food+drink

Dish of the Day

For once I managed to get off my beam end this evening and do as I always used to: cook tea.

Chorizo with Mushrooms, Herbs and Linguini

Preparation: 10 minutes
Cooking: 15 minutes

You will need (adapt to suit your taste and what you have in the fridge):

  • 250gm Chorizo, cut into sensible sized pieces
  • large Onion, coarsely chopped
  • lots of Garlic, coarsely chopped
  • 400gm tin Tomatoes (or you could use very ripe fresh tomatoes)
  • White wine
  • 8-10 button mushrooms (halved if large)
  • 8-10 good Black Olives, stoned and roughly chopped (I used the end of a tub of fresh Kalamata Olives)
  • 2 good handfuls of fresh Herbs/Leaves (I used some baby spinach, mint leaves and tarragon)
  • Olive oil
  • Salt & Pepper
  • 250gm fresh Pasta (I used Linguini, but any pasta will do)

Fry the onions, garlic and olives until they just begin to brown.
Add the chorizo and continue to cook for a couple more minutes.
Add the tin of tomatoes and a glass of white wine; continue cooking over a moderate heat.
After about 5 minutes, add the mushrooms and herbs plus more wine if needed to prevent it sticking. Season to taste.
Cook until chorizo is done (another 5 minutes or so) and the sauce is beginning to thicken.
Meanwhile cook the pasta until just done.
Drain the pasta, add it to the pan with the meat and mix together quickly.
Serve immediately with shaved Parmesan and a robust red wine.

This was a rib-sticking main course for the two of us (no starter or pudding required) or would serve 4 as a small main course.

memes, personal, photography

Household Meme


Household Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s Flickr meme is about how your household runs; here are some questions and answers:

1. When does your garbage disposal happen? Early Friday morning
2. What special jobs are assigned to other people in the house? All of them if I could get away with i; but seriously we don’t tend to assign special jobs, except that I always do the finances and Noreen always does the garbage
3. Who is responsible for bathroom cleaning? Both of us
4. Who cooks? Mostly Noreen these days; but it should be me
5. Who washes the dishes? The electric scullery maid
6. What temperature is your heating set at? Comfortable for nudity, usually about 20 Celsius
7. Who does the washing & ironing? The resident costume curator
8. Who pays the household bills / is financial controller? Me; well most of it anyway. We have our own bank accounts and our own money but I pay most of the bills as I earn the more
9. If you have a garden (or houseplants) who looks after it? Both of us plus Tom the gardener who does the heavier, and more boring, work
10. Do you replace commodities when they run out, or do you keep a spare? What do you keep a spare of? We keep spares of most things we commonly use; like everything from toothpaste to garlic paste
11. When is your heating on; some hours or 24/7? Morning & evening during the week; morning ’til night at weekends; unless it is bitterly cold of course. And yes, our house is naturally warm
12. Are there special jobs done on particular days? Not really except for the garbage and the finances on pay day

As always these photographs are not mine so please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. Chicago, early morning, 18 April 2008, 2. ColOurs… all of tHem…, 3. Just the two of us…, 4. KC the wundermutt upclose, 5. AKIBA Scenario, 6. day one hundred five, 7. Musketeer, 8. I’m sick as a dog….., 9. Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. –Marcel Proust, 10. What do you call Romanian toothpaste, 11. Good Morning, 12. O.P. (Organizing Principle)

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

amusements, current affairs

You couldn't make it up …

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Quotes from today’s news which amused me …

Conservative leader David Cameron on Gordon Brown: He can’t seem to reshuffle his cabinet but they can’t seem to organise a coup.

Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan: If Labour MPs put their terror of the electorate above any considerations of patriotism or democracy, they will do irreparable damage […] to representative democracy. This is your last chance, comrades.

Labour backbencher Jon Cruddas: Everyone’s walking away and taking their bat home with them.

And finally …

Former Home Secretary David Blunkett is recovering after being injured by a charging cow in Derbyshire.

Really you couldn’t make it up!

memes, personal, photography

Bucket List Meme


Bucket List Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

This week’s Flickr meme is again simple: share 12 things you want to do before you die.

This isn’t necessarily the definitive set, but here goes with a selection …

1. Retire
2. Win the lottery
3. Fix my depression
4. Celebrate our pearl wedding anniversary
5. Have a swimming pool and swim nude every day
6. Be able to afford it (for any chosen value if “it”)
7. Have a naturist holiday
8. Have another 3 wishes
9. Get a knighthood (or peerage); not that there’s any chance of this.
10. Grow old disgracefully and in good health
11. Become skillful at dowsing
12. Become immortal

As always these photographs are not mine so please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. retired, 2. 2009: Another Year …., 3. If my hair looks good that’s all that matters……., 4. peach bridesmaids’ bouquet, 5. swim, 6. Maybe I can afford it one day!, 7. More for friends, 8. Three Wishes, 9. Gulf Coast Renaissance Faire, 10. By the Waters Edge…., 11. Pendulum1, 12. Immortality

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

memes, personal, photography

Amended DID Meme


Amended DID Meme, originally uploaded by kcm76.

As most UK readers will know Desert Island Discs (DID) is a radio programme where a celebrity is asked to nominate the 8 records they would want if cast-a-way alone on a desert island. They are also allowed one book (they get the Bible and Shakespeare as well) and one luxury item (as long as it doesn’t aid them in escaping). It has been broadcast every week for well over 50 years!

This week’s Flickr meme follows the DID theme: chose 5 CD’s (to be loaded onto an iPod), 2 books, 4 luxury items and 1 food item of which you get an unlimited supply.

OK, so here are my choices:
1. CD: Monteverdi, 1610 Vespers
2. CD: Beatles, Let It Be
3. CD: Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here
4. CD: Granados, Goyescas (Piano Music)
5. CD: JS Bach, Complete Organ Works
6. Book: Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time (yes, I’ll have all 12 volumes, thank you!)
7. Book: Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
8. Luxury: Digital Camera with Assorted Lenses, battery charger, etc.
9. Luxury: PC with Internet Connection and Photoshop
10. Luxury: Prolifically Fruiting Avocado Tree
11. Luxury: Large Swiss Army Knife
12. Food: Nuts (assorted types)
Oh and I’ve mixed it up a bit as every one of the images is a collage.

This week’s Flickr meme could go one of two ways: either show us 12 of your favourites from other photographers or show us 12 favourite pictures you’ve taken! I have chosen to do the former; so here are 12 of my favourites from 12 other photographers — and not a pretty girl in sight (for once!). I might do 12 of my own favourites later in the week; or I might do 12 pretty girls from amongst my Flickr favourites.

1. Detail2 Poppea, 2. Art Project I, 3. Two lost souls, 4. The Crooked Coda: Toccare, 5. Orgelmuseum Malchow, 6. Sparkle With The Joy of Life, 7. Tales and Legends ~ Alice in Wonderland, 8. four amigos (hockney style), 9. Collage fragment3, 10. avocado, 11. Swiss army yo-yo, 12. Well Grab Your Drink And Clear A Space, I Think It’s Time To Torch This Place

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

current affairs, medical, science, words

Pandemic

Following on from my post of yesterday, it seems that WHO really are bowing to political pressure and redefining pandemic to take account of virulence as well as geographical spread. As an academic, Vincent Racaniello, author of the Virology Blog, is typically scathing:

WHO redefining pandemic is absurd. Pandemic is an epidemiological definition that has nothing to do with virulence […] Although pandemic is most frequently associated with influenza virus, other infectious agents may cause worldwide epidemics […] WHO should leave textbook writing to others. To paraphrase Andre Lwoff, a pandemic is a pandemic. The word implies nothing about virulence – and has little to do with politics.

As a fully paid-up pedant (and erstwhile academic) I entirely agree.

photography, pleasures

H Asleep – Join the Dots


H Asleep – Join the Dots, originally uploaded by kcm76.

Harry the cat asleep on my study chair; he was so dead to the world he didn’t even twitch a whisker while I leant across for my camera and took photographs until I moved the chair slightly; even then all he did was open half an eye! The cropping was a bit of an experiment.

history, pleasures

A Practical Use for Cats

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Another snippet which interested me (as an ailurophile) this week is from the May 2009 issue of Subterranea*:

A Practical Use for Cats

An unsubstantiated item of Derbyshire folklore claims the application of a cat to useful purposes, in connection with the development of lead mining at Bole Hill, near Wirksworth. Here shafts had been sunk, and lead ore raised, to considerable depths, until the water-table was reached necessitating expensive pumping if mining was to follow the ore deeper.

From 1772 a drainage tunnel (the Meerbrook sough) was driven under the hill from the valley of the river Derwent, intended to connect with a shaft then of the order of 200 metres deep. The tunnel was not in one straight line, as it made diversions from time to time to follow veins of galena as they were encountered. After 26 years or so, when the tunnel was getting close to the shaft, the question arose how to effect the meeting of the two with least wasted labour.

The solution, local legend has it, was provided by a cat, taken along the very wet tunnel into the heart of the hill. Boring was commenced at the bottom of the shaft at a predetermined time. The cat in the tunnel turned to look in the direction of the sound, thus indicating the exact alignment needed for the final length of the drainage tunnel. This was repeated several metres further along the same tunnel, allowing the determination of the shaft’s location by triangulation.

* Subterranea is the magazine of Subterranea Britannica, the “society devoted to the study of man-made and man-used underground structures and the archaeology of the Cold War”.