Reminder Of Why You Should Never Put Foil In A Microwave—Exploding Wine Box Version [Video]
Here’s why your mother always said never to put aluminum foil in the microwave. Can someone buy this Swedish guy a new kitchen, please? And a box o’ wine, too? [YouTube] Thanks, Nightwheel!
The best Chili in the World . . . EVER!
Simon Rimmer is the resident chef on BBC2’s Something for the Weekend. A couple of weeks ago on his twitter feed (@simonrim) he announced a new website he’d setup, eatsimonrimmer.com where he’s asking people to film themselves cooking their recipes and upload them.
As I seem to keep banging on about cooking on here and enjoy it so much (as anyone who has been round to our house for dinner will know), I thought it was a good opportunity to put my money where my mouth is and film something. Read more
The power of positive thinking . . .
I started yesterday with a bit of a rant . . . it wasn’t my fault, it was the fault of the idiot in the car who turned left in front of my bike and missed taking me out by about 2 inches. Although that wasn’t the first thing that went wrong yesterday. I woke up nearly 2 hours late on account of forgetting to set my alarm.
The train seemed to be a bit slow on the way to London then he tube was packed (because I was in the middle of rush hour) and seemed to crawl the remainder of my journey. Being late into work was particularly annoying because I was supposed to run some system maintenance starting at 8am and now I’ve got to reschedule it. Most of the actual working day ticked along fine until somehow, and this is the first time in 2 years I’ve done it, I got on the wrong train and ended up in Peterborough. Once I got back to Cambridge I discovered I’d got a flat rear tyre on my bike. Read more
Things that make you go Aaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhh!
I’m not talking about politics or religion here . . . I can brush those off because a) I don’t believe in either and b) they both work great for individuals but end up as infinitely corrupt for any sort of organisation . . . bah humbug!
No, what I’m talking about here is something that makes everyone’s blood boil . . . traffic.
Almost everyone that uses the public highways and byways is clearly an idiot! Read more
Time to take your Tablets?
Tablet PC’s are nothing new. They’ve been kicking around being used by TV presenters for a couple of years but they seem to have been a spectacular failure as far as their uptake from general users so far.
Now the big hype machine of Apple (or I should say the big internet rumour machine and Apples rumour squashing machine) is gearing itself up for the release of the iTablet (or whatever they decide to call it) at MacWorld in January. Pictures of backplates are emerging from suppliers, stories of orders for huge numbers of 10 inch touch screens are being talked about and Apple is saying nothing, as usual. (Google is currently showing 11,000,000 results for a search for Apple Tablet) Read more
What is Google Wave?
Is it really the next-big-thing ™ from the almightily Google or is it actually a useless overhyped piece of crap?? Well the answer to both of these questions is obviously no (although the overhyped claim may be somewhat justified 😉
One of the problems with Google Wave is that it’s new. Google said at one point that the set out to create what email would have been like had it been created now, in the Web 2.0 (tm again?) world. However, it’s also been described as like IM on steroids. Read more
Me and Keith . . .
Food again . . . well, yes.
This morning on the train I read a tweet from someone saying that Patrick Swayse had died . . . very sad and all but my only connection to him is a couple of, let’s be honest, somewhat crappy movies that I like (Road House and Point Break). About 2 hours later, and via another tweet, I discovered that Keith Floyd had also passed away and that one hit me a bit harder.
After a little introspection I think the reason is that the way I cook and generally muck about with food was clearly influenced by him. After a quick shuffle over to his page on Wikipedia I discovered that his first TV show, Floyd on Fish, was broadcast in 1984 and on my birthday as well. That would have made me 11 and I vividly remember watching it.
Floyd cooking on TV seemed to be a world of chaos. From ordering a handheld camera wielded by a poor bloke who Keith always thought was pointing it in the wrong direction, “not at me, at the food!”, to occasional spills, the odd missing ingredient, the general feeling that not a whole lot of planning had gone into the actual making of the dish and, of course, a generous glug of wine.
Throughout all this I always got the impression that the man really knew what he was doing. Ingredients weren’t just being thrown in for the sake of it, he knew tastes, he knew his palette and he knew that right now what this dish needed was a little touch of this . . . what I got from his programs, apart from a few laughs (and if I remember rightly some damn fine scenery) was that you didn’t have to follow a recipe like a maths formula, just go with it, create and enjoy
For one or two other view on the late great Keith Floyd you should head over to The Grauniad and check out what a few professionals think.
Keith Floyd, RIP
KFC’ish . . .
Here’s how it starts.
theWife: What do you fancy for dinner?
me: (shrug) dunno, what do you fancy?
theWife: don’t know . . . something chickeny, with lots of vegetables!.
And with that my brain starts ticking, my taste-buds start tingling and I know we’re in trouble. Read more
Food, glorious food . . .
I would say it’s that time of the year again but it isn’t . . . the fact is I’m on a diet. again. This isn’t the first diet I’ve been on and it almost certainly won’t be the last but what makes this one different from the others is that this time i’m keeping it in my pocket, it’s online, readily available and there’s no getting away from it.
I should probably back up a bit at this point and enlighten you all with some background facts. I’m 35 years old. I weigh, or at least at the start of this weighed, 19st 1lb and I have arthritis. The reason I mention the arthritis isn’t some cheap attempt to garner sympathy be simply a way to explain why I can’t just go and run the weight off like a lot of other people might. Read more
Fix please!
Dear WordPress,
yesterday during my commute home from Kings Cross to Cambridge I crafted a wonderful post about food, the glory of eating and the pain of my new diet. I had started writing this post on the backend of my website during lunch but picked it up on the train using my iPhone.
I immediately realised that there was no way I could turn a Draft post into a Local Draft on my phone so made sure I saved the post back as a draft every few minutes (or so I thought). About 25 minutes into my journey I saved again after finishing a section extolling the virtues of the site I’m now using (livestrong.com). While the phone claimed it was saving the train entered a tunnel and the phones internet connection was cut off.
The application seemed to stall for nearly a minute and when it came back my post wasn’t showing on my posts list. I checked in the Local Drafts and couldn’t see it there either. Upon going back to the main posts list I noticed it was showing at the bottom with an update time of 31 December 1969 19:00 and, having clicked (pressed) it discovered the post was in the same state it was before I’d got on the train. All my edits had gone!!
FIX PLEASE!!!!
Adam
