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Try one of the triple smoked hams from Luckhurst’s in West Ealing

Triple smoked hams are a  bit of a strange topic for a blog entry but I hope it will be of interest to some of our readers as they are just fantastic.

We buy a lot of our meat from Luckhurst’s in Melbourne Avenue and I’ve seen these dark-coloured hams hanging up for some years but never gave them much thought. This Christmas however, and with a bit of prompting from my wife, we decided to find out what they are as they seem very popular. Talking to Tony Luckhurst I found out that they are triple smoked hams and come from a specialist supplier in north London. Not surprisingly they take some time to prepare and a whole one will cost around £40 and a half around £20.

So, having found out what they are, we ordered a half one for Christmas. I got some advice from Tony on cooking it and did a bit more research and decided to boil it for half the time and then bake it in the oven for the other half. We had it for dinner one evening just after Christmas and it was by far and away the best ham I’ve ever eaten. It was tasty and moist. It hadn’t dried out at all despite being cooked for about 4 hours. We bought another one yesterday and it was just as good. It does smell a bit like kippers when you take it out of the wrapping but I thoroughly recommend it.

In terms of cooking, I cut off the skin but left as much of the fat as possible. Then I scored the fat and managed to find a large enough saucepan and covered the ham in water and brought it to the boil. I then drained off the water and put in clean water and brought it to the boil again and simmered it for half the necessary cooking time – about 90mins/2hrs depending on size. After this I took it out and put molasses (or treacle) over the scored side, out it in a roasting tin and covered it with foil and in to a moderate oven (160C) to finish and took off the foil for the last half hour. I’m sure there are lots of other ways to cook it but this works well for us.

I know it’s a bit of a treat but if you have a special occasion it’s well worth it and cold ham is still good to eat afterwards so it will all get used.

Do let us know what you think if you try it.

 

 

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Barn Dance West Ealing Sat Feb 4th 2012

Barn Dance/Ceilidh in the heart of West Ealing – easy steps, lots of people – come alone, come with family, come with friends. Steps called from the front. Get it right, get it wrong, bring all your left feet. Nibbles included in £8 adult ticket (advance booking) – bring your own beer/wine. Kids of all ages welcome – admission free/donation up to age 16.

Local Ealing ‘live’  folk band will be out in full force, wrangled by folk professional Laurel Swift.

Sat 4th Feb 2012, 7.30-10.30.

St James’s Church (behind Sainsbury’s in W Ealing), St James’s Ave, London W13 9DL.

Book in advance Gill Witcomb, 020 8568 4276/gillroy66@tiscali.co.uk.   Adults £8 if booked in advance, £9 on the door, kids (up to age 18) voluntary donation

Please forward this to anyone/any organisations you think might be interested.

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Free laid-back jazz at OPEN Ealing this Friday lunchtime

Fran Clark FFM JanCome to OPEN and celebrate the new year with some laid-back yet groovy soul and jazz music! Local established singer and songwriter Fran Clark will be teaming up with Pete Clark on Friday 6 January 2012 from 12.30- 1.30pm to perform at the next First Friday Music.

Fran frequently performs locally including featuring at Brentford Festival and is celebrated for her jazzy mellow vibe and emotional strength of her vocals. With her first album “To Fly” received excellent reviews from online and local radio stations, Fran is in her final recording stage of her second album and many of her original songs will be featured in this performance.

The performance will be held in the OPEN gallery on the second floor. A light lunch and refreshments will be available in the self-service café.

This performance is admission free.

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Local people to plan the centres of Ealing and West Ealing

According to the new Localism Act local people will soon be able to assemble a Neighbourhood Forum of 21 people or more who will discuss and propose the design of their local area. Save Ealing Centre (SEC), an alliance of 25 residents’ and community groups, has proposed the setting up of two Neighbourhood Forums – one for Ealing centre and one for West Ealingcentre. As part of these initiatives in 2011, SEC sought funding from national government, which if successful would amount to £40,000. We’ll hear soon whether this bid has been successful.

Neighbourhood Forums are required to be made up of a representative group of local stakeholders. I expect residents’ groups, community groups, businesses, faith groups, educational establishments and infrastructure providers to attend and contribute to these forum meetings.

These forum meetings are likely to be a breath of fresh air as they are likely to be the first such regular meetings in modern times at which local people/traders/service providers will be asked about how they want their town centres to be preserved, re-used and /or ‘developed’. These will be difficult discussions in which trade-offs between different needs – like quality of life, culture, healthcare, education, law and order, business and housing – will have to be thrashed out.

Unsurprisingly there are whole ‘rafts’ of planning legislation which the forums will have to wrestle with. At national level we have the newly proposed NationalPlanning PolicyFramework. At regional level we have the new version of The London Plan. At town level we have Ealing Council’s draft Local Development Framework Core Strategy (LDF CS). National government will decide whether it wants to accept Ealing’s LDF CS in early 2012.

All these planning policies contain a presumption in favour of property development, which seems somewhat out of place in a country with massive debts, a depressed construction industry and with no prospects of any significant economic growth for years to come. However it appears that no major political party wants to adopt a common sense policy of making the best use of what we’ve got.

The Localism Act will become fully enabled by April 2012. Neighbourhood Forums have a lifetime of five years. To find out more about Neighbourhood Forums and the Localism Bill you’ll find a useful briefing at www.urbanforum.org.uk/briefings/localism-act-briefing. To track progress of these Ealing Neighbourhood Forum  initiatives see SEC’s web site at www.saveealingscentre.com and West Ealing Neighbours’ web site at www.westealingneighbours.org.uk.

 

Eric Leach

3 January 2012

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Quiz Night West Ealing Saturday Jan 21st 2012


Saturday 21st January 2012

St James Church – top of St James Ave, Ealing, W13 9DL

 

£10 per ticket to include main meal

 

Programme:

6.45pm – arrival

7.00pm – dinner is served – chilli con carne + jacket potatoes (please ask for vegetarian meal)

7.30pm – quiz starts

9.00pm – tea/coffee + homemade cake (£1.50)

10.15pm – finish (hopefully on time!)

 

Please bring your own drinks (alcohol is fine)

 

Donations of raffle prizes appreciated – thank you!

 

Tickets from Martyn Clarke – martyn237@yahoo.co.uk or 020 8997 2540. All tickets must be purchased and paid for by 10pm Thursday 19th January so we can purchase enough food.

 

Please either bring a team of up to 8 people, or we can allocate you to a team.

 

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Pedestrian Safety at the Lido Junction: The Public Have Their Say

On Tuesday 6 December 2011 some 50 people attended a public meeting to discuss Ealing Council’s proposals to make the Lido Junction safe for pedestrians – for the first time in living memory. West Ealing Neighbours (WEN) organised the meeting and it was WEN (along with Five Roads and Kingsdown Residents’ groups) who researched and published its findings and recommendations on the junction in 2009. This report in fact stimulated the Council and Transport (TfL) for London into action.

We are in the middle of a public consultation on the proposals and Councillor Mahfouz, the Council’s Transport Czar, answered questions posed by the audience on the proposals.

Continue reading “Pedestrian Safety at the Lido Junction: The Public Have Their Say”

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A very busy year for WEN Abundance

It’s that time of year where Abundance goes into hibernation for the winter after a season that started in August and stretched all the way to November! This year we picked around 1.5 tonnes of fruit – apples and pears were by far the most popular, however we saw a bumper crop of quinces too. We mainly picked in West Ealing, Ealing and Hanwell, but also took a trip down to Kent and managed to pick around 400kilos over a weekend.

Our apple juice has been sold by Cheddar Deli as well as The Little Art Room and they have taken the last of our apple and pear juice to sell at Xmas fairs. We have also developed 3 new chutneys this year so look out for them next year, along with yours and our favourites.

We covered more fairs this year, with the addition of Pitshanger Party in the Park. Our second West Ealing Family Day was a great success and it was lovely to see some of the tree owners popping by at the stall for a chat to find out what we had done with the fruit we picked. Talking of which we managed to pick at every location we were requested at – There were quite a few new trees from private back gardens as word of mouth spreads about our project.

We have also now taken over Walmer Gardens Orchard with Ealing Council’s permission and had a very positive response to the consultation of the local area for the renovation of this small Orchard starting in January 2012.

Of course we couldn’t have done any of this if it wasn’t for a small team of very dedicated individuals that devote an inordinate amount of their free time to this project – a big thank you to you all.

So in summary a very successful year for us – and we have plans to expand in 2012, more of which in the next Newsletter after a well deserved rest.

Signing off for a few weeks, a very shattered WEN Abundance Team!

Have a great Xmas and New Year and see you in 2012.

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Launch of OPEN Ealing’s daytime book club Wednesday 7th December 10.30am

OPEN has a coffee bar with comfy sofas and bookshelves – the perfect place to talk about books.  So, we’re starting a morning book group with our first meeting on Wednesday 7th December 10.30am- 12noon. We’re at 113 Uxbridge Road (opposite the fire station)

Everyone is welcome: bring along your baby, if you like; come in after you’ve dropped the children at school or during your shopping trip; or just come along to get out of the house for a bit.  And bring your friends too.

In the first meeting we’ll just have coffee and cakes and talk about the kind of books we like to read.  And we’ll draw up a list of books for future discussion.

Look forward to seeing you there!

Angela

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Unleash your inner art critic – for radio

THURSDAY DECEMBER 1st. 2011, 6.00 – 9.30pm. Cost: £25

At OPEN Ealing Arts Project, 113 Uxbridge Road, London, W5 5TL
Refreshments and course materials will be provided. Numbers are limited so please reserve a place by emailing chrissie.kravchenko (AT) btinternet.com with your contact details.

Find your VOICE and make your CHOICE

 Estelle Lovatt is a freelance art critic for broadcast and print including BBC Radio 2’s flagship arts programme `The New Arts Show With Claudia Winkleman’ and `Art of England’ magazine. In this workshop she will coach budding art critics how to write art reviews specifically for radio. Art criticism for radio involves a specific way of both looking at and describing a work of art. The workshop will look at how the spoken (versus the written) critique is presented, script layout and writing for the programme host. The venue for the workshop is the OPEN community art gallery, where there will be an exhibition to inspire you.

To criticize art properly on air, you need to understand the work and its importance and relay that to the listener, who cannot see it. This  involves description, analysis and interpretation of the artwork.

We will also look at how critics decide what they really think about the artwork. Do you like or dislike it? Why? And how do YOU feel about  whether the artist was successful in conveying an idea? You will present your own style arts programme review, where you’ll talk about whether an artwork is successful. This will involve looking at the use of formal compositional elements and principles of design and how  these interact. The feelings invoked by each work of art will be based on your own personal experiences and judgement! The aim is that listeners  will follow and trust your opinions and you can build up a following.

www.womeninradio.org.uk

Charity Reg. Number: 801473
Company Reg. Number: 2340282