Oh no, not another food blog!

There are too many food blogs in the world already, I know.

You can look away now if you are sick of them.

But this post is going to be a food post. I love food. I love reading cookbooks (preferably chatty ones like Nigella rather than simply lists of instructions) even when I don't get around to making the food inside. I love reading menus, even after I have chosen my meal. Cocktail menus are fantastic too, and I love to watch cocktails being made, whether the barman looks like Tom Cruise or not.

In a previous life I was a scientist, so the idea of measuring things out, mixing them up, spinning them around, heating up or cooling down, this all is very familiar. And unlike science, what you get at the end is FOOD!

So tonight I am making dinner for some friends. You can call it a dinner party if you must. Really it's an excuse to spend the afternoon in the kitchen, spend more money than usual on ingredients, and try out some recipes. Whenever I watch Come Dine With Me and a contestant says "I haven't tried this before" I always scream at them "Nooooooo! You are being judged! Do something tried-and-tested!" (although when they say "I've done this a million times before" it is generally a sign that this will be the time it goes wrong). Luckily I am not being judged. Except perhaps by you. I am having dinner with friends who will treat my efforts kindly, and if all doesn't go well the Indian takeaway round the corner is open til 12.


Here are the two untried recipes:
Thai pork patties from the lovely, funny, and slightly sweary Esther Walker

Thai green curry from Jamie Oliver (actually from a book but this is where I could find it online - don't worry it's a safe link).

As you can possibly see, I didn't follow either recipe 100% to the letter, but tasty food came out at the end so I will call it a success. The curry could have been creamier but that's easy to fix - just add more coconut milk!

How do I know thee? Let me count the ways.

Prompted by a conversation on Twitter that went something like this (details removed so we don't have to discuss the actual issue itself)

Journalist - Link
Journalist - Joking/sarcastic comment about link
Me - Another sarcastic comment

Journalist - I was being sarcastic! Don't believe I think that.
Another human being (who I assume doesn't know the journalist personally) - I was worried for a second.
Me - I was joining in with the sarcasm - I didnt think you meant it!
Journalist - Phew!

I realised that I had assumed that the journalist knew that I "knew" her well enough to know that she would never say anything like that seriously. Which is of course madness. She doesn't know me, I don't know her, neither of us knows the third person, and yet I assumed that she would know I was being sarcastic, and she cared when she thought that we had misunderstood her joke.

When you communicate with people online, do you feel that you know them? In the online world I can feel that I know a lot about people's opinions without knowing very much about their lives at all. Age, location, marital status, children, even sex in some cases. All of these are secondary to what someone thinks about a new TV series or the best way to mix a cocktail or whether crocs are the work of the devil or comfy enough to override the ugliness.

In real life the opposite is true, when you meet someone the first things you find out about them are the externalities, the house/job/children, but in order to get to know someone, to know if this is someone you want to meet again, you need to chat about what you think about things, not what you have or what you do but how you feel about issues.

I can't see any way to change this, however, without sounding like a deranged quizmaster.
Nice to meet you, now what do you think about MSG? Which is more important, a good haircut or good shoes? Which Beatle do you like best and why?
I can't see it going down well.

The Pepsi(Max) Challenge.

Inspired by a BBC programme called Business Nightmares, I decided to do the "Pepsi Challenge".

You'll be familiar with the phrase, but the footage within the programme (still available on iplayer) was charmingly low-budget. Pepsi started the marketing campaign in 1975; members of the public are asked to try two unmarked glasses of cola, and after they express a preference a cardboard box (I told you it was high-tech) is moved, revealing the bottles from which the beverages were poured. "Which drink did you prefer?" "Pepsi!".

My own Pepsi Challenge will be not between standard Pepsi and Coke, but between the two new players. Pepsi Max and Coke Zero. These are diet drinks branded not as 'diet' but as 'no sugar', perhaps in an attempt to make drinking a diet drink seem more masculine. Both brands have certainly learnt from the New Coke disaster covered in the Business Nightmares programme - instead of updating their diet drinks they have . To my mind Coke Zero is what Diet Coke would taste like if it had been invented in the noughties rather than the 80s. (2006 and 1982 to be precise, Pepsi Max and Diet Pepsi were launched in 1993 and 1964 respectively).

So, onto the tasting. Two cans, put into the fridge at the same time, poured into same-sized glasses by a helpful volunteer, and I poured for him, so that neither of us knew which drink we were tasting.

I believed that I knew which was which instantly, and I was right. My assistant also guessed the identity of the drinks correctly.

• Pepsi Max
• is sweeter
• looks fizzier but tastes flatter
• tastes "of America" according to my test subject
• Coke Zero
• is more acidic-tasting
• "sharper" in the mouth
• preferred by both of us (maybe not surprisingly since they had 13 more years to work on the formula)

So I know which I should be buying - although knowing me it is more likely that I will go for whichever is on special offer!

Which do you prefer? Do you know?

If BA offer you a flight that is actually run by American Airlines...

... and it's the same price but at a more convenient time, so you take it thinking 'well it must be pretty much the same or else they wouldn't offer it', don't say I didn't warn you.

It is not the same.

You can't check in online, which means that you get to the airport to find that everyone who booked via AA has already taken all the good seats.

When they come around with the drinks trolley and you ask for a gin and tonic they say 'we charge for liquor'. "Liquor"? What a judgemental and puritanical word! I am going to sit in this very small space for the next 11 hours, and you seek to deny me gin? I have paid for a service with gin, as all Englishmen deserve. We didn't build an Empire on denying people gin! (I'm not technically an Englishman, but it scans better than saying I believe that everyone deserves gin if they are taking a long flight).

Then you turn on the little TV, searching for something to take your mind off the fact that you have no gin, because you have no cash, because you have spent all your dollars and were going to go to the cash machine at the other end, and discover that the selection of films is rather more sparse than on the BA flight, and that they don't start when you ask them to. No, they start whenever they feel like it, and you have to plan your time around them. If you wanted to watch <forgets names of all the films that were there because they were rubbish> Film A then you have to wait around for half an hour watching the no-booze trolleys go past, or deliberately wake up from your nap. If the crew ask you a question during a critical bit of dialogue that's it, it's gone forever. What century is this? Even the BBC has iplayer. I don't wait around for the time that a show is actually ^on TV^ at home when there are other forms of entertainment, and yet you make me do so when I am stuck in a seat and have nothing else to do?


Rant over. Ish. I know it all comes under First World Problems, but really if you are paying for BA make sure you get your booze and your telly.

On a more serious note, do vegetarians book special meals on flights? I figured that since there was always a vegetarian option for the main food that veggies would just choose that and not worry about it. Don't do that if you are flying with American Airlines. I chose the vegetarian because it sounded nicer and the label said "Allergens: Fish". Not very veggie at all then.

11.11 again?

I opened my eyes this morning and the clock said 5.55. Don't worry, I closed them again pretty sharpish. When I regained consciousness again I thought "That's pretty unusual", then realised that it probably wasn't.

So here's my attempt at some maths. You can stop reading here if you like.


The clock is set to 12 (rather than 24) hour display, so there are 12 x 60 = 720 different numbers it might be showing. How many of those would make you think "Hey, look!"?


All the same number: 1.11, 2.22, 3.33, 4.44, 5.55, 11.11
Hour and number the same: 1.01, 2.02. 3.03. 4.04, 5.05, 6.06, 7.07, 8.08, 9.09, 10.10, (11.11 already counted) 12.12.
Counting up: 1.23, 2.34, 3.45, 4.56, 12.34
Counting down: 2.10, 3.21, 4.32, 5.43, 6.54


Any more suggestions? I count 27 numbers that would make you look. 720/27 is 1 in 27. That's not very unusual. If you look at a clock about once every half hour during your waking day you'll see a "hey look" time about once a day.

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I realise some times are more visible than others - I expereince many more hours-beginning with-9 than I do hours-beginning-with-4, but it's Saturday and I'm not actually that good at statistics.

Why I ignored a wedding list request

It took me until age 21 or so to realise that I wasn’t growing any more. I’d been buying my own clothes since about 14 and had not got out of the mindset that expensive clothes were not worth it because I would grow out of them. I still stick to that principle sometimes, only now it is the realisation that I will grow out of a fashionable item not physically but mentally.

So here is my mantra that I will (attempt to) live by. If you intend to use something a lot, or over a long period of time, or both, get a good one. A good one will be pleasurable to use, and will actually withstand heavy use. This is why I have an enormous heavy garlic press. The last one couldn’t take the pressure. The thing is never in the drawer, it is used more days than it is not used and half the time I have to wash it up specifically to use it, because the normal washing-up flow has not yet gotten to it before I need to use it again. Yes, we don’t wash up after every meal. We are slatterns. Let's move on.

“Where’s the wedding list?”, I hear you cry. Or I would if a) I could hear forwards in time and through the internet, and b) I believed that anyone would read this. The wedding list, or in fact lack of one, is here. I attended a wedding last week for a grown-up couple who requested that “as we have plenty of pots and pans, if you would like to give us a gift we would appreciate a donation towards a honeymoon”. I don’t object to this. I know some people do, they consider it rude to ask for money. I don’t see it as asking for money so much as saying that if we would like to spend money on them, here is the way to do it that would be most appreciated. The things that I do very slightly object to is that the couple concerned do not have plenty of pots and pans. Not good ones anyway. Last time I visited the groom was struggling to make scrambled eggs in a nasty burnt-bottomed pan that’s probably 20 years old and not very good when it was bought. They are twice my age and haven’t learned the lessons above, so I have taken it upon myself to be very sanctimonious and annoying make their lives easier by giving them a nice non-stick pan. If anyone wants a recommendation for an inexpensive but super non-stick pan, these are the ones. Food just slides off. It’s like magic.

I am contributing to the honeymoon fund as well, I’m not that self-righteous that I have decided that they must have the pan instead , but they can have the pan as well.

I do remember a joke...

Equating Islam with terrorists is like...

equating all Christians with kiddly-fiddlers

or saying that all Jedis are like a bloke being kicked out of Tesco for wearing a dressing gown and carrying a lightsaber

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(from Andy Parsons)
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But better than that, he messed it up, and said "all Jedis are like a bloke being kicked out of Tesco for wearing a lightsaber and carrying a dressing gown", and started to crack up halfway through. "Now we are all thinking of a naked guy carrying a dressing gown, and we don't know where he is wearing that lightsaber". I imagine that he was wearing his "dressing gown" and Tesco staff told him that he wasn't allowed in wearing nightclothes, at which he said "OK then" and took it off.

Does the ban on shopping in your pyjamas extend to other dressing-gown-like clothing too? What about a karate gi? That looks dressing-gown-ish.