Tag: Royal family

  • The Facts of the Matter – King Charles & the West Indies

    So King Charles is due to visit various islands in the West Indies I read. I also read that he will face a barrage of accusations and claims for apologies and reparations from the various islands where slavery was once practised.

    Those slaves would have been transported from Africa, where the organized slave trade has been practiced for over a millennium, with external networks like the Arab-Muslim trans-Saharan, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean slave trades flourishing from as early as the 7th century, while the Barbary Pirates raided the North African coast – Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Morocco – as well as coasts as far away as Ireland and Cornwall from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Spanish writer Cervantes was among their captives, and condemned to rowing in their galleys until ransomed.

    Meanwhile the British practised the “peculiar institution”, as it was known in the American South, for 240 years. They were the first nation both to abolish it and fight it – using the Royal Navy to try to stop trading on the seas, for over sixty years until it was ended – losing both ships and some thousands of sailor’s lives during this campaign.

    So if King Charles is to be exhorted to apologize and pay up, there are many other people, groups and societies who should be ahead of the queue.

    Tidiiana N’Diaye, the Senegalese  anthropologist, says that what happened in East Africa over the centuries should  be openly discussed.

    “Most of the African authors have not yet published a book on the Arab-Muslim slave trade out of religious solidarity. There are 500 million Muslims in Africa, and it is better to blame the West than talk about the past crimes of Arab Muslims. Initially, the Arab Muslims in Eastern and Central Europe took white slaves to sell them to Arabia,” Tidiane N’Diaye said in an interview. “But the growing military power of Europe put an end to Islamic expansion and now that there was a shortage of slaves, Arab Muslims were looking massively to black Africa.”

    When missionary David Livingstone was exploring central Africa, and based at Zanzibar, one of the centres of the slave trade, he estimated that 80,00 to 100,00 Africans were captured by Muslim Arab traders every year. He wrote: “The strangest disease in this country seems really to be broken heartedness, and it attacks free men who have been captured and made slaves”. And out of those huge numbers of slaves captured to be sold and transported from Zanzibar, only one in four survived the journey, most of them died from hunger and exhaustion. A stick was chained to their neck and linked to the next man in the long chain of desolate captives.

    It was not until 1873 that Sultan Seyyid Barghash of Zanzibar, under pressure from Great Britain, signed a treaty that made the slave trade in his territories illegal. But that decree was not enforced effectively. It was in 1909 when slavery was finally abolished in East Africa. It was the mid thirties before it ended in Ethiopia.

    According to author N’Diaye, slavery still exists, albeit in a different form. It is estimated that nearly 40 million people worldwide –  in Mauritania they abolished slavery in 1981, but in reality the situation in North Africa has not changed much. Young people are still enslaved against their will, forced to work and sexually exploited.

    “When it comes to racism, the woke – racism weapon against the past is to see only the West’s part in the terrible historical centuries old crime of slavery and the apparent miseries of colonialism. Even a search of the internet, in entries about Africa, only mention the Atlantic West coast slavery.

    Between the late 1870’s to the 1960’s, Colonialism took over from tribal warfare throughout most African kingdoms, tribes, and provinces. The tales of the atrocities and tortures and massacres that were visited previously on defenceless peoples, or on the beaten armies, or revolting tribes, are horrendous. James Bruce, the British explorer who traced the source of the Blue Nile in 1770, spent two years at the Ethiopian court, and described not only the dreadful fates of the king’s constantly warring enemies, but the Ethiopian habit of enjoying fresh meat cut from a living beast, describing one horrible victory feast when a bull was tethered and steaks systematically carved from the bellowing desperate creature.

    The accounts of other explorers over the hundred years before western rule, tell of the same brutalities and cruelties by psychopathic rulers who inherited bloody tribal rites and continued to practise them. In spite of ancient civilisations which had risen and fallen in other ages on this continent, the Africa the explorers found was primitive and bloodthirsty.

    In 1861, explorer Christopher Speke described King Rumanika of Karagwe’s harem, whose wives were force fed milk through pipes from a gourd, to become so horrendously fat that they couldn’t stand, but rolled around like seals, he said. Men with whips stood by to enforce the endless fattening up.

    While Speke was detained at his court for months in 1860, he described King Mutesa of Buganda killing people at his court daily, for trivial reasons such as a girl speaking too loudly, or a page neglecting to open or close a door, innocent people burned alive, tortured and murdered in all manner of ways.,

    So was the advent of colonial rule for that one hundred years, really such a tyranny? In Nigeria for example, the governor, Sir Evelyn Lugard having brought peace to the warring north, ‘set out the same principles of the administrative system subsequently institutionalized as ‘indirect rule’. Essentially, local government was to be left in the hands of the traditional chiefs, subject to the guidance of European officers.

    ‘ While this system had built-in contradictions, over the years the Nigerian system developed into a sophisticated form of local government, which became the hallmark of British colonial rule in Africa. ‘

    The colonial authorities of most nationalities, French, Portuguese, German, as well as British, left behind the rule of law, plus roads, hospitals, schools, railways, drains, and most of the advantages of western civilization. Since these countries gained independence, many have ignored ‘due process’ of law, press freedom, individual liberty and human rights’, in the words of Amnesty International. Systems of democratic government established at independence have been dismantled, and corrupt authoritarian regimes imposed, with many presidents declaring themselves in office for life.

    Since Independence there have been unspeakable massacres, tribal wars, repression of any dissent, and previously prosperous countries like Zimbabwe reduced to bankruptcy – though to read the internet, you would think it was a thriving happy prosperous society, untroubled by violence, famine, corruption, unemployment, and bulging prisons filled with people from the wrong tribe. ( I know, I have a close relative who was matron of the hospital in Harare. I have two friends who worked in Kenya for a few years, where they had to have an iron door fitted to their bedroom like everyone else so that they wouldn’t be murdered in their sleep by robbers. When they left, they left all their possessions, being allowed only enough cash to buy a coffee and bun at the airport.)

    Human rights groups have gone on record as describing ‘extensive political repression, including illegal and arbitrary detention, threats or other forms of intimidation, disappearances, politically motivated trials, and the massacre of peacefully protesting civilians ‘ in many countries.

    None of these regimes are castigated by the critics of the West. Both the crimes of the past, and the crimes of the present are ignored, overlooked or unknown to those pulling down statues and condemning European and American slave owners. Slave owners who were also philanthropists whose generosity sustains the very colleges and schools, hospitals and libraries, art galleries, orphanages, that today’s woke critics benefit from. And apart from all their other crimes, these were mostly old white dead males – an unbeatable combination if you’re inclined to find a good whipping boy… while modern woke culture requires that we change our minds and our beliefs about these men and about the past, and condemn them too.

    The philanthropy of many traders and owners, which contributed to the great civilization of the west, their gifts to the arts, to medicine, to science, to music, to literature, to architecture, to good government and a decent society may be forgotten in this present orgy of righteous indignation and judgement, but let us hope that the pendulum swings back before all that they gave and achieved is obliterated.

    Those lovely words from the book of Ecclesiastes honour these sort of men, ‘Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begot us’… Some of the most famous and indispensable men in history have been slave owners – men who reflected the customs of their times and place. Like most of us they all had gifts and they all had flaws, and they were men of their time. In time to come we may be abhorred too, by more advanced societies for the way we treat and eat other species, and exploit the natural world

    These slave-owners include men like the Prophet Muhammad, William Penn, the great Quaker who founded Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the unforgettable words of the Declaration of Independence, Demosthenes, influential ancient Greek statesman, many US presidents, including George Washington, most rich Romans and ancient Greeks, not many British, they tended to have money invested in trading, and so we come to wonderful William Wilberforce, and his supporters who battled so long to abolish the slave trade.

    Many of their descendants have been proud of the achievements of such men, others have been influenced by them, or inspired by them, while others have followed them – as in the case of Muhammad. So perhaps their critics could try to forgive them, leave their statues where grateful people erected them, and remember that it is because so many of them worked for a decent humane society, that we have the freedom today to say and think without fear – a freedom which applies to us all in the West, black or white, privileged, terf or transgender. “I have no desire to make windows into men’s souls,” said Elizabeth I back in the 1550’s, and I think she had the right idea. So lay off King Charles !

    Food for Threadbare Gourmets

    Leftovers are wonderful! I had two buttery garlicky new potatoes sitting in the fridge, and wondered what to do with them, as well as wondering what to have for supper. It didn’t take long to decide to concoct a makeshift Spanish omelette for one, using a mushroom, small tomato, small piece of ham, and the aforesaid potato. Their garlicky flavour made up for not bothering to fry an onion, so after chopping everything up, and frying first the mushrooms, and adding the potatoes, then the tomatoes and then the ham, I tipped two beaten eggs over the the mixture, and cooked the omelette to the soft side, which is my preference.

    Eaten with a crusty warm roll, it was as good as the real thing.(With apologies to Spain.)

    Food for thought

    Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; … but to weigh and consider”. Sir Francis Bacon 1561- 1621

  • Harry Windsor and the Poisoned Chalice

    Christmas Day when I was twelve was made hideous by my younger sister’s tantrums all day because she thought I had one more walnut than she had had in our Christmas stockings. I had four, and she had three. The next day the fourth walnut was found under her bed where it had rolled.

    I was reminded of this when I read Harry, ‘Prince of England’, as he calls himself, sharing his angst with the world over the time William had three sausages and he had only two, while his older brother had a bigger bedroom than he.

    Like my poor sister, he has drunk deep of the poisoned chalice of jealousy and envy.

    Five years after the Walnut Debacle, my headmaster at boarding school was writing to my father that my sister was obsessed with jealousy of me, as a reason for some of the mayhem she was creating.

    Disturbed  children with painful backgrounds rarely do well at school, and Harry is a classic example. 

    But unlike my sister who had lost our mother at age five, and with a father fighting in North Africa and then Italy, and no family, Harry was surrounded by love, with not just a very concerned father, but devoted grandparents, aunts, loving cousins, a friend and companion in lieu of a nanny appointed to always be there for him, and various dedicated military men who made it their business to mentor him.

    With all this love and support Harry is still stuck in self pity and victimhood, and is still possessed of a burning sense of injustice that he didn’t get the same goodies as his brother.

    He says he’s done lots of therapy (with that same brother’s support, he tells us) to move on from the grief of losing his mother – though he doesn’t acknowledge that his attitude towards his brother is jealousy.

    But therapy is designed to help people cope better with their problems and their lives, and not to change their personalities. Unfortunately Harry’s personality has been revealed to us in his autobiography, his interviews and self-indulgent films for Netflix.

    And his real self is not a pretty sight. Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of the Harry saga is his level of ingratitude. Rules have been broken for him, strings pulled, excuses made, cover-ups concocted either to explain away his behaviour or to get him what he wants.

    Somehow he scraped into Sandhurst with two questionable A levels, and somehow got through the four to five day long officer selection board during which time a team of senior officers watch, note and assess every aspect of a candidate’s behaviour. 

    During my assessment at Westbury, I still remember the unnerving sound of the officers scribbling their notes on their mill boards throughout all the test sessions, inside and out.

     I remember a question right out of left field – what book are you reading at the moment? Fortunately the book I was reading was also being read by the Colonel at that moment too, and we had an amicable chat – what books would Harry have been able to list:  ‘How to look after a polo pony,’  or a: ‘ Guide to choosing in-offensive fancy dress’?

    Luckily the experienced staff sergeants and sergeant majors at Sandhurst have nursed  kings and princes from many countries through the Academy, from Jordan, Oman, Dubai, Bahrain, Qatar to Luxembourg, so Harry was in practised hands at Sandhurst.

    Yet during his time in the army he brought it into disrepute when he gained headlines for wild antics –  playing naked pool in Las Vegas, (his CO was not pleased) tossing girls in full evening dress into a stately house swimming pool, (until stopped by the butler) and staggering out of nightclubs barely able to stand up, (supported by a sober military mentor). 

    After being caught smoking cannabis as a teenager, Charles took him to a rehabilitation centre to help him see the long term consequences, yet in 2023 he was recorded as saying 

    that: “psychedelics are a fundamental part” of his life and that he used “psychedelics, ayahuasca, psilocybin, mushroom.”.

    Which leads me to wonder if these mind altering drugs may be responsible for some of his irrational behaviour and vengeful pursuit through the courts of those who incur his displeasure, or who thwart his desires for status and recognition, including round the-clock- police protection.

    The Anglican church broke its rules so Harry could have a big, fat, white wedding like his brother, even though his father had had to make do with a registry office when he married a divorced woman. But after the wedding the green-eyed monster pounced again, when instead of moving into a 20 room apartment like his brother, he had to settle for the same three bedroom cottage that William had used when he was first married.

    The faithful, loyal Duke and Duchess of Gloucester were turfed out of the 20 room apartment in Kensington Palace where they had lived for 47 years so Harry could move in. But his new wife preferred Windsor Castle – the Queen gave them a five bedroom cottage in the grounds instead.

    In his book Spare, Harry details his rows and disagreements with his brother and sister-in- law, and the annoyance of the ‘grey men in suits’ who were trying to keep his circus on the road, and disguise his irresponsible behaviour, as they had been doing ever since Harry had left school  – hard work for them, but which Harry felt was obstruction and interference. 

    And now he has removed himself from behind that shield of help and protection, the world has seen who and what the real Harry is. And the strange thing is that Harry himself has revealed it, reminiscing about his school days when he mocked a disabled teacher at school as she made her way painfully backwards down the stairs, and disparaging the first girl he had a sexual experience with.

    It’s an absolute taboo in the forces to mention lives lost in combat, but Harry boasted of killing 25 Taliban who probably had wives and children like him, describing shooting them from a helicopter.

    As Captain General, an honour he inherited from the Duke of Edinburgh, he skipped the  memorial service for Royal Marines who were killed in the 1989 Deal barracks IRA bombing, a tone deaf dereliction of duty, in order to posture at the Lion King premier with his wife, and angle for work for her.

    And since his departure from Royal duties, this person who didn’t even have the courtesy to speak to or visit to tell his future father-in-law he was marrying his beloved daughter, has undermined, maligned, lied about and sabotaged his own family.

    He has colluded with his wife, who has fuelled his jealousy, in a campaign of revenge for all his imaginary injustices and has become a professional victim in which his steadfast family, the grey men, the press, the legal system and anyone else who thwarts him are villains out to get him. In the years since he married, the party-loving, rebel young prince has morphed into a resentful, tone-deaf, middle-aged man exuding self-righteous, offended dignity

    Many commenters keep quoting the Prodigal Son as grounds for forgiving and welcoming Harry back into the family. But they miss the point about being forgiven. The Prodigal Son had repented, but Harry doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong. 

    Instead, he’s demanded apologies from the family he told radio listeners during his engagement had welcomed Meghan, and had become: “the family she had never had.”

    (Never mind the father and uncles who’d paid for, supported and loved her.)

    My husband has a saying you can’t fix stupid, which puts me in mind of the ancient Sufi 

    adage: ‘He who knows not and knows not that he knows not, is stupid – avoid him.’

    The next line is: ‘He who knows not and knows that he knows not is ignorant – teach him’.

    But sadly no-one seems to have been able to teach Harry anything. 

    He remains in a permanent state of not knowing and unawareness, and permanently too, in the claws of the green-eyed monster. Like my late sister he will probably be unable to escape this misery for the rest of his life. As Quaker William Penn said, “The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves.” 

    Food for threadbare gourmets

    I’m always fascinated by chefs and the like who disclose what are the staples that they always keep in their larder or pantry, aside from the obvious like bacon and eggs. For me, this is virgin olive oil, pasta, tins of tomatoes and parmesan in the fridge.

    When there’s nothing ready to eat in the fridge, and there’s no flicker of inspiration, these handy ingredients are the answer. Chopped fresh or tinned tomatoes are gently fried in the olive oil while the pasta is cooking, and parmesan grated. When the pasta is ready, tip it into the tomato mixture, toss it together, and sprinkle the parmesan on each  helping.

    Torn shreds of fresh basil are delicious if you have fresh basil on hand. I cook the pasta in cold water, a la Nigella Lawson, and find it avoids the dreaded clumping as long as it’s given a stir every now and then.

    Food for thought

    Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, to rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless because they cannot think new thoughts.

    Salman Rushdie

  • California Markled

    Whistleblowers are traditionally punished for whistling, and when I first wrote about M. Markle back in the distant day, one reader castigated me as bitchy. Another said I had skewered my victim with the accuracy of an Exocet missile.

    The story began of course, back in the dark ages of 2018, with the engagement interview and later at a meeting of the Fab Four, with her information for us all that she was going to hit the ground running (part of her campaign to bring the 1000 year old monarchy up to date.)

    Then the strange saga began – first with what we all know as Tiara – Gate, when Harry pronounced the immortal words – “what Meghan wants, Meghan gets.” But she didn’t – instead of the tiara feared to have Russian links which might trigger an international incident (with Putin over a tiara?) the poor bride had to settle for the magnificent diamond bandeau tiara, especially made for Queen Mary in 1932, and this Queen Never wore jewellery that wasn’t magnificent.

    Next came the Tragedy of the Tights – with tiny bridesmaids having to wear bare legs in new shoes ( sore, blister creating ) instead of traditional white tights, and Princess Catherine three weeks out of childbirth and difficult pregnancy, getting stick, either for causing our heroine to cry according to Markle herself, or the postnatal mother with two other under fives to cope with, to cry . 

    Private emails later published unforgivably by a duplicitous Harry who didn’t realise how tough they made his wife sound, show a rather uncompromising Markle berating Catherine for not joining all the other mothers for fittings. Later Markle, during a tour of South Africa whinged about being vulnerable as a mother during and after birth, but this had never occurred to her when relating to a fragile Catherine who suffered hyperemesis gravidarum throughout her pregnancy – nasty morning sickness for nine months, (I know what it’s like )

    Then there was the Mystery of the Invisible Family. No “Daddy” (as she later called him to “wring the public’s heart”, she wrote to Jonathan Knauf about her father spat), no uncle who wangled an internship for her at the embassy in Argentina, (didn’t last long as she failed the exams ) no bishop uncle, no brother or sister or extended family who figure in old family photos. All Markled.

    Just Doria, the absent mother during her childhood when her father brought her up, and a parade of Hollywood names like Oprah Winfrey and the Clooneys who admitted they’d never met Markle.

    All the rules were bent for Harry and his American bride – King Charles and Camilla were not allowed to marry in a church as Camilla was divorced, just the registry office for them – but touchy Harry got his way, and the Church of England broke its own rules and laid on the  works for divorced Meghan Markle.

    She went full on, dressed like a Royal virgin bride, and inserted into the lovely Anglican ritual the top, African American, activist bishop who overran by his stipulated five minutes with a full blown radical rant of over fifteen minutes, railing about poverty, racism and war. She organized a gospel choir who performed ‘Stand by me’, and a beautiful black English teenage cello player also performed in the church.

    As she stepped out of the Rolls Royce once used by the Duchess of Windsor on her way to the Duke’s funeral, she slapped aside the helpful hand proffered by a royal attendant, and processed into the St George’s alone, until met by a courteous Prince Charles who escorted her to the besotted groom.

    Afterwards they danced and partied into the night accompanied by their new Hollywood mates, while Harry’s besties and old school friends were left out of this jolly, a telling hint of things to come… the first obvious Markling, though we may have missed the other less important dropped buddies, like Liz Cundy and Piers Morgan.

    Later, in the notorious Oprah interview sprinkled with lies and barbs directed at the family which had welcomed them, broken all its long established rules, and given them a 30 million wedding, a house, and significant marks of good will, M. Markle described the ‘framed’ document hanging on the wall of their Montecito home, which was the certificate of their ‘secret wedding’ three days before the spectacle put on for the peasants and hoi polloi.

    She described how they ‘called up’ the Archbishop of Canterbury ( I could just imagine this ‘woke’ smug prelate pulling up his episcopal skirts and running over to Kensington Palace to do their bidding) to come round and marry them in the garden. He was obliged to disown his part in this imaginary ceremony, saying that to have done so would have been a criminal act, with no license, no witnesses etc etc.

    To my knowledge no one has called them out on this story and asked to see the ‘Framed Certificate’.

    Before they flounced off on what eco-warrior Harry called “their Freedom  Flight” on yet another private jet, ( they always use private jets, while the Wales fly commercial on private trips and business class on official trips) M. Markle had managed to ruffle a good few feathers, and incurred much ridicule too, including the time she wrote uplifting messages on bananas to give to female street sex workers in Bristol.

    Later it wasn’t ridicule, but disbelief and then rage at her misuse of power in a way that no Royal had ever done before – showing her contempt for the ordinary Brit, when she had forty dedicated tennis watchers turfed out of the Wimbledon seats they had queued and paid for, so she could sit in splendid isolation with two friends, showing off to them how powerful and special she was.

    Catherine tried to mend matters by taking her to the tennis with Pippa the following day, but even then, M Markle refused to conform with the formal dress code, but shuffled in wearing over – long trousers and a casual striped shirt. When Oprah questioned her, she denied that Catherine had been helping her defuse the scandal.

    Sadly she even manipulated royal aides to unknowingly lie to the public when she allowed them to announce the birth of her son, while she’d already gone home from hospital with him three days before.

    Everything she did seemed to demonstrate her contempt both for the ancient Royal institution and for the ordinary and openhearted Brits who had welcomed her so warmly a few years before. And it seemed as though she just didn’t ‘get’ what the institution was about.

    She was recorded on their Australian tour saying as people shook hands with her:

     “I can’t believe I’m not getting paid for this”.

    When she and her “Prince of England ” as he pompously described himself in a recent interview, left the country in 2020 they castigated the Brits, and the Royal Family as racist and victims of ‘unconscious bias.’ Meghan Markle had lasted one year and eight months in England.

    Ensconced in California, opening her heart – if she had one – to Oprah Winfrey, she claimed she had been silenced, she had had to give up her car keys and her passport  – so how did she manage to slip out for Serena Williams’s ( slow motion Markling in progress?) gift of a $400,000 to $500,000 baby shower in New York, and holidays with the Clooneys and Elton John at their Mediterranean villas?

     Harry told us he found her weeping on the floor because she was so desperate during pregnancy –  (what was wrong with sofa or a bed, I’ve used both for that purpose) and she recounted how close to suicide she became. At the same time she was guest editing Vogue magazine at her own request, working with her buddy Edward Enninful (since Markled) and designing stuff for Dress Smart – a women’s charity. What a woman !

    Since then, her mockery of the loving and beloved Queen with her infamous courtesy and war of words – including a shot at the Queen – ‘We can all live lives of service. Service is universal;’ her continual attempts to one up Princess Catherine, trying to steal her thunder every time Catherine wows the public in a gold dress, or climbs a mountain or two; putting out pictures of the back of her children’s heads as soon as Catherine issues an anniversary photo or announcement, and her strange undignified stunts like twerking in the delivery room, or leaping into a swimming pool on her birthday, have not endeared her to critics like me.

     For six years now she has carried on her vendetta against the blameless family she obviously despises, never missing an opportunity to undermine them, even boasting to the magazine The Cut that she’d never been asked to sign an NDA, as though she didn’t recognise that the family had never expected her to bad-mouth, undermine and lie about them to the world. Decent people don’t either air or invent dirty family linen to expose to the outside world, never mind the whole world.

    Is her penchant for making her daughter walk barefoot in crowded places like Disneyland where thousands of people walk and spit out their chewing gum, or in a garden centre on the gravel, or on the grass at Montecito with beetles or bugs underfoot, meant to demonstrate what a carefree informal life her children enjoy, compared to the immaculate Wales children? Is the daughter’s unkempt untrimmed hair ending in rats-tails some gesture to show what freedom they all have? Beats me.

    This diatribe about one of the world’s most disliked women according to some polls has allowed me to get my disgust of this strange, compulsive liar and poseur off my chest.

    Good thing I am too unknown and insignificant to be Markled like so many of her besties like poor Jessica Mulroney, or sued like so many of her other critics. 

    And now California has been Markled. For how long I wonder.

    England is cold and wet or dry and too hot, depending on climate change, while California is warm and sunny, and swarms with minor celebrities who would willingly gush over a faux duchess. I don’t think England need worry for long about the return of the Markles.

    Food for Threadbare Gourmets

    Since I learned that older women ( like me) need a lot more protein than younger women, I’ve become an authority on protein counts in food, as opposed to calories.

    One of my favourite staples after learning this blinding piece of intelligence, are green Puy lentils  – so delicious I can eat them on their own, but just as good as an accompaniment to salmon, chicken or just fried onions and mixed vegetables- even sausages.

    No soaking needed. Just a wash. Fry gently an onion, stick of  celery and a finely chopped carrot in olive oil. Cook until soft, then add a clove of chopped garlic, and fry for a minute. 

    Then add a cup of lentils, three cups of chicken stock, a bay leaf, two sprigs of thyme or  some dried thyme, salt and black pepper, and simmer until the lentils are soft and have absorbed all the liquid, about 25 minutes. If the lentils are still firm and the liquid is all absorbed, add a little more and cook till the lentils are soft but firm, not mushy.

    Take out the bay leaf and thyme sprigs and serve. I often have plenty left over, and re-heat in the microwave with added knobs of butter, or a splurge of virgin olive oil to keep the lentils lubricated.

    Food for Thought

    There are three forms of culture; worldly culture, the mere acquisition of information; religious culture, following rules; elite culture, self-development.

    Sufi Master  -Revelation of the Veiled