Category > food
Foooood glorious food
The Creed.
This is my tea.
There will be many cups like it, but this one is mine. My tea is my lifeline, it is my sanity, I will drink it and gain coherence.
My tea, without me, is usless. Before my tea, I am useless. I will drink my tea hot. I will drink it with milk and sugar before it gets cold. I will...
My tea and I know that what counts in this morning is not the tea we drink, the sugar we add, nor the time it steeps. We know it is the liquid that counts.
We will drink.
Those who spoke on this:
Christmas Fracture
a recipe, by Aquarion & LonecatDecide to make apple crumble. You will require:
Apple. Note singular. Large. Not as many as you thought you had.
Flour. Ordinary. White. 6oz thereof.
Caster sugar. Much. Realise you have no castor sugar. Use granulated instead.
Margarine. Yellow. 3oz. Not really much we can say about this one.
Water.
Spices. Ones that will go well with apple.
Small number of sultanas to add to the flavour, but see below.
In the beginning, take your flour. Carefully measure it out onto the scales. Look carefully at the sieve and decide whether to sift or not. Resolve that life is too short. Add the margarine, take a fork and rub in. Do not, repeat not, use your fingers. Why on earth do people feel the need to use their fingers? All that happens is you get covered in loads of gunk, and it's not like it works any better. In fact, the margarine will stay cooler if you use a fork, which is a major consideration if you're making pastry. We're not, but I think my point holds.</rant>
Where were we? Oh yes... Weigh your apple. Note that it is far less than the required 1 and a half pounds of fruit, and add sultanas until it isn't. While this is being done, the other chef can add the required amount of sugar to the crumble. The required amount being 3oz. Actual amount added: unknown. Possibly 6oz. Decide not to worry about it and carry on.
Peel, core, randomly chop and slice your apple. Realise that resulting weight of apple is even less than apple plus core and peel. Think about adding more sultanas. Remember that this is apple crumble, dammit. Was apple crumble, dammit. Decide to leave it as it is.
Place sultanas and apple in a 1 and a half pint casserole dish. Add further 3oz of sugar and stir. Attempt to add 2 tablespoons of water. Note complete lack of any kind of tablespoon within kitchen. Add approximately three soupspoons of water. Roundly curse person who stocked kitchen. Sprinkle random spices over fruit. We recommend cinnamon and nutmeg, about half a teaspoon of each. Discover job is complicated by the size of the spice jars, which are too small to get a teaspoon into. Mutter nasty things about spice manufacturers and approximate measures. Stir again.
Sprinkle crumble over fruit. Shake bowl until level. Remember you forgot to preheat the oven. Realise recipe book predates the invention of the centigrade scale. Discuss merits of programming temperature converter on laptop. Take a guess at 180oC and turn on oven. Insert dish into oven. Have a brief panic that it's not going to fit. Find that it will. Stop panicking.
Occupy yourself, and possibly someone else, for about 40 minutes.
Remove dish from oven, with aid of oven gloves. Put on hob to cool. Decide to make custard while it's cooling.
Rock Custard.
Get out custard powder and milk. Pour small amount of milk into measuring jug. Attempt to add a tablespoon of custard powder. Once again curse the person who stocked this kitchen. Add a severely heaped dessert spoon of powder, and attack until non-lumpy. Recall that powder contains cornflour, something that when mixed with water forms a substance that is liquid when left alone, but solid when put under pressure. Realise that this is why it's so hard to stir. Add milk up to half pint mark.
Discover that custard can be microwaved. Make 'Yay' type noises. Walk up to microwave. Attempt to guess age and generation of microwave, and thus possibly the amount of time to put the custard in microwave. Decide low power, and therefore 7 minutes. Note you have to stir it at half time, and place jug in microwave.
Press 'high' temperature setting. Type into keypad, '330' for three and a half minutes. Press start. Witness nothing happening. Keep pressing start button. Continue witnessing lack of things happening. Press cancel. Note that microwave clock appears to read 3:30am.
Swear.
Repeat previous actions. Note clock now reads 3:31am. Repeat actions, using real time instead of 3:30. Note clock now reads, 'ERROR'.
Swear more.
Remember that this isn't your microwave.
Realise you've run out of swear words.
Type in '330' and press start. Make 'yay' type noises, as a small jug of yellow liquid rotates on a turntable.
Occupy yourself, and optionally someone else, for three minutes.
(A note here, we are ommiting for the sake of time a whole series of pressing buttons on the microwave to attempt to get the clock back to normal, and even possibly start the bloody thing working. It should be mentioned that at no point in the orginal sequence did we press the button clearly labled "Clock", but at various times over the next ten minutes set the microwave to automatically start at 3:30am tomorrow, Automatically heat potatoes, set the clock time to 03:30 again, and make continuous beeping noises. I refuse to be beaten by any piece of technology smaller than me. The clock read "03:40" when we got the stuff heated. Note ends.)
Return to microwave. Observe that custard is attempting to leave the jug. No longer trusting the buttons on this thing, press the button that opens the door. Rescue boiling yellow liquid from a fate worse than death. Receive no medals for this. Attempt to stir custard, as suggested on packet. Realise that, against all probability, the cornflour appears to have multiplied. Stir vigorously. Add more milk. Repeat previous instruction. Give up on custard. Decide to eat it as it is. Discuss the possibility that, in 2000 years, archaeologists will discover remains, nod sagely, and call it 'The Custard Age'.
Return to 'crumble'. Take spoon, and push onto crust. Note lack of typo in previous sentence. Retrieve hammer and chisel from place of resting, and apply them to the crust. Make a note to send broken hammer and chisel to the nearest repair shop. Retrieve blowtorch...
Once crust is breached, spoon portions into bowl. Observe that crumble is not exactly crumbling. Note that it smells very nice and christmassy. Decide to rename this, 'Christmas Fracture'. Poor over very thick custard. Eat, while discussing the possibilities of putting this recipe on a website. Realise you have a huge amount left over. Decide to have it for breakfast tomorrow.
Wash up the custard jug.
Write up a recipe.
Save.
Those who spoke on this:
Kimmi:
This occasioned an attack of mild hysteria, resulting in the chinchillas all looking reproachfully at me from their cages, and the dog running away downstairs with a scared expression on his face… oh, my ribs hurt! :-)
Jehanneton:
Oh Aq2 Aq2 Aq2… I’m seriously trying not to explode here from holding in my mirth. I shall have to remember that the office here at Uni is not the place to read your blog.
Want me to add you to the list of my Boys requiring my “easy cooking for the young male” classes? IanD has already signed up, and you’re in his area now.
lonecat:
Does this course include ‘imposing your will on possessed microwaves’?
Recipe - Chickens In Blankets
You will require:
- (x is the number of people)
- (2x) wide slices of bacon
- x large chicken breasts
- Thyme
- Basil
- Oil (Vegetable/Sunflower will do, or use butter if you prefer)
- Tin Foil
- An Oven
- A Baking Tray
- An hour.
Preheat the oven to somewhere medium-low, ensure your chicken is defrosted.
If your chicken is not defrosted, defrost your chicken.
Tear off a piece of tin foil large enough to cover all chicken-breasts when lined up on the tray twice. That is, where len is the breadth of the breast, 2(len*x)+mzrk. Where mzrk is a random length that accounts for being able to do with said tin foil everything we are going to do with it. I really suggest you read this recipe fully before you try it.
If you haven’t read the whole of this recipe in the last few months, and are using it to create this dish, manufacturer 1 (One) cup of tea, cover the chicken with cling-film and sit down and read the recipe.
Place the baking tray somewhere safe
Put the tin foil on the baking tray
Pour some oil on the foil.
Put the chicken breasts close together (as in, lined up) on the oil on the foil on the tray on the surface.
Put the basil on the breasts on the oil on the foil on the tray on the surface.
Put the pellet with the poison in the flagon with the dragon, and the vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true.
Um. Hang on a sec.
Right, lay the bacon on the chicken one rasher per breast
Sprinkle Thyme over the bacon that’s on the basil on the chicken on the oil on the foil on the tray on the surface.
Wrap up the whole kit and caboodle in the tin foil, crimping the edges shut if you feel like it.
Put the baking tray in the oven for an hour.
Take it out, cut it up, serve it with peas, potatoes and Stuff. OR:
Sod it all and go out for pizza.
Those who spoke on this:
Ruthi :
helpless giggles
falling-about-on-the-floor-in-Mirth
But also a serious question: What temperature/gas mark should the oven be at?
Huw:
Oooh. Mr Aquarion, Sir, try using pancetta instead of bacon for a more continental taste. It works well.
Fish and Crisps, A Recipish
You will require:
- Fish Fillets
One per person. Smoked, for preference. The recipe says unsmoked, but the recipe says a lot of things we will be comfortably ignoring over the next twenty minutes.
- Salad Dressing
Thick, creamy, italian-style white salad dressing that isn’t Ceaser dressing. Nor is it Caeser dog food. This is Important. You’ll need about one bottle per three fillets, streaching to four fillets if it really has to.
- Chedder Cheese
Some. Grated thinly.
- A packet of unsalted crisps.
That’s right, unsalted crisps. Apparently you can get these easily in the states, but for those of us on this side of the atlantic I suggest you get a packet of those “Salt ‘n’ Shake” crisps and then don’t salt them. Use the little blue packet for whatever you feel like using it for.
Ensure you have all the above, and a baking dish large enough to hold all the fish fillets side by side. If you don’t, create a dish with tin-foil and use that on top of a baking tray. If you can’t do that, there’s no hope.
Preheat the oven to “Really fucking hot”, or about 250oc
Get a bowl, and pour the dressing into it. Enjoy the wonderfully decadent gloop noise it makes.
Put the fish into the bowl, fully covered by salad dressing, and leave it for a bit while we do the next thing:
Open the bag of crisps, convince yourself that one crisp won’t hurt the recipe, and eat it. Smash the remaining crisps into tiny little pieces with the nearest blunt object. It’s a good idea to put them into a bag or something before you do this. Vent your frustrations on it, make the small bag become the mother-in-law, or exams, or Bastard Ex. Have fun.
When you have sucessfully dusted a bag of crisps, you may feel proud for a bit. Once you have concluded basking in the glory of your sucess, add some grated cheese and mix it around a bit. Resist the urge to hammer it some more, for the cheese will make the crisps reform like something out of Terminator. Gentle mixing, shaking, combining. Violence at this point is unnecessary. If you feel like more violence, go play Grand Theft Auto for a while.
Happy? Cool. Now that the fish has been in the salad dressing for a few minutes, withdraw it from the horrible white gloopy mess and transfer it to the baking dish/tinfoil monstrosity we created in Oragami class earlier. Carefully sprinkle the cheesy-crisp stuff over the top of the gloopy white fish (all of it), and bung it in the oven for ten minutes while you boil some vegetation.
Withdraw from oven, arrange on plates, eat.
Those who spoke on this:
MP:
OK, how about a new recipe for you:
Tuna pie with crisps, cheese and tomato
You need:
Tuna, from a tin. Enough. Probably about 1.5 tins, although it depends how hungry you and LC are…
Sweetcorn, either from a tin or from the freezer. About a bit
Peas, frozen, about the same as the sweetcorn
Condensed chicken soup (do not use normal chicken soup. You end up with orange gunk if you do…), one tin
Chopped tomatos, one tin
Cheese, some, grated
Crisps, probably about 2 or three bags
First, defrost any frozen stuff. Take care not to cook it though. A microwave is good for this…
Put tuna, soup, peas, sweetcorn in ovenproof dish, ideally a deep one. Stir until all nicely mixed together. Do not put water in. Ignore the side of the soup can.
Smooth the top out a bit with a fork. Put tomatos on top. Spread them out a bit.
Bash crisps until small bits. There should be a bit of crunch in them. Sprinkle about 1/3 of the cheese on the top of the tomatos. Sprinkle about 1/3 of the crisps on top of the cheese. Repeat until no more crisps and cheese.
Put in oven at about gas mark 5. If you have an electric cooker, go out and get a gas cooker. Or guess.
Wait about 40 minutes, or until cheese is melty and delicious, tomatos are bubbling and soup isn’t gloopy.
Serve and eat. Carefully. The tomatos will be hot and you don’t want to burn mouth…
Tea and The Aquarion
So far this month, this weblog has been about many things. Tea, hithertofore, has not been foremost among them, but it is this subject I must draw upon this evening.
I have this reasonably well known thing about tea. Real tea. At this moment within this house there are six separate types of tea, from Earl Grey, Pear and Pineapple, Strawberry tea, Old English Fruit tea and Sticky Toffee flavoured tea though to the standard PG Tips tea bags, plus three separate varieties of green tea (Which I don’t drink, but LoneCat does).
For the process of brewing ideal Tea, there are Teapots. There are, in fact, seven teapots, from the big black one when we have Visitors (which is currently under my bed) to LoneCat’s delicately patterned china teapot, the Useless Silver one (where the handle is always too hot to pick up) and a teapot of CCooke’s which we took with us by accident when we moved out of Cambridge, which is somewhat unfortunately shaped like a white cat. This is unfortunate because the tea is expelled from the mouth of said cat, making it look like the cat is vomiting tea. Plus, it’s a bugger to clean.
But the teapots that get used most are my little ones, of which there are three. A blue one, a green one, and the Red One that has never been used and will be given to Supermouse when I remember to do so. These teapots are nice. They include built-in strainers, are just enough for two mugs of tea (with a bit left over for the dregs to swim in) and have never been known to explode.
You may find the presence of the idea of an exploding teapot to be somewhat of a surprise in the above paragraph, teapots not generally being known for their excitable personality, but you would still not be quite so surprised as I was several minutes ago, when one of said teapots belied the previous trend and decided now was the time best chosen for exploding whilst in my hand.
Fortunately the teapot was not currently carrying any tea, due to it’s explosion being whilst I was carefully washing it, and attempting to realign the spout (which is part of the glass globe of the teapot) with the handle (Which is part of the plastic base, to which it the globe is held but not attached) and must – assumably – have squeezed the glass globe slightly beyond it’s optimal holding weight, leading to said explosion.
Did I mention the teapot was glass? It’s glass. It shattered into one large, two medium and many small pieces, several of which were gentlemanly enough to leap point first into my waiting skin in order to assist later retrieval.
Thus my blue teapot has perished, and will be a teapot no more. No great loss, as said teapots cost an entire new English pound to replace.
So I’m recovering, slowly, nursing the lacerations to my hand with care
and, of course, a cup of slowly steeping tea in front of me.
Those who spoke on this:
lonecat:
It should be pointed out that I have been using said silver teapot for some time and wish to deny all suggestions that the handle is too hold to hot. It’s a perfectly good teapot, the only downside of which is that I use it solely for green tea and will hurt anyone who leaves dregs of black tea sitting in it.
Castellan:
At the risk of starting all manner of tea-related Religious Wars (which would only serve to confuse 95% of Americans), the thermal gradient of ones teapot construction material should be totally irrelevant as you can always use the tea cosy as a form of toasty glove, ne c’est pas?
Chicken Bacon Somerset
A recipe for disaster
Did you know that in america, people buy pasta by the box? How big is a box? We don’t know. Thus, when a recipe starts “take two boxes of rice”, we should know to leave the hell alone.
Hah, I decided, your strange american phrasings cannot harm me, my culinary genius is like a shield of steel.
Take one cup of rice. That is, take a small mug, put rice into it, pour it into boiling water, and boil it for 10 minutes. Drain.
Meanwhile, cook two chicken breasts (either properly or by bunging them in the nukeomatic for a few minutea)
Meanwhile, cook several slices of bacon. Cut into little pieces.
Get casserole dish. Add rice, add bacon and chicken (sliced into smaller pieces).
Take a can of cream of chicken soup. Add half a can of milk, stir.
Pour chicken/milk stuff over rice/bacon/chicken stuff.
Add herbs (Thyme, Basil, Whatever sounds good)
Top with cheese.
Cook at 190oc for half an hour to 45 mins.
serve with greenery.
Snick
You see, once upon a time there was Marathon, which was a chocolate bar with peanuts in it.
The name change from Marathon to Snickers was one of the Great Name-Change Annoyances of the last few years.
So now they have launched the New Snickers Marathon! A Long Lasting Energy Bar.
They are bastards. All of them.
Those who spoke on this:
AdrianO:
Bastards, and of course, Morons. And also, on this occasion, Morons Who Think They’re Being Devious.
It looks like they’re throwing a sop to all those who were so annoyed by the original name change that they’ve never stopped calling them Marathon. But in fact it’s an attempt to get those same people to give in and admit they’ve lost. “No, you can’t call it that any more! See? That’s something else!”
So how do we refer to the new abomination? Marathon Snickers? This does have the advantage of coming out as “Marathon’s knickers” if you say it too fast, so if enough people adopt it it might be enough to make Mars execs concede defeat out of sheer embarrassment. We can hope.
Jill:
You could always boycott the whole thing and buy Mars bars and Bounty which remain faithful.
Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt & Leeks
Today's culinary experiment was taken from Emperor's LJ:
Sausage & Apple braise
- 1lb cooking apples, peeled & cored
- 1lb leeks, trimmed
- 1lb pork sausage meat
- 2 × 1/4ozoz pkt instant potato
- salt & pepper
- 7fl oz dry cider
- 1 level tsp dried mixed herb
- chopped fresh parsley or mint for garnish
serves 4
Cut apples into thick, even slices. Finely slice leeks & wash well. Put apples in boiling water, bring back to boil and blanche for 1 minute. Drain & cool quickly. Repeat with leeks.
With wetted hands, shape sausage meat into balls about size of large cherry. In lightly buttered 3pt ovenproof dish layer up the apple,leek and half the sausage balls with a sprinkling of instant potato and seasoning between layers. Finish with remaining sausage balls as a topping. Mix cider with herbs and pour it over the mixture. Bake at Mark 5 for about 1 hour. Serve sprinkled with chopped parsley or mint.
(seems to work fine with sausages. I usually use a bit more cider than that, too).
Some notes for FutureMe when cooking this:
- Don't over-do the leeks, blanche them properly.
- Don't over-do the apples.
- Don't be stingy with the cider
- Your casserole dish isn't big enough for the above, cut them down.
It's nice, and I'd recommend it. In fact, I suspect at some stage I'm going to make it again, lathough it contains nothing - apart from the herbs - that is in our "default stock" of stuff we'll have on hand at any one time. Actually, at the moment I'm on a cookery kick, since after a year and a bit, I'm a little bored of my own default set of available meal plans, and with the employment situation it's not as if I'm lacking in time...
Those who spoke on this:
Jeh:
Want me to send you a few idiot proof easy recipes? Guaranteed to impress you and any of your guests, and they usually require not too many pots!
Cookie monster
Someone has eaten all the oreos from the cupboard.
Now there are no oreos.
And somebody must die
Those who spoke on this:
Senji:
Weren’t me guv.
Wasn’t there.
Y’didn’ see me.
A Big Boy did it a ‘ ran awa’.
How to bake a cheesecake
A recipish
You will require:
- Bowls.
- Time.
- Effort.
- An Oven.
- A nine inch cake tin. Preferably one with a loose bottom.
- Greaseproof paper. Not tinfoil.
- All your base:
- Bikkits.
- Cinnamon
- Nutmeg
- Butter
- Brown sugar.
- The creamy goodness:
- Cream Cheese
- Sour Cream
- Double (Heavy) Cream
- Sugar
- Flour
- Vanilla Extract
- Eggs
Take your cake tin and line it with something. The recipe recommends butter, but this doesn’t work terribly well. Last couple of times I’ve tried Tinfoil. If you really, really want to use tinfoil, then do, but the shear effort it takes to line the cake tin in tinfoil would be better spent walking to the local supermarket and saying “What ho, fine supermarket, sell me one roll of your fine grease-proof paper, if you would be so kind”, including the resultant time spent in a place with nice friendly walls.
Cream Cheese
3×8oz packets of cream cheese. You can use spreadable “soft” cheese for this too, but if you see something that says “Cream Cheese” buy that instead.
Cream
You will need a whole cup of each of sour and double (which Americans call “Heavy”) cream. Shockingly enough, an official ‘cup’ is about a the size of a cup, or about half a pint. It’s important to note that this is one of the middle size of cream availability, or close enough to it for jazz. If your moronic Helpful Local Supermarket Delivery Collective are stupid enough to supply you with the smaller size, take the time now to go forth and send a minion to fetch more stuff, whilst you play Freeciv and wipe out the evil empire of Sainsbury’s with a tactical nuke.
Bikkits
Bikkits in this case are defined as “digestive bikkits” if you’re British, Graham’s Crackers if you’re American, and “the crumbly dark brown ones that may usually be covered in chocolate” if you’re neither. You’ll need about a cup of these, too. How do you measure a cup of a non-cup-shaped solid substance? This is simplicity itself. Take an amount of bikkits, and hit them with a hammer until they fit into the cup. This strategy works with most things.
Stage Zero: Oven.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C)
Stage One: All your base
Get about five tablespoons of melted butter. You can do this by putting about half a block into the microwave and nuking it for a minute or so.
Summon all your hopes and dreams that have been dashed upon the hard rocks of reality, and apply the resulting frustration to a small tower of biscuits until they break down into their component crumbs. Add these to the yellow goo, mix in 3 table spoons of brown sugar, a tablespoon of cinnamon and a tiny, tiny amount of nutmeg (The recipe said half a teaspoon. This is accurate if you really, really adore the taste of nutmeg) and stir until it’s consistent slush. Pour this slush into the bottom of the cake tin and bash until it’s level and coats the bottom of the tin. Personally, I recommend using a potato masher for this task. Hit it and make it as level as you can, or until you get bored. If you realise at this stage that you’ve totally forgotten to add the sugar, then sprinkle it over the top. Bung the kit and caboodle into the oven for 10 minutes. Or, ignore the oven bit entirely and do the next bit.
Stage Two: The Topping
Bung the cream cheese and a cup of white sugar into a bowl and vent frustrations for a while, or put it into an electric mixer. Either way, you want smooth gritty stuff.
Add both types of cream (A cup of each) and attack.
Add a tablespoon of Vanilla extract, and three tablespoons of plain white flour.
Attack mercilessly until it begs for forgiveness.
Now, wash your hands.
Take the index finger of your right hand, and swipe it though the mixture. Now lick the cheesecake stuff from your finger. This is important, because it tastes really nice, and we’re about to add raw eggs, after which you really shouldn’t eat it until it’s baked, so savour it for now.
Add the eggs (Three of them) one at a time, avenging your lost loves upon the ghost of cheesecake past between each egg.
Pour the pure white fluffy white goo upon the dark, forbidding ground of the Biscuit Mix That Time Forgot and bung the entire unholy creation into the Place Of Heatedness for an hour to an hour and a bit before you withdraw it from its personal hell and place it into the Place Of Coldedness.
Here you must suffer Hell, for you must remain aware that there is a freshly baked cheesecake in the fridge, but you must leave it pristine and uncut for at least six hours. Hell is a cheesecake you cannot eat.
After that, you can top it (For example, melt half a packet of chocolate with a small tub of cream and pour it over the top and let it set) and eat it. I’d provide a picture here of what it looks like, but there isn’t any left…
Those who spoke on this:
Naomi:
Eeep!
Thanks, you just reminded me I need to go and buy ingredients this evening to make cheesecake. I’d completely forgotten.
ber:
seeing how you really hate this cheesecake, it may just crack. :)
You should try hot water bathing it, or at least throw in a pan of hot water on the lower rack while you bake it on the middle one.
if yours didnt crack, wonderful. if it did, i cant say thats unexpected either. :)
Updates
I’m finally signed on at the job centre, without any major problems. Hopefully this’ll follow the same track as Last time and I’ll be employed before my next appointment.
In other news, I made mince pies (We have spare mincemeat which LoneCat made for Christmas. Christmas 2002) and they would have been a lot nicer had I not burnt them. Nemind, the pastry was good practice for tomorrow, when I do something actually complicated.
LoneCat has discovered how nice our Friendly Local Neighbourhood Butcher is. We’ve been trying to find Sausagemeat – none of the local supermarkets seem to stock it this side of Christmas – so we asked them and they kindly sold us some. They did have to take it out of the sausages to do so, however. Nice people.
A couple of system updates:
- Comments are now formatted using a subset of textile formatting (Previous formatting still supported, so as not to break every previous comment)
- My automatic, Amazon querying, Far too complex for it’s own good “Currently Reading” section is back online. You’ll find it just under receont comments on the front of the front page. Next thing is to put that and the blink system into epistula properly so I can have a “What I was reading” bit on the archives as well as folding blinks into the main archive.
Those who spoke on this:
Artela:
Ah – but I have here Devon Scones with jam and Cornish Clotted Cream and a cuppa tea… :-)
So, Nyah!
Job Centre
Today, I visited the Job Centre.
Although I have the interview on Thursday, and should really be spending most of my time bringing my Active Directory skillz up to scratch, I’m obliged to visit the Job Centre a couple of times a week to see if they have anything new. I can do this online, but I wanted the exercise.
The touch-screen terminal asked me a number of difficult questions (“What industry”, “Do you have a car”) before giving me both of the possible jobs on offer this week for a l33t Web Developer with sysadmin skills.
I could either work in Scotland (Which is, apparently, within 10 miles of Letchworth or London) as a VB Programmer.
Or I could work as an assistant for a marital aids mail order catalogue.
Somewhere in here is a lesson about meta-data, and it only being as good as whoever types the document in, but to be honest, I can’t be bothered.
So I’m baking a fruit cake, before I become one.
Those who spoke on this:
Senji:
Maybe they’ve moved scotland between letchworth and lodnon?
MP:
Nice trick if you can manage it… Would put me a lot closer to proper civilisation…
Of course, Aquarion, you could just move to Edinburgh like everyone else is… :-)
Barbeque
So, today we did the barbecue thing.
I’ve never done a barbecue before, and our house has one left over from the previous occupants, so we’ve been meaning to do the barbecue thing since we arrived, and tonight we did so.
After we noticed the barbecue didn’t have a grill and jury rigged one from the oven grill, we were all set.
From the local butcher we bought some absolutely gorgeous burgers, which we ate with mushrooms (Halved and put in tin-foil with a dash of olive oil, thyme, basil & oregano) and baked potatoes (Boiled for a bit first, then again slathered in olive oil and with a dash of oregano, then once again sealed in tin foil) both cooked in the embers. Finishing off with apples with brown sugar and sultanas, again baked in the embers while we grilled the burgers.
Yay tin-foil cookery, it all worked perfectly and was delicious.
So neh :-P
Those who spoke on this:
Kimmi:
Oh, local butchers do the best meat – I started getting sausages from Tilburys, and now I can’t face the thought of sausages from Tesco, as they have no flavour in comparison! Mmm!
Here and back again
Things that have happened in the last five days since ‘Threadnaught’:
- I’ve learnt that the secret to chocolate sauce is to shake the bottle with the lid closed.
- Brown shows up on white curtains, seven feet from the table where there was ice cream and a limited amount of chocolate sauce.
- And the carpet.
- Also the television, speakers, post and furniture.
- Do not follow Aquarius blindly when he says “Kernel-image-2.6.4-k7” as your laptop is not a K7 and this won’t work.
- 686 works better
- XF86 doesn’t like your laptop much.
- Project Utopia is Neat.
- Debian Rocks.
- It’s a good idea to pay your rent
- You should remember that you’re getting paid by cheque, and these take four working days to clear.
- My bank has just decided that cheques now take six working days to clear. The age of communication is upon us, and Halifax is going backwards. May it fuck off and die, and take my overdraft with it.
- Buying a Young Persons Railcard is cheaper than the discount it gives you for a ticket to Durham.
- ...yet despite already having a Railway Photo Card (for my Letchworth/London railcard) I need another photo card for the YP Railcard.
- I still don’t deal with photo booths well.
- Using the advice a model gave me on how to not look like a serial killer in passport photos makes me look like a male model.
- Who is also a serial killer.
- Train compains remain morons.
- RedDragDiva’s Mushroom Thing is really nice.
- It’s vitally important to take your keys when leaving the office
- Especially when the following day you can’t get out of the house because your girlfriend deadlocked the door (your keys for which are in London) and the back garden backs onto three other back gardens.
- The spare keys are in LC’s room, on the dresser.
- You moron.
I’m off to Durham for the weekend. TTFN
Those who spoke on this:
Pingter:
Yers, I noticed that 6 day cheque clearance right at the end of the updated T&Cs where I’m supposed to have given up reading it or something. Mumble mutter stupid bank. Fortunately only my Nan gives me cheques…
Ant:
I’m dying to know, what was the photo booth advice, as my passport photo booth pictures just make me look like an East End thug who’s lost a lot of weight.
Senji:
Cheques take longer to clear when you forget to pay them in and instead take them to Durham with you.
Pumpkin Soup
Serves two full bowl-fulls
Means
- Some butter
- An Onion (Chopped)
- 2 cloves of garlic (Keeps the vampires away. Even the ones with a y)
- 1.5 pints of Chicken Stock (Either from a chicken or from a cube)
- Pumpkin. About a pound (A clue: One 6 pound medium-large pumpkin and one small pumpkin yield about 5 pounds of pumpkin flesh when carved out)
- Spices, Herbs (I used a tiny amount of nutmeg and some thyme)
Method
- from Kitchen import Saucepan, Liquidizer
- pot = new Saucepan($base = “heavy”)
- pot.Content.append(“butter”)
- pot.heat(high)
- pot.Content.append(onion)
- pot.Content.append(garlic)
- while (onion.state != “clear”){pot.Fry(1m)}
- pot.Content.append(stock)
- pot.Content.append(pumpkin)
- pot.Content.append(herbs, spices)
- pot.Simmer(20m)
- liquidiser = new Liquidizer
- liquidiser.Content = pot.Content
- liquidiser.Whizz(1m)
- soup = liquidizer.Content
(Any similarity to any languages, living or dead, is entirely co-incidental)
(Less idiosyncratic version at http://hol.istic.net/pumpkinSoup)
Those who spoke on this:
ssta:
Great./ At what point in that method did you add the pumpkin? Nowhere I can see.
Ravioli Epiphany
So, today I made ravioli.
In fact, I made roast butternut squash ravioli. Hand made the ravioli, prepared the squash filling (Slice in half, clear out gunk, roast in a pool of water at 190oc for 40 minutes, mix with butter, nutmeg & a dash of cinnamon and fill ravioli, then boil parcels for 5-7 minutes, serve with pepper), and had a minor epiphany.
Yesterday, I faced the possibility that the entirety of Aquarionics – that is, five years of archives, all the code and comments too – had just gone the way that my entire MP3 collection did last month (as well as the backups of Aquarionics). That is, was gone forever.
The robot that graces this week’s header was given to me as a present by the sysadmin of the box that Aquarionics (And istic, and afphrid, and everything) runs on and his wife. (That is, he is the sysadmin of the box, not the sysadmin of his wife. Probably. Though possibly of his wife’s computer. If you’re reading this sentence, I failed to go back and edit this paragraph for comprehension. Sorry). The robot is wonderful, and contains a clock.
The site has been down, as you may have noticed, for a little while. This has included all the .istic.net sites as well as others not run by me. This was because as far as I can tell, the server that runs it threw a tantrum and spat the home directories out of its high chair. It wasn’t until the words “Drive failure” were mentioned that I realised that my various off-site backup machines had all suffered catastrophic hard-drive failures in the last six months (‘tis the season). I had no backups of the code at all, and none of the archives since July.
The ravioli was nice. It was tasty, it went well. Only one of the parcels split in the saucepan, and I was pleased. Partly, I was pleased because over the past few months I haven’t had much of an opportunity to create a full thing from ultimate raw ingredients, and there was a sense of achievement in doing something I hadn’t ever done before (Make fresh pasta of any kind, use butternut squash) and it all working.
I’ve been talking to people about why they read the site, what they read it for. It’s a mystery to me, really.
Sysadmin Pol saved the day, of course, and all the sites that were running are running, as well as a new set of rsync’d offsite backups to three locations around the globe. I am not paranoid at all.
I was given the Robot by Pol & Mouse for being part of their wedding, though the honour of being involved would have been enough. The robot sits on my desk (It sat on my monitor at BrowserAngel, It’ll sit on my monitor at Evolving when I get around to taking it in, which will probably be when my three-month ‘trial period’ ends and I can relax a bit). It looks a little like a more cheerful version of the old style Marvin, except with an added clock. It’s a reminder of a Good Thing, too.
I realised that I won’t have time. I don’t have time to do Aquarionics as it is, nor to cook, nor to work on any other project. Changing AqCom into a weekly multi-media-mega-post thing won’t mean I have to do any less work (Even if Epistula makes the technical side childsplay), and the weekly restriction will stop me just being able to post when I want to.
The only solution, really, is to make more time. More effective use of the time I do have (Get my laptop working – or replace it – and use it to compose things on the bus. Post entries during my lunch break).
So the grand masterplan to completely rework how I do this has been shelved for a while. I’m back, here, and I have a nice list of things I need to write about.
Those who spoke on this:
Jeh:
I am *so* impressed by you! Unlike a lot of fellas I know, you really make an effort with your cooking and try to do new things. Fresh pasta is fantastic, it’s not really difficult, but it’s something most people never try to do.
Paul Freeman:
A long time ago, in a house far far away (donkey), I used to do all the cooking and had fresh pasta (made using a fine pasta making machine) and I used to make my own dough for pizzas. Then we had children. :)
Emilia would like a word—
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She was being silly, she can type much better than that. George prefers playing on the x-box, which Daddy helps him with.
So, you win some, you lose some.
Domino Rally II - Cruise Control
A couple of years ago we had a minor problem with Dominos Pizza, and since then we have not ordered from Dominos.
Well, we probably have, to be honest, but not in the last couple of years. More because Lights Pizza (near Letchworth. Good pizzas, and we’re getting to the “It’s us” “It’ll be there in an hour” stage) is better, and we didn’t do pizza as often in Reading. (Thats it! I can blame the breakdown of our relationship on not having a sufficient community area in which to eat food and watch movies! I can stop angsting now!) but today is the first time since that point I can remember ordering from Dominos.
I ordered from the website at 18:15. It was on my doorstep by 18:35.
Colour me impressed.
Nice pizza, too.
I also finally got around to watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s which Lovefilm (Tell ‘em nicholas at aquarionics sent you) sent me for free for converting people to them. It’s a wonderful film, and everyone should see it at some point.
Mostly, though, I’m catching up on five years backlog of CSI. Why didn’t anyone tell me how good this show was?
Those who spoke on this:
Jason:
You put up with waiting an /hour/ for a pizza? Wow.
Kian Ryan:
Have you not got around to installing that site to site pizza transporter yet?
Get with the times. woosh
/me drinks Dew.
Don't eat that
From the wonderful world of Edmund on #afp:
Crit
I am not new at this “Bread Making” lark. For a while now, one of my default methods of dealing with overstress and the onset of madness has been to pound the unliving hell out of a mount of innocent dough. Last year, this was assisted by a bread maker to do the pounding for me, which doesn’t help with the stress relief, but does make better bread.
Making bread with the breadmaker is really easy. You measure stuff out, put it in the bread pan, press the “Go” button, and come back in a while for fresh bread. For days when you can’t even be bothered with this, you can get Bread Mixes, which basically consist of skipping the “Measure Stuff Out” bit and just dumping it in and pressing “Go”.
And so today, since I was supremely busy fixing bugs and playing Monkey Island 4, I dumped in the last bread mix thing I own, and got this:
The big silver thing beside it is the breadmaker pan. It should be about that size. The white stuff around the edges are uncooked mix.
My first assumption was that the mix was out of date, but this apparently isn’t the case, or is it Bedford’s obviously inferior water. It isn’t even, and I considered this long and hard, the obvious fact that everything and everyone in the universe hates me.
Oh no.
It is, in fact, that breadmakers work better when you put the mixing paddle into the pan.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when you Critically fail your ‘bread’ roll.
Those who spoke on this:
J:
Ah, thats a Russell Hobbs Breadman. Same one I have. And I ocasionaly put all the flour and water in, then find the mixing paddle siting on the counter.
Pancakes and RSS
There is an advantage to living with other people. There are several, in fact. One of the advantages, for example, for living back home with my family is that my brother is far better at making pancakes than I am. However, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and today I had three and several half pancakes, but all the whole pancakes were tossed properly.
Also, Pancakes with icecream and melted chocolate for the win.
I had a big rant about RSS and Atom and how it’s just fucking life up for those of us who want to produce things where the user can press a button and have it Just Work.
But I can’t be bothered, so here’s the straight dude’s guide to Brokeback Mountain
Lets
Let there be servers,
humming in key.
Let there be daemons,
programmed in C.
Let there be hard drives
All with backups.
Let there be printers.
Running off cups.
Let there be desktops,
Graphics and text.
Some on ubuntu,
some OS X.
Let there be fallbacks
Nothing goes crunch.
But first of all please,
Let there be lunch.
Mmm-mm, lunch.
Those who spoke on this:
Pancake Day
Today, I did this:
I made pancakes.
I used to be terrible at pancakes – Ben always made them – but this is how you make pancakes:
Fail. Lots.
You need a decent sized frying pan – non-stick – a ladle and some batter. The batter is made out of some flour, a few splashes of milk, some eggs, optionally cinnamon, vanilla extract and sugar. The amounts of these vary from person to person, but I usually start with about 300g flour, a few eggs, and add milk and whisk until it’s fairly thin (liquid rather than sludge).
Heat your frying pan lots. Add a very small amount of oil. Ladle some batter into the middle of the frying-pan and marble-madness the pan until it stops spreading easily (this should, ideally, be almost exactly as it reaches the edges of the pan, if not, adjust amount in ladle or your expectations). Allow to cook for a little while as the shiny un-cooked batter parts turn into duller cooked batter parts as far as they are going to, and then flip.
To flip a pancake, either:
- Remove the pan from the heat. Make a rapid movement down with the pan, whilst pushing it slightly away from you, so that the pancake has a “spin” on it as it exits the pan. Then catch it in the middle of the frying pan, not the edge. Or…
- Get someone else to do (I) Or…
- Use the slice. You coward.
Retrieve the pancake from the floor/ceiling/wall/cat, and/or leave it in the pan for a half a minute to a minute to brown on the other side. Place on a plate underneath another plate to keep them warm. This doesn’t work terribly well, so eat them soon.
Terrible hardship.
Always, and this is important, remember three important lessons:
- The cook who doesn’t reserve some pancakes doesn’t get any pancakes
- The first three pancakes you make on any day will be useless.
- If a teflon pan catches fire, it’s not non-stick anymore. In fact, it is a Stick pan.
These lessons have been hard earned, learn from my failures.
Those who spoke on this:
Kat:
Don’t bother weighing stuff. Get a measuring jug, put a couple of eggs in and see where it comes up to. Transfer eggs to a bowl, measure to the same mark with milk, then flour. Whisk vigorously and leave to stand for about 1/2 hour before doing the thing with the pan. Sometimes you need a touch more milk, but normally this works great.
A post not about Valve software, that is instead about water.
So, in my willingness to try new things, Tescos managed to sell me a bottle of Carpe Diem Botanic Water. It is water with herbs in it. I bought the “revitalising” version, which contains Galangal, Ginger, Cardamom, Elderflower, Quince, Rose Hip, Birch Leaves & Lemongrass. The important one in that is the second one, as after that it doesn’t really feature. This is ginger flavoured water, only not as nice as it sounds.
Learn from my mistakes: Avoid it.
Adrian Ogden:
This is Aquarionics.
This is Aquarionics on Tea.
Any questions?
dearg:
Yes, if I have 2 marbles, and one of them is blue, what is the number of sheep in New Zealand?
On the other hand, I can’t stand sweet tea.
Euch…
Stuart Langridge:
"Dishonour me, and I will fail you."