Bibliophile Lass

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:00:02 GMT

Why, yes, I am a Type A personality, how did you ever guess? (test here.)

Amazon sell everything these days

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:28:12 GMT

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:42:57 GMT

sweet_lil_sis has acquired a last-minute Glastonbury ticket and is running around the South of England frantically buying useful bits and pieces (e.g. a tent)

What should she not forget?

Lunch, and more lunch...

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 08:36:04 GMT

Wednesday was rotwang's birthday (The Big One -- as in, the same Big One I had only a few weeks back). I cooked him lunch and then took him to the cricket (Surrey vs Hampshire at the Oval -- the wrong team won from my point of view, oh well ;))

Look, I promised him I'd make him a cheesecake with a Twiglet base....

Baked smoked salmon cheesecake with Twiglet base

Makes 4 small individual cheesecakes.

(Roughly based on this recipe.)

1 small packet of Twiglets (25g, I think)
1 heaped teaspoon butter

130g cream cheese
1 egg
1 tbsp double cream
40g smoked salmon
2 tbsp grated cheddar cheese
salt & pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350F / 180C.

Melt butter. Crush Twiglets (I used a grinder to grind them finely, which worked well) and mix with melted butter; press into base of individual springform pans.

Beat cream cheese, egg and cream together until well combined. Chop smoked salmon finely and add salmon, grated cheese, salt and pepper to cream cheese mixture. Divide between pans.

Bake about 20 minutes. Cool in pan for an hour or so, then refrigerate until ready to serve.

Venison pie

Makes six individual pies

(Roughly based on this recipe.)

500g venison, cut into small pieces
3 rashers bacon, fat removed and cut into small pieces
3 tbsp dried porcini mushrooms, ground fine
1 carrot, cut into small pieces
1 cup beef stock
150 ml red wine
1/2 tsp ground cloves

225g flour
150g butter
3-4 tbsp milk (may need more)

Brown venison and bacon pieces in a little olive oil in a saucepan. Add porcini, carrot, cloves, stock and red wine. Bring to the boil then cover and simmer for 90 minutes or so. Cool.

Chop the butter and place it and the flour into a food processor (if you didn't just blow yours up like I did). Process until mixture resembles very fine breadcrumbs. Turn out into bowl and add milk until mixture binds together (this usually takes me a bit more than 3-4 tbsp). Chill for about 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 180C.

Grease deep muffin pan (mine is the sort that makes six muffins). Line each hole of pan with pastry; fill with venison filling. Top with pastry lid. Brush with beaten egg and bake approx. 25 minutes or until golden brown. Cool a few minutes in pan before serving.

Served with red cabbage salad, mushrooms and watercress.

Raspberry agar-agar jelly

Makes enough for about six people

(Roughly based on this recipe.)

250 ml red wine
about a dozen raspberries
250 ml water
Sweetener equivalent to approx 2 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
25g agar-agar

More raspberries for moulding

Heat red wine, raspberries, water, sweetener and cinnamon together, squashing the raspberries as you go. Strain the liquid and return to the pan. Add agar-agar and whisk over a low heat until dissolved (if it thickens too much, add some more water). Place raspberries into oiled moulds (prettily-shaped ones if you have them!). Carefully pour jelly into moulds and refrigerate overnight. Turn out onto plate and surround with single cream.

Port and Stilton Surprise

Makes enough for four (stilton icecream), or for six (port sorbet).

Stilton icecream, roughly based on this recipe:

125g Blue Stilton, crumbled
180ml double cream (plus some more: see below)

Beat the Stilton and 75ml of the cream together. Whip the remainder of the cream until stiff. Fold the whipped cream into the Stilton mixture using a metal spoon. At this point I decided the mixture was too stiff and also folded in the remainder of the (284ml) pot of cream -- so, about another 100ml -- unwhipped, which gave a smoother consistency that looked like it'd freeze better (which it did).

Port sorbet, roughly based on another online recipe for which I've lost the link:

1 cup port
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup simple syrup

(Conveniently I have bottles of sugar-free simple syrup.)

Mix ingredients. Freeze. Probably best to give it a stir half-way through the freezing process if you're not making this at 11pm...

I froze the Stilton icecream overnight in two small moulds -- which started out life as lunchbox biscuit holders from Lakeland. The port sorbet was frozen in one larger container.

Next day I removed the icecream from the mould and cut out a portion from the middle to leave a hole. I then replaced the icecream into the mould and filled the hole with port sorbet, before putting the moulds back into the freezer overnight.

On the day of serving, I made some savoury meringue -- you can (allegedly) do this by using a flour/cornflour mix instead of sugar along with your egg whites. I took the icecream out of its moulds, placed it on a baking tray and covered it in the meringue, before returning it to the freezer for another couple of hours and then taking it straight from the freezer to a 220C oven for a few minutes, then browning it a little with a blow-torch.

The meringue (for a Baked Alaska-oid finish) didn't really work (it tasted OK but didn't stiffen as much as it should have done). Next time I think I'll freeze the icecream in small ring moulds and then fill the centre with the port sorbet (and re-freezing).

And there may be some photos from the cricket up at some point.

The new 4e rules for cooking....

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:26:42 GMT

... are here.

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 07:20:04 GMT

Happy birthday rotwang!

Yay!!

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:44:05 GMT

Gamers: Dorkness Rising finally out for purchase at GenCon US.

IT MUST BE MINE!

(Those of you likely to want me to bring you back a copy should let me know sometime ahead of August)

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:47:11 GMT

We had a great time at Go Ape on Sunday, about which more later (with photos).

In the meantime, does anyone have any good ideas for how to stop the cats bringing frogs in? I would have thought frogs didn't taste nice enough for a cat to want to bring them up to my office in their mouth, but I've just evicted the second one of the day... actually Orac (it has been her both times) spots that I am Not Best Pleased and then takes the poor thing back downstairs. I pick it up in a teatowel from wherever she happens to be watching over it, and put it out in the front garden.

Still, this is getting a bit old. Suggestions appreciated ("putting a muzzle on the cat" may not quite work)

(ETA: Frog 3 was just brought into my office while I was on the phone to a (thankfully quite understanding) client. Thanks, Orac.)

Enough with the f**king frogs already, cats.

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:11:59 GMT

This frog, sitting in the dining room and being intently stared at by two cats, did not appear to have any evidence of green feathers clinging to it, so I'm guessing it wasn't the same one as earlier. Also placed into the front garden, where it hopped away.

Four in two days. I'm almost worried to leave the house tomorrow in case I come back to find it full of displaced amphibians....

"we thought we'd wrap it for you this time"

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:08:21 GMT

I may have been maligning Zen yesterday by calling her the Mastermind of the Frog Invasion.

Orac has just triumphantly deposited a frog on my (carpeted) office floor. Not just ANY old frog, oh no. This one was gift-wrapped: draped in some of the luminous green feathers that had been ripped out of one of the cat toys motorpickle kindly gave us.

So this time the frog had been dragged in through the catflap and up two flights of stairs. It was still breathing and blinking but looking significantly less happy than it had been yesterday. Sadly I did not have a camera within reach to take a picture before rotwang took it back outside (this time we left it in the front garden, where the cats don't go).

It could have been worse; I was not actually on the phone to a customer at the time...

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:41:31 GMT

Via maetang: Architect builds scavenger hunt into refurbished apartment... man, we missed out; why didn't our builder do that?

And so it begins...

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:38:22 GMT

We have had to remove a frog from our dining room twice so far today; possibly the same frog twice, possibly two different ones, who knows? In both cases the intruder hopped away into the bushes when released back into the outside. Hopefully it, or they, will learn that staying clear of the Furry Monsters is a good idea if one does not wish to be dragged in through the cat flap and then batted around the room as a kitty toy.

Other things the cats have so far brought in to play with: feathers, a chunk of moss, and several pieces of pondweed. I am at a loss to see why the pondweed is so interesting; Orac seems to specialise in dragging that in, while Zen appears to be the mastermind behind the Frog Invasion.

Orac has also managed to shed her collar somewhere, and it (and its tag) have vanished into the mists of oblivion. I've now ordered a batch of spare tags and a batch of spare collars... now, if someone could sell me some slightly larger cat brains to install in these two, we'd be set.

[Edited to add: sweet_lil_sis reminds me. I'd thrown out some rather past-it cocktail sausages, legacy of the party the other week, for the local foxes. There was then an "OH GOD WHAT HAVE YOU DISEMBOWELLED AND BROUGHT IN... oh, it's half a sausage. Er, good" moment.]

Fame of sorts....

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:23:10 GMT

sweet_lil_sis's two videos of the Foo Fighters with John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page on Saturday evening (here and here) have made her stuff, at the time of typing, the 11th most watched channel in the UK on YouTube today. Cool. ;)

O Lazyweb...

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:31:59 GMT

My dad has finally decided what he wants for Father's Day, and the answer is "something that will let him play his own music in his workshop". This translates to an MP3 player of some sort, which needs to be:

- not too small;
- easy to use once music has been loaded onto it;
- _relatively_ straightforward to load music onto -- but this will probably be done either by me or by sweet_lil_sis so is a bit less critical
- able to handle playlists and/or randomisation, not just restricted to playing stuff out of folders
- capable of playing MP3s -- other formats not required
- sensibly priced (under 100 quid)

It specifically does NOT need to be able to play videos or any other visual content, nor does it need also to be a radio or anything else (he has a DAB radio already). Battery life is also not crucial -- in fact it doesn't really even need to have a battery at all since it's likely to spend the vast majority of its life plugged in.

Anyone got any recommendations? I love my iPod nano but that's way too small for this; it'd get lost and/or he'd get frustrated with the interface.

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 15:30:13 GMT

Edited to add: someone else has a better caption for a similar image

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 10:34:36 GMT

I have fallen into a parallel universe, I'm sure of it.

Now, okay, Wembley Stadium has in fact been razed to the ground and rebuilt since I last visited it, so one might expect some changes. But consider the following:

sufficient ladies' toilets with no significant queue
plenty of establishments selling drinks and food, even including some variety in the food -- and again with no queue
comfortable seats with some actual padding involved
polite and friendly security staff
a sane and functional system for getting people away from the stadium at the end of an event

... when compared with the clusterf**k that used to be involved with going to Wembley, this was nothing short of miraculous.

So, we went to see the Foo Fighters -- we bought seated tickets, on the grounds of being Old and Boring (unlike sweet_lil_sis who was down at the front on the barrier). While you can get back to our neck of the woods on public transport after a Stadium gig (it's often touch and go after a show at the Arena, as their curfew is later), it's long and crowded, so we usually prefer to drive to somewhere just slightly further out of town than Wembley and get the train or tube in from there. South Ruislip seemed to work pretty well as a staging post aside from it taking about two hours to get there (M25, Friday afternoon, the usual sort of thing) -- gig finished at 2215 and we were home by midnight, which included waiting for sweet_lil_sis who had been on the next train after us out of Wembley Stadium station.

Supergrass were supporting and they were okay but nothing special (they did at least play "Moving" which is the song of theirs that I like best).

The Foos were pretty damn good. Lots of energy, lots of good songs (sweet_lil_sis had prepared us a CD of songs likely to be on the set list -- and she wasn't all that far out ;) -- so that we could prepare properly). The stage setup was a little bit odd -- sort of semi-in-the-round but not central; on the plus side the "not central" bit put it towards our end so we could see pretty well, even if not really looking at the front of it. (It did rotate a couple of times.) The sound worked a lot better than some of the previous times I'd been at the stadium, too.

Downsides? Um... I can't really think of too many connected with the band. I might have been a bit unhappy if I'd been desperate to stare into Dave Grohl's eyes for the duration of the gig since they were mostly facing partly away from us. We quite fancied getting some dinner from the "Champagne and Seafood Bar", except that they were only selling sushi and smoked salmon bagels (can't eat the bagels, can't eat the rice from the sushi) and wine and champagne by the bottle (not so feasible for two people where one of you is driving home).

I look forward to seeing sweet_lil_sis's photos, though she tells me she doesn't think they'll be as good as those from previous gigs because the pit between barrier and stage was wider. (No, I did not take my new long lens -- sheesh, I'd like to keep it for longer than a few hours rather than having it confiscated by Wembley!). She's back there again today, queueing to get in at 4pm and make that dash to the barrier... ;)

shiiiiiiiny....

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:59:37 GMT

New lens arrived first thing. Ooh, it is shiny, and the focussing is so fast (I can see me now spending most of my time dissatisfied with all my other lenses)

The only downside is that I will definitely need to go to the gym and lift weights more often. 1.4kg may not sound like a lot but when you're supporting it in front of your face it seems quite heavy...

Mighty hunter...

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:47:30 GMT

I have mentioned before that we have foxes semi-resident in our garden (I don't know where their den is, but there could be an entire tribe of pygmies at the end of our garden and we'd not know it). This morning two of them decided to come out and curl up in the sun near our pond, and the cats decided to investigate...

It seems we have a live-and-let-live situation, thankfully. The cats snuck up -- one at a time; where's the Velociraptor Manoeuvre when you need it... -- to within perhaps four feet or so of one of the foxes, and then carefully snuck away again. For their part, the foxes didn't seem too bothered either. Just as well; I like having foxes around but I'd also rather they didn't eat my cats. ;)

(The photo involved a long lens and was taken from an upstairs window -- Zen and the fox (probably a mostly-grown cub) were about a metre and a half apart at this point, at a rough guess.)

Food and books and things and stuff

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 20:29:49 GMT

Last weekend was the joint birthday party for rotwang and your humble narrator, which also marked the official end of my birthday celebrations (he has two more events to go). It was fun, even if we were short a few people (some of them for good reasons); I may have ever so slightly overcatered, but at least most of the leftovers have either found good homes, been eaten or been recycled into other meals (the leftover crudites are, even as I type, turning into vegetable stock on my stove). I loved the venue; anywhere that'll provide you a room for deposit only, buy in some decent cider for you, and is happy for you to sort out your own music (CDs or iPod level; no decks) and your own food is a complete winner as far as I'm concerned.

Books: The Athenian Murders: should have been good, interesting concept, but just didn't really work. (Will be up for grabs on BookCrossing shortly.) Pyramid: badly-written sub-Da Vinci Code toss; I gave up reading it after the third or fourth plot-dump in which characters who were allegedly Oxford academics apparently had no knowledge of something fairly well-known. (I do not expect all Oxford fellows to be omniscient, omnipotent superbeings, but neither are they likely to be bloody ignorant of things such as ley lines and longitude.) The End Of Mr Y: just started and looking as though I will enjoy it a lot.

Things: well, okay, cats. I need to fit our bird table with gun emplacements or close equivalent since Zen, the smaller and more agile of the cats, has proved this morning that she can climb the table's pole and sit on the table itself (luckily without any actual birds being around). Razor wire? Electrification? I shall have to have a think. Also, waistcoatmark and sielis have provided a cat fountain which has duly been set up - I am not convinced the four-feet know what to make of it just yet but I'm sure they'll figure it out. We will definitely have to work out the whole battery-operation concept, though, because the power cord obstructs a couple of cupboards with important things in (such as the cat food)

Stuff: um, off to see the Foo Fighters on Friday, meeting up with colonel_maxim on his return from Forn Parts on Saturday. Work seems to have calmed down a bit, which is nice. Waiting for Shiny New Camera Lens off ebay (uitlander, same one you bought a while back). rotwang gets back from Stirling on Thursday night and then has to do a day-trip to Glasgow on Monday... enough bloody Scotland already....

Recipes by request: Falafel

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 14:02:48 GMT

This is a recipe originally found online and adapted a bit. The original doesn't specify what size "tin of chickpeas", but from previous experience with American recipes involving such tins, the US tin of chickpeas is usually a bit bigger than ours. Three standard-sized tins (400g before draining) seemed to work OK for double the quantity, so you'd be looking at 1.5 tins for one quantity.

Tin of chickpeas (see above)
2 - 4 tbsp finely chopped fresh parsley
2 - 4 tbsp finely chopped fresh coriander
1 teaspoon salt
1/2-1 teaspoon chili powder
4 cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon baking powder
4-6 tablespoons flour

Place the drained chickpeas in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Add the parsley, coriander, salt, chili powder, garlic, and cumin. Process until "blended but not pureed." (There is not really enough liquid in this for you to wind up with what I would call a puree.)

The original recipe suggests that you then sprinkle the baking powder and flour in and pulse the food processor to mix it in. I found this really didn't mix it properly -- again possibly because the mixture was not wet enough -- so turned the chickpea mixture out into a bowl and mixed the flour and baking powder in by hand. You are looking to get the mixture to a point where it's more like a dough than a puree -- I found it took more like 6-8 tbsp of flour.

Refrigerate the dough (covered) for several hours.

Form into balls about the size of a table-tennis ball. Normally one fries falafel but I found that baking them worked just as well; about 20 minutes at 180C/gas 4 cooked them through without drying them out too much.

Recipes by request: Honey & ginger cookies

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 13:46:50 GMT

This was originally from a recipe book published by the American Museum in Bath. It doubles or trebles fairly easily (though you may find three times the dough is a challenge to mix)

12 oz flour
4 oz butter
10 oz sugar
1 egg
4 oz honey
3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
pinch of salt

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg and honey and mix well. Sift the dry ingredients and mix in thoroughly [editor's note: add a little more flour if the mixture seems too damp]. Roll into small balls. Place on baking sheet, flatten slightly, bake at 350 F / 180 C / gas 4 for 10 - 15 minutes. [Editor's note: do not overcook, you want these to be golden rather than dark brown; they should cool to a slightly chewy consistency rather than to a solid consistency like ginger nuts.)

Makes approx 36.

Blood... glucose... rising....

Thu, 29 May 2008 22:30:11 GMT

Blame dmwcarol...

Thu, 29 May 2008 21:24:36 GMT

Your Score: Letter Opener

You scored 41 flexibility, 46 sharpness, 42 stickiness and 57 size!

You can be quite sharp and you're medium sized - You're a Letter Opener!

This test has 4 variables. Your size depended on how "big" you are in certain situations and there are three levels. Your sharpness is a measure of how cutting you may be (i.e. the harsher you are the sharper you are in this test). Your stickiness is how much you like to stick to others, and lastly your flexibility pretty self explanitory. There are 24 different results. Hope you enjoyed the test!!!

Link: The Which Office Supply Are You Test written by passion4music on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test
View My Profile(passion4music)

An Awfully Big Adventure

Sun, 25 May 2008 23:30:15 GMT

The cats now being up to date with their jabs, and having been fitted with their shiny new collars -- conveniently in different colours, which makes them much easier to tell apart at a glance -- were finally allowed out into the garden today. They haven't quite got the whole cat-flap thing figured out yet, possibly because the flap itself is quite stiff, but they were happy enough to go exploring when the back door was opened. Happily, they also came back in when I called them in for dinner, so I didn't have to spend the rest of my evening hunting them down in other people's gardens.

Photos are here, and there MUST be a good caption to be had for the third one from last...

In other news: nice dinner out with rotwang's folks last night, and Iron Man is good if a little jingoistic in places.

This is what colonel_maxim is up against...

Wed, 21 May 2008 21:46:03 GMT

Talibun