted to be a nerd, I would have spent ages trying to think of something to collect, and agonising over it until I did. But it all happened as a sort of love-at-first-sight moment, when somebody sent me a copy of the Radio 4 weather map. (A Mensan, of course). Bet you've never seen a radio weather map, have you?
Look forward to seeing you,
I'm Chenda Appleyard
Goodbye And Thank You
As you know Maddy Rees has had to resign as co-editor of Spotlight due to the pressure of university work coupled with work to keep the wolf from the door and starvation at bay!
I would like to thank her for all her hard work and to wish her well for her future studies.
Hello And Welcome
Happily I am able to report that we have a new victim ...... sorry, I mean volunteer to take her place. Kathy Lewis has kindly agreed to take Maddy's place to become co-editor of Spotlight.
Jenny Gill
I will let Kathy introduce herself to you:-
I'm originally from Bolton (which I'm frequently told is the "wrong side of the Pennines"...) but have been living in Leeds since I came here as a linguistics student in 1998. I've been indulging my passion for language ever since, in past editing roles and also personal writing; I'm now editing the second draft of my first novel with fingers tightly crossed in hopes of publication!
As Chenda will confirm, I'm a loyal attendee of Globetroughers events and love to try new foods and experiences, to such a degree that I may be keeping Red Letter Days in business single-handedly. In my spare time I can also be found haunting cinemas for the latest releases, buried in a book, watching NFL Live or trawling eBay for more additions to my autograph collection (when my husband isn't on there buying shoes...)
I look forward to a thoroughly enjoyable period as co-editor – Kathy Lewis.
Spotlight On Line
In addition to Spotlight Nor'East being available on the Regional Website it is now available on the main website at www.mensa.org.uk together with all the Regional Newsletters.
Towards the end of each month a news item will appear on the news section, click on the masthead of the newsletter you want to read and there it is.
Work is on-going to add a link in the A-Z index and the first page of the members' area to the newsletters (indeed by the time you read this it may already have been completed). It is likely that there will be six months or so of downloadable pdf files for each regional newsletter.
Do go and have a look, firstly you will be able to see all the photographs for Spotlight in colour and additionally you can read through the newsletters for other regions.
Jenny Gill
Two Supper Delights
Supper 1 - Sweet Potato Pasties with Caramelised Onions.
500g (1lb) Sweet potatoes peeled and chopped into 4cm (1 inch) chunks;
2 cloves garlic (thinly sliced);
Salt & white pepper;
Chilli (fresh) chopped finely;
500g (1lb) onions, peeled and sliced (halved through to root then sliced into half rings thinly approx 1mm);
1/2 block of 125g (1/4lb) butter;
1 block of ready made puff pastry (500g);
50ml milk and 1 egg beaten together for sealing and glazing the pasties.
Place 2/3rds approx (75g) of butter in a pan and add sliced onions, cook on a low heat for a couple of hours (yes! that long!) stirring occasionally. This is to cook out most of the moisture so that the natural sugars start to brown. You can do it faster but then you could burn it. You want very soft onions with a golden toffee colour and taste. Season with salt and white pepper and leave to cool.
Boil the sweet potatoes with the garlic until tender, drain through a sieve and mash with remaining butter. Season and add chilli to taste, leave to cool.
Cut the puff pastry into quarters. Roll each quarter into a rectangle approx 3 times length to width and approximately 2-3mm thick, and then cut each of these in half on the short diameter for 8 slightly elongated pieces. (I find this easier than trying to keep the whole block rolled neatly).
Divide the caramelised onion between the 8 pastry pieces, on one side of the middle, and spread leaving 2cm at the edge clear, and the other half left clear. Do the same with sweet potato mash. Now brush the clear part of the pastry with the beaten egg and milk mix. Fold over the pastry, try to ease out to the edges any trapped air, and seal/crimp the edges (a floured fork is an easy idea for this). Place the pasties on a baking tray; glaze the top with the remaining egg/milk mix.
Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200 degrees (approx gas 7) for around 30 minutes until golden and crisp.
Allow to rest and cool slightly before serving as filling is very hot! (But you could eat cold later). Serve with a selection of dressed salad leaves or just dunk in a big splodge of ketchup or chunky pickles.
Extras:
You could sprinkle the glazed tops with coarse sea salt, sesame seeds or poppy seeds or you could add to the filling any of the following: peas; sweetcorn, chopped nuts, your choice of cheese, cooked chopped / sliced mushrooms, diced crispy bacon or cooked chicken.
In the supermarket the other day they had reduced price baking potatoes. This gave me the idea for:
Supper 2 - Cheesy potatoes.
I bought 8 potatoes for just 60p (good deal at 7.5p each!). I baked them all (Top tip: score the skin around the circumference before cooking for easier splitting later) and then put six in the freezer for future use and chilled the other two to eat over the next day or two.
To serve one or two persons:
Split one cooked baked potato; scoop out the middle of each half with a spoon, taking care not to get to split the skin.
Dice "scooped" centre into small cubes. Finely chop a clove of garlic and add to diced potato. I then added approx 25g of diced Roquefort cheese, 25g of finely diced cooked chicken (You could use fish/prawns if you like, or some peas or beans, fresh herbs of course) and some black pepper. Combine all the ingredients and refill the potato shells.
Finish with 8-10 minutes in a hot (180-200C) oven or 4 minutes on combi microwave/grill.
Great on its own, or with a fresh green herb salad on the side, half is enough each for lunch/supper, with a glass of wine. I just had both halves with no salad and a glass of red wine!
Jon Bemrose
Wortley Top Forge
Found between Thurgoland and Stocksbridge, North of Sheffield, students of industrial archaeology will love this place. It is the oldest iron works in Yorkshire and there is evidence of Cistercian monks making iron from the local materials in the 12th Century. Sheffield was famous for blades even in Chaucer's time. One of the Canterbury Tales refers to a Sheffield "thwittel" or whittling (carving) knife.
It is a 19th Century ironworks, housed in 18th Century buildings, but its origins go back much further, as above. There are three working water wheels, and the mechanisms of the water-powered tilt hammers. They can't be worked again, because hammering cold iron will wreck the hammers, and the Health and Safety people will not permit red-hot iron to be worked for the public. This leads to the fact that there is something about a dead factory which sucks all the interest out of it. Never mind. Long famous for making railway axles, ("Never a failure in service", they claimed) and abandoned in 1912, when local iron became uneconomic to make, the works was ignored, not even reduced to scrap, for 40 years until acquired in 1953 when restoration began, by volunteers.
There are workshops still in use, powered by overhead shafting and flat belts, fast and loose pulleys and open gear wheels, used to maintain the machinery. A Health and Safety nightmare! I spotted a tommy bar left in a lathe chuck. Oh dear! Bad practice, and very dangerous. There is also a collection of small steam engines, powered by compressed air, and the smallest spiral staircase, with treads only about 1 foot across.
A model engineering society has a track on site, and a clubroom and workshop. When I visited, a model Stirling Single locomotive was being hydraulically tested for leaks, whilst battery powered locomotives ran round the 1/3rd mile track.
There are many old steam hammers and other bits of industrial heritage on site, scattered round the car park, and a large preserved vertical steam pump, in its own building. Other buildings complete the site.
Geoff Theasby
