The Cloven Hoof
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14 August 2015 at 18:35 #41829
@bluesqueakpip And never forget the Doctor Who zealots– Moffat must die for sins against canon!
15 August 2015 at 04:26 #41841@mudlark @Purofilion I feel the same way about cooking for guests, and I barely cooked anything complicated for us two at home. Now that I’m on my own, I’d still rather go out with friends to eat, although it’s tough sometimes because of the incredible noise levels in most new and/or “trendy” places that we’d like to go try out. No one puts sound-absorbing tile on the ceilings any more, or fabric as part of the decorating, and the piped music is generally at a level appropriate to a pick-up bar — loud, or louder, to simulate/stimulate an energetic, even frantic social scene that will *surely* get you laid pretty quick unless there’s something *wrong* with you (or even if . . . ).
Okay, into the kitchen for some nice spinach, rice, and pine nuts, with a sprinkle of shaved ham for — sprinkles.
15 August 2015 at 07:32 #41843@mudlark Some things I guess you just have to make at home, or give up on. A good local bakery offers a “lemon meringue cake” that’s yellow cake with lemon curd layers between, but topped with a “meringue” that I guess holds up better in the showcase than the real stuff: a cement-tough block of white pastry cream (just very sweet, solid fat so far as I can tell, might as well be lard) with a layer or what looks and tastes like melted marshmallow on top. $6.50 per meager slice.
It’s almost enough to make me try baking for myself . . .
15 August 2015 at 07:50 #41844@bluesqueakpip Except that Marxist-commnist zealots are worshiping gods in disguise — the Great Leader, be he Mao or Stalin or Pol Pot or that weird little creep in North Korea becomes the one true God of the nation he rules over, and his zealots do exactly what “religious” zealots do: try to stamp out other religious power centers in their country so that no challenge based in the religious ethical systems can be mounted by organized believers such as the Buddhist monks following the Dalai Lama in Tibet. The Precious Leader simply takes over and obliterates the concept of God except as himself. It doesn’t always last; see the rapid resurgence of the Russian Orthodox Church in recent decades.
There are, though, extremist atheist zealots whose “God” is materialism: I mean men like Hitchens and Dawkins, who insist that nothing that can’t be reliably and repeatedly measured (that is, measured by scientific means) can exist. If they had the power to shut down religious institutions, I don’t doubt that they would, without hesitation, for the general good of course.
Racists are something else. As I understand it, the worst of them here in America often are Christian fundamentalists with even narrower than usual parameters of acceptance. They worship a White God expressed on Earth by a White race that’s supposed to have God-given “dominion” over everybody and everything else — as far as I can tell, anyway. I haven’t made a study of them; my low tolerance for hateful and pernicious B.S. makes that prospect more trouble than it would be worth.
15 August 2015 at 11:31 #41845@ichabod That ‘lemon meringue cake’ sound unutterably disgusting. Here in Norwich (that’s the original Norwich, in case you were in any doubt) we are fortunate enough to have at least two specialist cake shops producing delectable confectionary. At one of them, I swear, they must have someone on permanent duty wiping the drool off the display windows.
I grew up near here (I came back to roost after a couple of decades migrating around the UK) and although we rarely bought cakes or baked goods – my mother produced cakes and tarts which were a great deal better than almost everything on offer in the local bakeries, there was one exception. Shortly after food rationing ended, in the early 1950s, a Viennese immigrant opened a patisserie, and his cream cakes and pastries were on a completely different level!
Bread was another matter. There was a bakery in the village where we lived which had probably been in the same family for several generations, with a Master baker still making bread the traditional way, in a wooden kneading trough and wood or coal fired brick ovens. There was no shop. He baked in the morning and delivered to the surrounding villages in the afternoon, and if we ran out of bread between deliveries, you simply walked into the bake house. The bread was wonderful, and still warm when he delivered it. My mother used to leave the loaves to cool on the pantry windowsill, where it would be when we arrived home from school. Mother always pretended to be puzzled by the fact that when she came to put the cooled loaves in the bread bin, the crusts were so often missing 😉
Some time after leaving the parental home I resorted to making my own bread, although recently I have been using a bread making machine which, if you use the long programme, allowing the dough to prove long enough to develop a good flavour, produces very acceptable loaves.
15 August 2015 at 19:13 #41846@mudlark Ah, the Viennese bakers . . . New York used to be full of lovely bakeries like this, where you could get a real apple strudel with tart apple filling + cinnamon and a few raisins and of course miles of butter, slathered on between the enclosing layers of puff pastry — instead of those flat, heavy, over sweetened gummy apple cakes that are now sold all over America as strudel. Unfortunately, those great places slowly vanished as the European Jewish refugee population aged and trundled off to Florida to roast themselves on the beaches until they died. I noted was happening when I’d go to a bakery on a visit to the city and see latinos at the counter and Koreans in the kitchen — and the strudels were gone, never to return (except at Greenberg’s, that held out for years but finally closed up over a decade ago — they were a splendid last star in the firmament of great baked goods in Manhattan, IMO). There are probably a few places tucked away in Brooklyn and the outer boroughs with the Orthodox Jewish communities, but Manhattan, now bloated with the super-rich, has exactly what those people deserve in terms of baked goods: turgid rubbish with lots of sugar. (Somebody please tell me I’m wrong, and where to look for some hidden gem of baking survival!).
And the seeded sour rye from Cakemasters — ! Fabulous. They also made rye breakfast rolls to die for. Gone with the wind. I wonder whether the old baking still flourishes in places like Budapest and Vienna? Probably, but who knows? I’ve read that neighborhood pubs in England are shutting because of incoming muslim populations that don’t drink but that do settle in the lower-end areas where traditional pubs (not gentrified ones) still existed until recently. When I follow news stories about the massive population shifts that are really just getting into full swing now, I don’t normally think about what’s being drowned in those irresistible tides.
We had a great French bakery here in town for a long time, owned and run by French people. Eventually they went home to France, sold the place to some enthusiastic locals — and of course it all went downhill, from excellent to a mere cut above the more or less tolerable local norm. They make some good cookies, but their pastry is a little more than soggy bricks, loaded with butter but minus any shadow of finesse — the American way.
15 August 2015 at 20:29 #41847http://baconandbuttersac.com/about-us/
This is my favorite breakfast/brunch restaurant in Sacramento -The menu changes according to
available ingredients and its completely farm to table and organic. They have wonderful
chefs. All the breads and pastries are baked in house and are outstanding. Love love the
delicious food. They even make the grilled cheese on Challah! Totally not traditional
but its so delicious plus you only get real maple syrup to go with breakfast grass fed
beef for hamburgers etc. If anyone is ever in Sacramento I will take you to breakfast here!
This restaurant also has a facebook page which I follow because it tells you the menu changes
and show you the dishes.
When I was a kid there were local bakers called Friehofers. They delivered baked goods to all the
local groceries and many restaurants in the Hudson river valley and into Conn. Everything was
always incredibly well done and I have to admit that I really ‘appreciated’ those tender but crispy
and very chocolate-y chip cookies. Its no secret in my family about how I loved those! 😉
Last time I was there I tried looking for them. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any sign of them 🙁15 August 2015 at 21:51 #41849@ichabod @mudlark @lisa Oh, bread. (happy sigh) I love good bread. We have a decent bakery in our neighbourhood, and a few pretty nice French patisseries around town. (A really good croissant is one of the happiest things I can think of!) There are a few very fancy “foodie” bakeries that do make fabulous bread, but the prices make me shudder. What I cannot get here is a proper baguette– and by proper I mean what I have had in France: fresh, crusty on the outside, chewy on the inside. For whatever reason, they never get them quite right here, although interestingly I have had them in Quebec, where they seem to have an intuition for French-style bread and cheese that just doesn’t exist here.
I bake a pretty fair loaf, with the help of a liquid starter I learned how to make and my Kitchen Aid. I don’t do much fancy baking– a few old-fashioned cookies, an occasional spice cake. I do make a nice pie; and braided Ukrainian Christmas bread (Christmas really ups my game!). And Mr. Arbutus is The Muffin Man. He can make the most delicious breakfast muffins without even using a recipe, not a skill of mine.
I am however determined to learn to master a thing we had in Italy called a pasticiotto, which is a kind of flavourful little cake with a cream-filled centre. They were fabulous.
@lisa That thing with chocolate chip cookies when they are crisp but also chewy is magical!
15 August 2015 at 22:33 #41850@arbutus, @Purofilion, @mudlark, @lisa, @janetteb, @ichabod
Without realizing it, I think you are slowly developing the the contents of:
The Cookbook of the Doctor Who Forum: Recipes even more insane than what’s actually cooking
Indeed, the posts above might even get me out of the Blenkinsop cellar and into the kitchen! I certainly owe it to myself to try my hand at anzacs. It has been a long time since I had the real thing.
15 August 2015 at 23:26 #41851@arbutus The problem with baguettes baked outside France is that they are seldom made with the right kind of flour or in the right kind of oven. Whereas bread in England, North America and (I presume) Australia, is made with ‘strong’ flour, high in gluten, French bread is made with flour from local wheat, which is relatively low in gluten, mixed with only around 20 percent strong flour. The ovens are of a special type which use steam injection at a certain point during the baking process to produce that distinctive dense and glossy crust whilst leaving the middle soft. French bakers also, I think, use a relatively slack dough and a fairly long and complicated ‘proving’ method which results in that open texture with unevenly sized holes. The steam injection process was, I believe, introduced to France by the Viennese, as were croissants.
As it happens, on a recent visit to France to visit my brother, I learned something new about baguettes: that there are two kinds. There are the baguettes traditionelles, which have the better flavour and keep for at least 24 hours before going stale. and the kind which are more commonly to be found nowadays, which have to be eaten immediately since they turn to cardboard in a matter of hours.
@blenkinsopthebrave Well, I would hope that the menu on offer aboard the Tardis extends to more than just jelly babies, fish fingers and custard, and jammy dodgers 🙂
16 August 2015 at 00:34 #41852@arbutus @mudlark and everyone!
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/flours/
Thought I’d share this for the bakers – my friend Maria is a really great baker!
She says this is 1 of the best flours to bake with cause of its gluten profile, non gmo plus milled
properly. Apparently its preferred by many professionals too. She comes from a family that owned
a Italian bakery in a Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn NY! She said that 3 reasons why NY
pizza is so good is 1- the water and 2- they used this King Arthur flour and 3- real cheese and
other toppings. Although you have to be choosy about where you go for authentic NY pizza there
these days. Anyone can get this flour online and although I have thought about doing that I’m not
really much of a baker myself.16 August 2015 at 00:42 #41853BTW – I think the old style pizza ovens added something to a great pizza too.
But nowadays in California I eat California style pizzas. The grilled
chicken, onions and cheese is a total yum!
just saying…16 August 2015 at 02:37 #41854Anonymous @
I’m devilishly hungry. Yesterday’s talk saw me baking a red velvet cake with a sweet cheese filling. Today, I now want bread.
I used to make bread, ‘Lark, and I really admire your efforts at doing so.
Nothing like beautiful, proved bread. Thing is, I simply couldn’t kneed it without my wrists aching! I’m told a good bread maker is the ace. Mum used to have one and made all her caraway, sour dough breads as well as plaited Christmas and Easter breads perfectly. She handed that to the granddaughter.
My fear was upon making bread we’d all inevitably gain weight. Once a fresh, warm load is there….it disappears into the tummy immediately ….whether I’m really hungry or not and that’s not good for the scales at all!
Right, Brunch….Boys at soccer so it looks like cake for breakfast and lunch is in order with coffee. ….:Drags bigger bottom down the stairs to the kitchen….:
Puro
Ah…question….I should ask this in the film thread….but has anyone seen a) Project Almanac (for teens, I think) and b) the 2004 film, Primer?? It’s about time travel. The latter made on a shoestring of $7000 and has become quite a cult classic. There’s a whole lot of mumbo jumbo but it’s very slick -in its way. @pedant @craig @phaseshift?
16 August 2015 at 02:46 #41855@purofilion Re Primer. I only discovered it recently myself. It’s great. Posted about it here:
http://www.thedoctorwhoforum.com/forums/topic/general-films-thread/page/3/#post-41256
I’ll check out Project Almanac though.
16 August 2015 at 03:06 #41856@craig thank you for that! Project Almanac I mainly borrowed for my teen boy. It’s a found footage film: and there are so many out there. Possibly better than a lot of other found-footage movies. But. But…..
16 August 2015 at 07:09 #41860@mudlark I know that the long proofing process is part of the problem. There just isn’t the cultural interest here in the kind of time that the traditional process requires. I knew about the baguettes traditionelles, and they are definitely the ones to get. The last time we were in Paris, we were in and out of the local boulangerie twice a day. It was heaven.
@purofilion My Kitchen Aid is my friend! I mix up bread dough, pizza dough, cookie dough, and cake batter in it, and I now have an attachment for making pasta, so I’m learning to do that as well. Charming as the idea is, I have tried the long, long kneading thing, and I just don’t have the patience for it.
@lisa I recently bought a new pizza stone at Williams & Sonoma, made especially for the BBQ. It is in two pieces that fit together, and air is trapped in the middle, so there is more space between the pizza and the flame. It works really well. We have done a reasonable approximation of a thin crust brick oven pizza with it. We are also lucky to have a local organic flour mill in the area that produces a lot of different flours, including a “00” Italian-style pizza flour. We like the Neapolitan style best, with simple toppings and home made tomato sauce.
@blenkinsopthebrave Bring the wine up with you into the kitchen, you will have more fun that way!
This Forum used to make my head spin; now it just makes me hungry. 🙂
16 August 2015 at 15:11 #41862Ok so I am hoping that by not @ anyone that everyone will read eventually when they are here?? 🙂
I’ve been off a couple of days work was busy oddly enough and totally appropriate it was my departments “cook out day”. Every summer each department takes a turn cooking for the whole company. If yours is very small then you join with another. We do it every year and it’s a ton of planning and then ALL DAY FRIDAY all you do is work in the kitchen from 8am til 3pm. We have a full kitchen (with impressive appliances I must say) on the first floor. In any case every year our department had done some CRAZY theme because the norm is hamburgers hot dogs chicken lots of hot and cold salads etc. for example two years ago (and I suggested this a joke and my boss said YES YES!!!) we did “summer thanksgiving” and did the entire spread – turkey and all the trimmings. It was a big hit mostly because everyone always does he same old thing. Well this year we were not motivated and did the same old thing. But it turned out well we got very nice hamburger and also pork ribs and some lovely chicken, hot and sweet sausages with onions and peppers and we had home made sides like macaroni and cheese from scratch, green beans, deviled eggs, seafood salad, Polynesian meatballs, regular cold salad (lettuce carrots etc) and a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember. You feed about 100 people that day so at the end (and mind you its August and we are outside grilling lol) you are sweaty smelly and ready to go home! All said I heard a couple “best barbecue ever!” Comments so that was good. And I got to go home early and get a shower.
Then I got my nose pierced.
Re pierced actually as the old one closed up. That however is another story entirely *re positions ice pack on face* and it was not full of awesome. In fact the guy had to call his boss in to finish because it went so poorly. Quite the experience. Hurt way more than the first time!!!!
This weekend home cooking menu was a Tuscan bean Soup (prep said five minutes and it took me an hour to dice all the veggies!!!) I texted my ex boyfriend the chef and sent a picture of my “mise en place” and he said that looks very professional but yeah it would have taken 5 minutes for someone with skills lol. But the soup turned out lovely. Also a “Greek style” lemon chicken with rice (chicken still marinating in the fridge from last night so I’ll do that today) a pineapple upside down cake for a friends birthday at work tomorrow as well as little tiny mini cheesecakes with strawberry as some of the people at work announced “I don’t like pineapple upside down cake” lol….and last night I attempted “flourless and butter less” chocolate cookies that turned out SO foul even my 8 year old refused to try one … And I mean there was melty chocolate all over it and he said “no way mom that’s hideous”. They were. And they tasted really odd and so they are in the trash now … They were weirdly chewy and crisp at the same time but not in the good way 😉
anyway just had coffee and lounging in bed with my son “watching” cartoons with him. One day soon he won’t want to have much to do with me so I will take as much snuggling now as I can….School starts in a week…he is growing out his hair LONG so he can cut it and donate it to charity where they make wigs for kids with cancer. Absolutely adorable and admirable but having to tame that mop in the morning is requiring more and more product each day. “Mom is my hair sticking up??”
“ummmm….no?”
hope everyone has had a lovely weekend and I cannot believe it is August already where the heck did this year go??? It was May and I blinked (haha blink!) and now it’s August.
I’m glad it will be September soon for the Doctor but other than that I sort of loathe the holidays around here (in the U.S.)
Rose2112
16 August 2015 at 18:25 #41864@lisa That brand of flour is not generally available in the UK, although no doubt it could be ordered on line, via Amazon. It sounds broadly similar to Allinson Flour, which is what I use. Allinson offer two grades of both wholemeal and white bread flour – ‘strong’ and ‘very strong’ and I use the latter, because it produces bread which is reliably well risen and of good, even texture. For everyday bread I use a half-and-half mixture of white and wholemeal flour, but Allinson also do white and wholemeal bread flours with seeds and grains, and a ‘country grain’ bread flour comprising wheat flour, malted barley flour, rye flour and malted wheat flakes. And of course they do self-raising and plain (all purpose) flours as well. But there is quite a wide variety of other brands readily available in many supermarkets, including at least one brand of traditional stone-ground flour. There are still quite a few traditional water mills, and even a few windmills still in operation producing ‘organic’ stone-ground flours, though mostly in limited quantities and available only in specialist shops (I take an interest because my maternal grandfather, though not a miller himself, was the son of a miller and descended from a long line of millers going back to at least the beginning of the seventeenth century).
@Rose2112 I know what you mean about preparation times. If I am following a recipe I just ignore that bit, knowing that it will take at the very least three or four times as long as stated. I get the impression that the writers of the recipes assume everyone has the knife skills of a professional chef, whereas if I tried to work that fast I would soon have no fingers left 🙂
16 August 2015 at 22:38 #41866@Rose2112 Wow, haven’t you been having a time? I can’t even begin to imagine cooking for so many people. It sounds like the best office barbecue ever.
Your soup sounds great! I enjoy making soup, but I am also not the greatest at dicing things. My husband is actually much better at it than I am, he is more coordinated. And onions are a particular problem because they really hurt my eyes. Any recipe that calls for finely diced onions simply has to take large chunks and like it! But Rose, what on earth is the point of a cookie without flour or butter? 🙂 That really is more insane than what’s actually cooking!
A nose repiercing, wow. “Not full of awesome” is a great way to put it! I finally got my ears pierced in my thirties, and then I had a baby, and after a few weeks of new momhood and not wearing earings, I found that one of my holes had filled in! I was so annoyed, because it really hurt the first time. So the second time I left my sleepers in for so long that I ended up with a very large hole, and for a couple of years I used to lose earrings all the time!
Your son sounds lovely. I remember thinking the same thing as my son begged me to sit with him and watch interminable episodes of the Magic School Bus, and various Hot Wheels movies. Now he is sixteen and makes me watch long highlight reels on YouTube of various soccer matches. His hair isn’t all that long, but it is definitely not short, and he uses so much product that I can’t keep it in the house. Between that and the super soaker of deodorant every day, he smells like a salon when he leaves the house. 🙂
16 August 2015 at 23:12 #41867well it’s supposed to be for those who cannot have wheat/gluten or dairy. Which is me actually. It doesn’t kill me which is why I do it anyway for the most part….I eat butter and sometimes will sample the cheesecakes I make ….but i avoid dairy altogether other than that. And if I avoid wheat and yeast and sugar my body feels SO MUCH BETTER that I try to stick to it. I fail frequently. But it’s never bread that gets me. It’s cake. And pie. And candy. Oy.
My my son is already addicted to you tube. He watches grown men (and I tell him they still live with their mothers) playing video games. It’s sad.
The bbq is good fun and builds the team as well. We all really like each other as well as work together so we do have a great time. Every day really. It’s the best job I’ve ever had actually. I’m very lucky. Most people hate heir work if they are doing their passion. I do this as it pays the bills and appeals to my OCD technical side.
and ive ive been around some teenage boys … I’m thinking we’d rather have them smell like that than the alternative! 😉
17 August 2015 at 03:01 #41870@rose2112
a diet without sugar and wheat -for the most part suggests to me that you’re very fit and slim -a diet that causes a full lifestyle change must impact on the body. So good on you -though such diets involving limited wheat and sugar can be somewhat tricky.
@arbutus I’m with you and Rose on the “boy” thing of video gaming, snuggling (whilst you can and before you’re told “get orf mom, leave me alone”) and watching YouTube highlights of soccer. Oh Arbut, I try to be very ‘interested’ in all these goals, fouls and penalties: I have the ‘enthusiastic’ look which is really faked as I quickly tire after one 5 mins video!
Fortunately Boy Ilion is happy enough to hug and say “I love you” before he hops off to bed which is good -Mr Ilion still goes in to ‘tuck’ him in where they quickly chat about the ‘best 3 things that happened that day’. I discovered this from a friend of mine who started this when their child was old enough to talk and I think it’s one (albeit) small way to ‘communicate’ and aren’t we always told “keep a dialogue open with your kids” 🙂
So your Kitchen Aid is the name of the appliance ? Because if it has a pasta attachment then I’m thinking this is something I’d love to try. Years of buying pre-made ravioli and tortellini (with foul little hard “seafood” or “something” inside -Gordon Ramsay would say “it looks like a chopped off dog’s dick -in fact, in an episode of Kitchen Nightmares, that’s exactly what he said about ravioli in some mad restaurant) have turned me off that type of pasta and yet eating it at our fav restaurant is expensive and the portions are too small for me (and I like a lot of ravioli!). Learning to make my own pasta is something I could do and know it would be appreciated. We can live without the toaster; the kettle; oh, and the microwave kinda blew up so I’m not too worried about chucking that !
@rose2112 on the nose piercing. I couldn’t sit thru either a piercing or a tattoo. At 48 I feel too old, although a friend of mine had a tiny tattoo of a star placed on her hand at 52 and it looks classy (if that possible!).
I also hurt @arbutus with the ear piercing. It was a surprise for my 8th birthday. I spent the day at Mum’s health food shop mooning about with an icepack tied around the chin (a la the mumps) keeping both ears frozen. What a day! Fortunately they never closed up but I recall getting some allergy to nickel or some other metal used in cosmetic jewellery? That means platinum, gold or silver unless I want my ears to ache for several days and sometimes…well a woman’s gotta do what’s she’s gotta do!
The BBQ sounds fantastic Rose -what a great job you have: sounds like they listen to staff and make an effort. Quite rare -certainly in the public service here.
@lisa I love good pizza and enjoy the plain topping too. But I’ve never had chicken on pizza. The pizza Hut sure has some weird concoctions including curried chicken on pizza -surely that was NEVER meant to be! Grilled chicken, maybe with chilli but minimal cheese would be quite refreshing if you want to avoid bacon and ‘harder’ meats. For some reason I thought you were vegetarian? But that must be someone else!
My memory…….puro wandering off to find it. It has to be in the building somewhere….
17 August 2015 at 04:23 #41871@mudlark On 1 of my trips to England I visited Anglesey Abbey with some friends
from the midlands area and Sara bought up some sacks of the stone ground flour from the gift
shop for her Mum and Auntie. Apparently they make the flour from a mill on the property.
That was btw some amazing garden! My favorite bit was the birch trees area under
planted with cyclamen. Visiting great gardens is a passion of mine.@purofilion Grilled onions on anything is always a good thing. There is a place
here in Sactown where I can go to get a authentic NY style neapolitan, marguerita pizza.
Its called Masullo’s. The owner/chef is a transplant from the Bronx and takes his pizza very
seriously. He imports a lot of his ingredients including the flour. I get over there now and then
but not too often. I get the grilled chicken pizza oven ready from Whole Foods mkt. Yes, they
are overpriced – but but but…. 🙂 (I also think they make a darn good new england clam
chowder which is nice on cold wet days.) However I don’t get over there all too often either.
We have such abundant choices for good food where I am. The area has this very pervasive
attitude of the ‘foodie interested peoples’.17 August 2015 at 05:15 #41872@arbutus I’ve seen pizza stones for ovens and bbq. My husband does mostly all the bbq.
I don’t know how this all came to pass but he has staked out certain cooking territory.
He also makes good eggplant humus which he has loved ever since he first ate it in a
restaurant and then there is his special grilled cheese. Of course far be it for me to mess
with him over any of his particular specialties 🙂 That would be silly!17 August 2015 at 05:43 #41874@Purofilion My S/O solved the onion cutting issue for me last year. He bought me some (very cheap) retro motorcycle goggles. They look hilarious and they work. Now I can happily cut a whole sack of onions without pain. Swimming goggles would also do the trick.
@other Mums, My youngest (R.3) has only just stopped giving me a hug when he goes off to school in the mornings. Not entirely sure it is an age thing or due to my being too grumpy most mornings. I often wish I could borrow a Tardis and take a quick trip back to when they were little. (would also be a great help when it comes to getting to school on time and getting Yr 12 assignments in on time..)
Cheers
Janette
17 August 2015 at 06:08 #41876bahahbahaLOL. ROFL: any other laughs? because that is an awesome image -and, when you think about it, perfect! Like the French, the Czech enjoy onion soup and anything with onion.
Consequently, I tried all sorts of wacky ideas: one was cutting up the onion whilst holding a steel spoon in your mouth (watch for drool). But having taken up snorkelling in my mid-twenties, I twigged to using my swimmimg goggles. Of course, condensation formed which meant I was basically cutting the onions with poor visibility anyway. But still: 50 onions & no tears.
So, a brilliant idea!! Make sure he takes photos for the family album so your boys know just what you went thru in order to provide dinner.
Having read the last part of your post, I would suggest a ‘high five’ in the am? Or a ‘hand slap’ when he exits the car. I remember pushing for that when the hugs and kisses ‘died’ at school and the hand slap worked. Even if it was done, undercover, in the car!
17 August 2015 at 12:13 #41881I am no longer itinerant (but am sleeping on the sofa for reason too convoluted to get into on coffee shop wifi)
17 August 2015 at 17:10 #41883@pedant – Congratulations! I’m sure the bed will soon follow. 🙂
@Rose2112 Gluten and dairy, wow, that’s tough. My experience with “gluten-free” products has not been positive, they often taste pretty bad. My father-in-law is gluten intolerant, and his solution is to eat a lot of corn product. This is a natural for him due to his career as a biologist, he was a corn specialist!
@purofilion That vegetarian would be me! (Although I think @janetteb said that she is as well?) The Kitchen Aid is a brand of electric mixer. Mine is very sturdy and comes with a dough hook, a paddle, and a whisk. It takes a lot of the physical work out of baking, and it has a sort of portal on the front that allows special pieces to be attached. I have the pasta maker and have just started learning how to use it. Haven’t yet progressed to ravioli, but that is definitely the end goal. A friend of mine has an ice cream maker that attaches to it! Believe it or not, I have never had a microwave and don’t miss it, but I wouldn’t want to go without my Kitchen Aid!
@lisa We have Whole Foods quite near us, and I find it very useful for certain things. I tend not to buy their produce, because it is usually more expensive than I like, but a lot of other things are actually priced better than elsewhere around here. I like that they are pretty accurate about telling you exactly where things come from! Their house brand frozen organic veg are really useful, as they are American produce as opposed to Chinese, and reasonably priced as well.
@janetteb I might actually try your goggle idea. We use a lot of onions, especially in our Indian and southeast Asian cooking, and I can never tolerate them long enough to dice them decently.
Arbutus Jr. at 16 will still give me hugs, and occasionally when he’s feeling blue will hang onto me for a cuddle. He and his dad do a sort of air fist bump in public, subtle enough that it won’t draw attention. In the privacy of home, though, we get plenty of hugs; he is, as we say, a “hugging and kissing boy” and probably always will be.
18 August 2015 at 03:51 #41884your son sounds a real delight. Love your kitchen aid. My “anti appliances” motto may well be changed in favour of something like this which has many applications. Our gluten free products are pretty good here. Cakes and breads taste almost normal and most restaurants have plenty of gluten-free meals. Even local pizza cafes provide gluten free bases so there’s quite a business in it too. Not like 25 yrs ago when it tasted dreadful.
@pedant hopefully you shall find a space soon!
18 August 2015 at 03:56 #41885@arbutus Yes indeed. I am also vegetarian but living with a family of carnivores.
@Rose2112 Have you read up on Fodmaps? There is a theory that a lot of “gluten intolerance” is actually an intolerance to Fodmaps. They are also found in dairy products and some fruits.
There was an article in the Guardian just the other day on food intolerance. I think it missed the glaringly obvious myself, the fact that the food we eat now is heavily adulterated. For instance most commonly consumed breads are far higher in gluten than they were 100 years ago. Also chemical additives can cause all sorts of obscure reactions, (such as skin outbreaks) and that is an area no one wants to go near because food additive production is a multimillion dollar business. About a year ago I read a very scary article by a journo’ who had managed to infiltrate a food additive fair. It was all too reminiscent of School Reunion.
Cheers
Janette
18 August 2015 at 14:28 #41891I’m a big fan of Den of Geek (would’ve guessed!). Have just read this and thought you may like it. Is a nice defence against ARSE re Marvel and The Avengers. Says a lot of what has been said here before.
Be careful what you wish for. Not because you might get it, but because you risk getting only that and nothing else.
18 August 2015 at 17:47 #41895@craig Good article from the den — thanks. So It’s a good thing that Steven Moffat mostly ignores the “demands” of the fans, eh? I think it is. That lovely extra tension, between fan uproar and Moffat’s teasing and forked tongue talk is a strong element in the pulsing lifeblood of the show, IMO. Buzz, buzz, shriek, swoon, terror, hysterics, doom, rapture, and (supposedly) cold analysis — you couldn’t design such a vivid response, and with such longevity, if you tried! Fan-TASTIC!
Well, something for everyone, really, but not everything for everyone. I stumbled across a corner of tumblr that’s connected to Philip Sandifer’s DW articles, and it appears to be a hotbed of excited academics writing “metas”, which are largely vast, over-arching theoretical dissections of the whole series, its symbology, psychology, intensely elaborate structures and motifs, etc., and I (yea, even I, who generally love intellectual/observational pursuits around this show) found myself — skimming long, intricate posts! Yep; a bit bored . . . or maybe just out of my depth? I’ll drop back in now and then, but that’ll do it.
The “what you wish for and nothing else” sounds to me like “lowest common denominator, i.e. only the elements that will please the most fans”; LCD useful in marketing, but it’s the death of art, and most fans are looking for some level of artistic resonance, even if they have to invent it for themselves (see: fanfic?).
18 August 2015 at 23:09 #41898@purofilion
I have space – it’s a bed I lack.
19 August 2015 at 00:05 #41899There’s always the ‘two pallets and a mattress’ trick. 😉
Glad to hear that you’ve found somewhere.
19 August 2015 at 02:40 #41900Ah, I see now – my apologies. All you need is furniture?
I recommend a couch, a bed, a table and chairs and some book shelves. Other than that, what else is needed?
I have a house with precious little furniture. Except for walls. The walls are furnished with some oils and interesting bit and pieces: some antique sewing work in abstract form (a grandmother), watercolours, as well as some wood paintings framed in tesserae from Persia -about 200 years old?
I never tire of looking at that stuff although, yesterday, was quoted a stunning 3 times the amount of other picture hangers for a canvas weighing less than a kilo. God, did they try to play me. And did I respond with vigour and venom! Also, in their email, they greeted me as: “hey”.
“Hey”. Oh yes, really successful in obtaining work these nutters.
@janetteb so, unlike us, you don’t buy ‘white sunblest’ bread? 🙂
what’s the bread you think is most likely appropriate? In other words what bread do you buy or do you also make your own? (I don’t, I’m afraid: not anymore, the temptation to eat it all is terrible and leads to weight gain in our household!)
19 August 2015 at 03:01 #41901Thank you for the link Craig and absolutely right. There’s an Abenaki phrase which outlines that same quote; be careful what you wish for etc…
it’s why I’m on a Primer re-digest this week. This was a man (Shane Carruth) who, because he was director, actor, writer, producer and composer (and the score is infinitely beautiful) who didn’t particularly care about pleasing anyone.
He wasn’t going to reduce the scientific tech. He wasn’t going to explain everything. He wasn’t going to dumb it down. He wanted to make a movie about time travel without mentioning time travel. And it worked. For years, Manchurian Candidate was my top film -now it’s replaced by Primer. Yes, it’s deliberately over-exposed. Yes, it’s got a monotonous vocal range and there’s no women to speak of (because only 2 people matter -or, technically Abe Prime; Abe 2; Aaron Prime; Aarons 2 & 3) but it’s still terrific. I’m not suggesting every director should be a Shane Carruth: people do want escapist adventure moves, long and boring vampire films (Twilight), light comedies or dramas with beautiful locations (unlike Dallas or Salt Lake City) and gorgeous wardrobe appeal. Nothing wrong with that. But it’s nice to see a film and have to work at understanding it.
It’s why I adored Buffy 5 -the metaphors alone kept me thinking. And it’s why I also loved Firefly -the majestic appeal of all those characters fitting together like a delicate jigsaw was marvellous. I loved Doctor Who, S 5 just as much. It spoke to me in a very personal and subjective manner. Even so, the season involving “the question that must never be answered” had an interesting pull factor. There was so much exquisite patterning and internal reflection that it was really hard to assume another season would be equally effective and grasp at the heart so deliberately -and last year’s Who definitely did that.
We have some fantastic telly and movies. Long may they deliver!
19 August 2015 at 06:19 #41903@purofilion I generally buy basic sliced multi grain, from the supermarket, the worst bread possible. Having three, (often four) teenage boys to feed fancy breads are a luxury. They will happily get through a loaf in a night. We do have a bread maker but rarely use it, partly for the reason you don’t have one. Homemade bread disappears twice as fast as the bought stuff.
The limited nature of history as taught in Australia is why I chose not to do Honours History. I looked at the courses on offer and took English and Drama instead. I have often regretted that as I would like to do a History masters. I should just be sensible and do a dip ed instead. (never too late to decide upon a career.) I did enjoy Modern History and Australian History but would have loved to have done ancient history. At least now they do some ancient history in year 8. Yr 9 history is back to the “same old”.
I have studied a lot of history in the past twenty years, picking on various periods relating to my writing, so roughly my main areas of interest are Early Medieval Europe and Twentieth Century Australia. I am currently focusing on Australian women and German citizens, (internees in particular) in WWI.
@pedant I hope that you will be comfortable soon. As long as you have a sofa by the 19th September all will be well. 🙂
Cheers
Janette
26 August 2015 at 06:02 #42048So, having had more red wine (cough) I was watching a British production about 40 Year old Virgins (nuthin’ wrong with that folks) but the first fella was in IT.
Again, terrific.
Except they focussed in on a mini Tardis on his work desk.
Gawd.
The agony.
26 August 2015 at 06:05 #42049Bahahahaahbaaboohooboohoo
I’m going to drink more Park Estate (red is lovely) and to Michael McIntyre I would say:
“no, not all of us think wine is just red and white colour”
And yes, I do stick my nose in the glass, Michael, and no it is nothing like rubbing your face up against a CD (don’t ask me -it was his joke!)
26 August 2015 at 06:10 #42050My brother informs me that despite being a geologist and fixing computers, writing code, doing origami and God only knows what, he also makes his own ravioli -without a pasta maker.
No fair.
He can do everything.
Gene codes suck.
Oh and he can do wine tasting and seemingly, being blind folded, can correctly pick wines. I always thought that was a crock. Maybe not. Not at all.
I think @blenkinsopthebrave is a wine connoisseur as well ? All respect to you. 🙂
1 September 2015 at 21:28 #42235Waaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!
I can’t believe it!
No new signings for this Season!How can we possibly make progress with the same team we had last season????
We’re stuck with the same Doctor and Companion, when Moffat knew we needed a Doctor who could score!
And trusting in the same short midfield maestro, when everyone knew we needed an enforcer Companion!
Moffat OUT!
oh, hold on……
…. I’ve confused my fanbase
ARSE!
(grrrrr – now what the hell have I posted on that Arsenal blog??)
1 September 2015 at 22:38 #42241@ichabod @mudlark @janetteb @purofilion
Moved into the pub for ease of ranting. As we currently have a (very lengthy) federal election going on at the moment, I may be ranting a bit more than usual! 😡
Mudlark’s comment it is difficult not to feel that we are governed by people who are intent on jettisoning pretty much everything this nation has which we can be reasonably proud of describes so well what has been going on in Canada for the past ten years. Barring the awful prospect of vote splitting, we may be ready to move on, as Canadians appear, at long last, to finally have had enough of it. But as Puro remarks, it beggars belief that so many of them can’t be bothered to vote.
Ichy, this: they replace the gold of quality with changelings made of shit is a fabulous statement. Unfortunately, too true.
@lisa Very disturbing piece. Or it should be. But too many people will not be warned. Our government is planning to flood the Peace River Valley in northern BC, hectares and hectares of some of the best farmland in Western Canada, for a dam that even the former head of BC Hydro says won’t necessarily be needed. It will deprive farmers of their homes and livelihoods, and First Nations bands of their traditional territory and burial grounds. All that is holding them up (and not very effectively, like standing in front of a pack of charging elephants) is a small group of First Peoples and their lawyers trying to fight the corporate behemoth and the government. One of them is my sister, who has a very small firm that handles native rights issues, and I can tell you that the media doesn’t even tell half the story of what goes on in those courtrooms. Limitless dollars thrown into the shutting down of people’s views, and environmentalists being spied upon by the government, and insane things that you never thought you’d see in this country.
1 September 2015 at 23:11 #42244@arbutus I saw something somewhere about the building of that dam as a way to back funnel
$ to subsidize the expansion of dirty oil sands? I thought that maybe voting in a new more
liberal government into (the was it the Alberta) province would have helped? Interesting also
because there already is a big dam there. Not very encouraging to hear that is still an issue.@ichabod In most sci fi when you see 1 gate there is usually another or several. I wonder
if we will do something like that ?1 September 2015 at 23:42 #42245@whisht I hate to think what the Arsenal fans are reading right now. (ARSEnal is probably an apt descriptor for some of them if they are anything like Canadian ice hockey fans!) Actually, I started my day by listening to a lengthy lecture from my son on various deals that had made him happy, sad, or filled with hilarity, depending on the circumstances. Meanwhile, he has sports network alerts on his phone so every time something happens in any of the leagues he follows, the phone vibrates; it was sitting next to his bed, bouncing away the entire time. 🙂
1 September 2015 at 23:53 #42246@lisa I’m not sure what the connection would have been. They are also trying to put a pipeline through there, called Northern Gateway, for the oil sands product, which might have been part of what you were reading. They’ve had much less joy with the pipeline, as most people here are against it and there’s very little in it for the BC government to force it through when most of the benefits would go elsewhere. But they’ve done a great PR job convincing people that without the Site C dam, the cost of their electricity will go up. They do already have two dams up there.
As for Alberta, much as I’m sure that Rachel Notley would love to pull way back on the oil sands, she can’t really afford to do anything too quickly as so many people are just waiting for her to put a foot wrong. She has already started looking into taxes and fees on the industry that have Tory-types yelling “I told you so!” And the province is now in recession, as the price of oil has dropped down so low and oil is by far their biggest economic sector, so she’s got her hands full. Plus, I’m sure she’s aware that the whole country is watching her to try and guess what Thomas Mulcair and the federal party would do if they were to be voted in next month. She won’t want to mess things up for him.
Oh, these are interesting days for socialists! 🙂
2 September 2015 at 00:55 #422472 September 2015 at 02:20 #42251Whilst we are part of the Commonwealth and used to get a lot of Canadian news, mostly we receive only that from Japan, China and America as well as the UK. My knowledge of either the pipeline or the new dam is completely null -had it not been for you explaining it!
Thank you for that. It sounds like a horrible situation. So, bribing environmentalists, funding select citizens and turning certain peoples’ reputations into mud is not just something for the movies? 🙁 It’s really happening?
Tim Flannery, once an environmental advisor to our old Labour Govt under K. Rudd, always commented on how excellent the soil in Canada was for farming and how, unlike us, the yield per hectare is fantastic: here, people were demanding we over-use our already poor soil and it was his job as ‘communicator’ to explain why we couldn’t push our land in the same way Canada, parts of America’s mid west and much of Europe can still do. And yet they will flood the Peace River area thus removing farm lands that I imagine have been in the hands of these owners for many generations?
Go to your sister, I say: I’m trying to come up with victory song combining ice hockey, soccer (Arsenal; ARSE = the Canadian govt) and Canada’s First Peoples. It’s not working out very well.
It’s jolly complex as a situation. I always become unbelievably stressed around voting time particularly when the ‘usuals’ talk about dropping taxes to a flat rate and ensuring a ‘user pays’ system is in place. If I point that they wouldn’t have the jobs they do because they went to university in the 80s without paying a cent, they start to look like they’ve sat on something in an awkward manner.
<<*}
12 September 2015 at 12:10 #42564The problem with being over 50 is that you can see the next generation making exactly the same mistakes all over again. 🙁
Bloody hell. Short of Dave and his mates being discovered running a paedophile ring from Number Ten, that’s the next election sewn up.
14 September 2015 at 15:16 #42650@purofilion, @janetteb, other Australians on the site, and all civilised peoples of the world,
I awoke this morning to the news that “the suppository of wisdom” (as the appalling Prime Minister Tony Abbott was referred to after a gaffe he made in a speech) has been flushed away!
What brilliant news! I am almost inclined to jump on a plane and fly back to join in the celebrations!
14 September 2015 at 17:25 #42656Yes, I had rather gleaned the impression (from this side of the world) that there might be much rejoicing and merriment over the Very Australian Coup. 😉
14 September 2015 at 18:25 #42657Congradulations Aussies! 🙂
I hope we in all the countries of the planet Earth
continue this more liberal move. I’m beginning to
feel some shifting in that direction. I’ve been
a tiny bit worried that we might start to resemble
early Skaro! But it seems as though global perspectives
are starting to change. -
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