Continuing with my culinary posts, here is a recipe for an exotic dessert, which tastes delicious, takes only minutes to prepare and appears much more impressive than it actually is – and it should charm the pants off your guests. I can only say spice up your summer evenings and look like a culinary god(des).

The word semifreddo is Italian and means half cold. It usually refers to half frozen desserts and similar dishes.

Ingredients (for 4)
- 250g soured cream
- 35g Sharwood’s “Mango Chutney and Kashmiri Chilli”. The chilli and the Indian spices make for an unexpected surprise.
- 30g honey

Add an extra teaspoon of chutney to make it stronger or honey to make it sweeter.

Preparation
Put all the ingredients in a bowl and blend well with a hand mixer until smooth. Store in the fridge whilst you cook the rest of the meal.

Transfer into dishes just before you serve the main course and put into freezer. By the time you have finished your main course, you should have the desired, semi frozen texture.

Serve and enjoy.

If you share this dessert among four people, as suggested, it should set you back around 80 calories per portion.

Please feel free to share this post.

—

As I was knotting my Kikoi – a colourful piece of cotton, which is traditionally worn sarong style by men on the coast of East Africa – around my newly shrunk waist for a day in the sun, I thought that a Panama or a straw hat would look stylish.

A quick root through my wardrobe revealed that I had amassed six summer hats over the years. They looked good on my sofa, too.

—-

We have had nestboxes in the garden before but never any occupants, which is probably because the birds can find so many well protected, natural nesting spots in our garden. All the more exciting that this year a pair of blue tits decided to move in.

I suspect that the offer was too good to refuse: vacant possession, desirable and safe location close to the shopping facilities, and no mortgage and deposit required.

It only took a few minutes of waiting in today’s sunshine to get this shot of a blue tit checking the surroundings carefully before taking a juicy caterpillar into the nestbox to feed its young. I have no idea why I wrote “it” because I am sure that it was Dad.

Life has a tendency to throw little surprises at you, which usually means one thing: I grab my camera and add to my series of unplanned portraits.

Meet Steve, my window cleaner. He has been coming for many years and I thought that I knew everything about him that I needed to know. Only last week, however, I found out that he can also serenade his customers with his guitar.

Click on the photograph to see it bigger and please feel free to share this post.

—-

Bath in England is a small city with a population of about 84,000. This street in the centre of Bath felt very much like a village on a Saturday afternoon.

—-

My “Face of Spring” modelling competition was a huge success with hundreds of entries. Winner was a 9 year-old local lad. See his photograph here.

The weather may mislead us but summer begins in just over a month and I am once again looking for a fresh face that will be the face of Wolf Kettler Photographer for the summer 2012 season.

The winning photograph will be published on the home page of my website, www.wolfkettler.co.uk, and featured on my blog. This is another fab opportunity for aspiring and experienced models to work with me and my makeup artist. The shoot will take place around the middle of June at my studio near Devizes, Wiltshire.

This modelling opportunity is open to males and females of all age groups – this includes children and older individuals. There is no upper age limit. No previous modelling experience is required.

Your reward (apart from the fame of being seen by around 90,000 people over a three months period):
- Either payment at my standard modelling rates, or
- A collection of six digital images that you can use on your own website, social networking site or on modelling sites, or
- A large, framed print.

How to apply
Go to the contact page on my website and supply the following information:

Adults: Full name, age, where you live, height and weight.
Children: Parent’s or legal guardian’s full name, age and where you live, together with the child’s name, age, height and weight.

All: Please mention Face of Summer in your message. You may also include any other information that you feel is relevant and that could persuade me that you have got what it takes to be my face of summer.

I will then request a couple of recent photographs – snapshots are fine – by e-mail.

Please feel free to share this exciting opportunity with your friends.

As announced on Fantasy Radio

—–

Or rather, I like the idea of a national postal service. I hate what the government is doing to it, all in the name of preparing Royal Mail for a sell-off to a potential buyer, who will be expecting to make immoral profits.

The strategy of raising prices and cutting services is what they call making Royal Mail efficient and competitive, dragging its unique advantages to the level of the lowest common denominator. This is costly for the consumer and for businesses, especially small businesses that do not have the volume to bargain on price. Privatising Royal Mail means that its services will become very poor value for money, that services will be cut and that their staff will likely have to work even harder for even less money.

Then there are the self-inflicted problems: I send my Christmas cards around the middle of December every year. A few days ago one of my cards to a client came back as undeliverable – five months (!) after it was posted.

The Christmas card that went AWOL for five months.

The answer to the problems is the same for every state run service: Put in the proper funding, appreciate employees and embrace the fact that these services are not there to make profits but to serve the country.

The premise that taxpayer-owned services cannot be run well is as much a fallacy as the current fashion of putting profits before service is hideously absurd.

—–

Some days I wish that I could pack a few things and turn into a hermit. Click on the photograph to see it bigger.

Responding to the question “how is business?” is a delicate affair. If you sound too cheerful, people assume that you are more successful and richer than they are, which makes them hate you instantly. Sound too downbeat and they think that you are pathetic.

It is easy when I am asked this question in Austria because there are rules. When I say rules I mean one rule: You moan, and soon your opposite will join in. When you walk your separate ways minutes later, everybody feels good because they have established that life is even worse for the other person. Apart from the niggling suspicion, that is, that the other person could have been lying.

In Britain there are no standing rules. When Christina, the owner of a local health food shop, asked this most difficult of questions I was non-committal.

“Good”, I said and dampened my cheerfulness by adding “of course, we are in the middle of a recession”.

I was going to garnish my response with a comment about the tide changing all across Europe and anti-austerity taking hold in many countries whilst here, in Britain, the government was still convinced that strangulation was a better approach than the kiss of life.

Alas, I was in no mood for a political discussion. I had errands to run that day. I count myself lucky when I get a moment to hold a camera. I also have the administrative side of my business to run and four cats, one wife and a home to look after, not to mention the garden and its wildlife. Some days I wish that I could pack a few things and turn into a hermit.

My approach worked. Christina put on her sombre face and nodded. I could tell that she was unsure at which end of the spectrum I was dwelling.

“Where is the aniseed?” I asked Christina, who was now busy stacking a shelf in her delightful, little shop.

“Aniseed? We don’t do that anymore”.

The situation is evidently worsening. First the spaghetti crisis – for years I have been unable to source long spaghetti from any of my local shops and supermarkets – and now the aniseed shortage.

I was sure that a common herb such as Marjoram would not have such an awkward attitude, only I could not find it in the alphabetically organised miniature chest of drawers that is hung on a wall.

“Oh no. No, no.”, said Christina and explained that she found substituting marjoram with basil a very satisfying tactic.

I did not want a substitute and made my way, all eight steps of it, to the cash till. A lady in her sixties was telling Christina’s colleague, whose eyes were already crying out for help, tales from her life. From what I could hear, she was starting at the beginning of her life. Then she discovered that she had forgotten an item. Unfortunately for me, there were two options for said item.

“Show me both”, the elderly lady demanded as if time and other people did not exist within the walls of Christina’s shop.

A shopper goes about her business in early 1980s Austria. Click on the photograph to see it bigger.

I put my shopping basket on the counter and announced that I would be back later to collect my bounty.

“Entschuldigen Sie bitte”, said the elderly lady. In German! German? She was not German or any such nationality. Her false teeth bounced with pleasure as she grinned at me.

I shuddered and glared at her. I am good at glaring. I learned it from our cats. A better person would have replied “saublöde Kuh” with the most charming of smiles.

The telephone call that I had been waiting for came whilst I was in the supermarket minutes later.

“You enquired about the DG-200”, said the man from a company called Expansys. He was talking about the GPS data logger (never mind) that I crave.

The rest of the conversation went from “can you hear me?” to “loud and clear” and “I cannot hear you”.

I called back as soon as I had escaped the confines of Sainsbury’s nuclear bunker and got lumbered with one of these annoying people with cheerful voices, who are utterly incompetent, always sound keen, have no regard for their customers and cannot get on with anything. Beats me why people with her personality profile always get the telephone jobs.

Had I spoken to someone from corporate sales, Ms Telephone wanted to know. She was dark-haired, about 5 ft 3 and slim. I can always tell what people look like from their voices.

“How should I know?”, I replied and added, to be helpful, “it was a man and he sounded as if I had woken him from a deep sleep. Perfectly alright because it was early when I first called. Dark-brown, short hair, a little overweight and I am sure that he was unshaven.”

“I’ll put you through to corporate sales”, Ms Telephone promised after a few moments of silence but stopped herself and asked my name for the third time.

‘How sweet’, I thought. She is trying to delay letting me go.

“What’s yours?”, I asked.

Ms Telephone did not tell me her name but was eager to consume more information from me: My company name, telephone number, the seventh digit of the first line of my address and whether I kept pet sheep, which I thought was a rather personal question.

“Please don’t be offended but I really do not want to marry you”, I clarified. If I was honest at this stage then perhaps her fall from the heights of an imaginary love would not result in too harsh a landing.

“I only want to know whether the DG-200 works under Windows 7”, I pleaded but Ms Telephone showed no mercy.

We were halfway through my medical history when something told me that we were not making any headway.

“Oh, please”, I said, “just get on with it!”

“Sir”, shouted Ms Telephone in a voice that betrayed her little body, “have a little patience”, and put down the phone on me. I hate it when people call me Sir.

Later, back at base, I was in one of my benevolent moods and decided to give Expansys one last chance. I e-mailed my question. The answer came promptly: “Unfortunately, we’re not technical and wouldn’t want to induce you in error”.

My quest continues for aniseed, long spaghetti and a data logger.

—–

A short while ago I posted a photograph of Avebury on my blog and mentioned that I had had an encounter with a ghost some time earlier in the exact spot. Promptly, I received many requests for more details. I am not sure that I want to talk about it but I will oblige reluctantly.

My account is set in the village of Avebury in Wiltshire, England. Avebury is famous for its Neolithic stone circle and also for a ghost that is said to reside in the Red Lion pub. To this day I have not seen this ghost, which is not surprising because there are no ghosts. Apart perhaps from Kaspar, the cat, who moves at supersonic speeds like a ghost and Holly, the cat, who is more stealthy than a ghost before any background. Holly can be invisible before a mirror.

It all happened on a cold Winter’s afternoon not many years ago. Christmas had just passed and I was on a walk with the best of all wives. After a lie-in and a lazy breakfast we had set out late and the sun was already beginning to fade when we left the village by a small road, which turns into a footpath that leads across a stream and past a rather lovely house, which is set on its own little island, surrounded by a now dry moat. I have always thought that this house, you might as well call it a mansion, would suit my requirements perfectly but the best of all wives dampens my spirits with the expertise of a long suffering companion by pointing out that I am probably not the long-lost heir to a big fortune. She backs up her analysis with the insignificant fact that I am not an orphan. Pity.

The footpath connects to a strictly no-through road with a handful of more rather lovely houses and cottages, horses in a field and a pond. We continued onto a farm track at a junction with the old-fashioned black and white street signs that look as if they had been brought out for the filming of a movie, onto a track, turned right at a farm and headed towards a copse on the top of a gentle hill. It is a pleasant walk that we had done many times before.

Just after we crossed a small bridge, the temperature dropped a few degrees and I thought that I could hear footsteps behind us. I turned around but there was no one and I could no longer hear the footsteps.

We walked on and the footsteps resumed. Perhaps I should say that the footsteps followed me rather than us because my wife could not hear them. I tried to alter the speed and the rhythm of my walk but the footsteps kept following us and they seemed to mimic my own walk.

The track, along which I had an encounter with a ghost.

After a few minutes the footsteps suddenly disappeared. Instead I felt a presence hovering next to me, almost unnoticeable and as light as the gentlest of breezes. There was no doubting my senses; it was there. What made it feel so strange was the fact that I did not merely think that there was something. I knew.

Whatever it was that had joined us on our walk was now touching me. First it was pulling my trouser leg gently, then it perched on my right shoulder and after a while – and this is the only way, in which I can describe it – it put its hand into mine. I was holding a tiny hand. The hand of a ghost. Either that or I was on the verge of some unpleasant illness.

I am a very liberal person and if something or somebody wanted to join us for a walk, that was fine by me and I would not question or refuse. We walked hand in hand, the three of us, to the top of the hill and back. The presence went and returned like a playful child that is collecting pebbles or looking at plants before returning to its parents all excitedly. Nothing else happened but I felt that there was a zest for life emanating from the presence.

Naturally I tried to talk to our new companion – you want to be social – but received no answers. I became convinced, though, that I was holding the hand of a girl of about eight or nine years of age. Who she was and what she expected from me I will never know.

The apparition faded away in the same spot where it had first joined us. I felt empty and exhausted.

I have been back to this place several times since but have never sensed a presence again. I think about her from time to time and when I do, I always experience a connection and I feel protected.

Click on a photograph to see it bigger. If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it.

—–

I have repeatedly written about my recently found, mild obsession with the moon. The full moon in May is called Flower Moon and it was going to be a so-called supermoon, when the moon is closest to the earth and hence appears brighter and bigger.

A thick cloud cover is a major disappointment to the photographer, who wants to photograph the moon. The day before this month’s full moon I did not expect to be able to see the moon and wrote on Facebook:

“Tomorrow is this year’s biggest full moon. Shame I won’t be able to photograph it because we have been stuck under thick, grey clouds for … forever, it seems.“

A friend replied by saying “Goodness and I thought I was the prophet of doom and gloom”, to which I answered “the secret is that I can read a weather forecast”.

It turns out that I was wrong. I cannot read a weather forecast or perhaps the weather forecast was wrong. In the afternoon before the full moon the clouds began to lift and there was a beautiful, clear sky for moon rise before the clouds returned. The gods must have been with me that evening.

The photograph shows the full moon at 21:48 rising over Rowde and Devizes, photographed from my window. Click on the photograph to see it bigger and feel free to share this post.

—–