Just a thought...

Is it me or does the 'united nations' sound like a group of super heroes while the 'Arab league' sounds like the villains.

Meatballs

Because I'm lazy I'll just be showing you a real easy recipe this week, Spaghetti. Now there are endless variations on how to cook up a la bologna, but I'll show you mine. It's really very simple.

Firstly I prefer meatballs over mince any day, so how do you make simple meatballs?

Well, quite simply with meat. In the picture above i have used 200g of minced steak, almost every meat is suitable for meatballs (try half pork, half beef). You can add egg, breadcrumbs etc... but to be honest just by adding a little salt you can shape the balls well enough. I have added a little paprika and oregano (O REG GANO if your American, ORI GANO if sensible) as well as basic seasoning to mine.

To cook, seal off the meatballs in a little olive oil until nicely browned. Remove to a baking tray and finish in a oven at 200 degrees c for roughly quarter of an hour.

And now how to make the sauce

To make a good Italian sauce all you need is onion, garlic and tomato. But we'll add to this a little, firstly fry some sliced or diced onions in the same pan you used for the meatballs, we want to use all that meaty fat left over, add crushed garlic to the party and cook lightly till soft. Add a couple of good sized chopped tomatoes and simmer till reduced alittle, and basically your there, when you cook the pasta (in salted water with a good splash of olive oil) reserve alittle oil to loosen the sauce, add the meatballs to the pan to warm and serve over the pasta, which will have been drained and tossed with olive oil and black pepper.

Et Viola, bein appreveche

(none of the above is Italian)

Jansson's Temptation,

Scandinavians are cool, that's a fact. But one things always worried me and that's the food. Every time I have saw pictures in books it all looks distinctly eighties, the bad sort of eighties, now surely that can't be right? Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Iceland have gave us some brilliant design quirks as well as this excellent movie.

No they have a healthy coffee and cake culture that i'll be exploring in the near future, but what about food? Well I have been experimenting Viking style. The first dish that i have tried is 'Jansson's Temptation' (Jansson's Frestelse), This is quite a traditional Swedish dish that was apparently born when an explorer was lost and only had potatoes, cream, onions and anchovies in his pack.

Here's what you'll need,

Jansson's Frestelse,

(Makes Two)

500g Potatoes

2 Cloves Garlic

2 Onions

Anchovies

Butter

Thyme

150ml Cream

Breadcrumbs

How to,

1, Peel and grate the potatoes and squeeze out any excess moisture.

2, Gently fry the garlic and add the onions, Diced or sliced its up to you. Cook lightly till golden and add half a tin of anchovies and a little oil.

3, After letting the onion mix cool, its time to start building, start with a layer of potato (i used a nice earthenware dish, looks are important) then the onion, garlic and anchovies mix, on top of this add the thyme before topping wish the rest of the potato.

4, pour the cream over the dish, topping off with a little milk if necessary.

5, Sprinkle with breadcrumbs (an easy way to get good breadcrumbs is to let a slice of bread dry out in a warm oven and then break it up with your fingers) and dot with butter.

6, After forty five minutes at two hundred degrees Celsius it should be light golden on top and ready to eat.

Scandinavia

It has to be said I did really enjoy this, I served it with a pan roasted fillet of Lamb and a red wine sauce. I think the only thing i would consider changing is the anchovies, maybe reducing the amount a little. They tasted good, its just the smell while cooking was, ermm prominent.

Tabletop General

While I have dabbled in Warhammer for a few (actually, while in my head it only seems like two, three. I have been playing for more like ten, with a year or two hiatus during university) years, last week was the first competitive games I have ever played.

The tournament was held at a local gaming club, well local-ish, in Stockport. The points value was 600 meaning short and brutal games, the usual points value being 1750, they numbered five in total and their were fourteen competitors. After much deliberation I decided to field an army of Lamentors, Blood angels successor chapter, this was largely due to there fantastic back story and in know way due to their primary colour being yellow.

sorry about the quality

600 points doesn't leave you with many options and it can be quite hard to come up with a good list, the one I settled on is as follows,

HQ,

Liberian with Blood Lance and Fear of Darkness, a very fitting an effective pys power.

ELITE,

Furiso Dreadnought in a drop pod with Frag Cannon and Melta, The frag cannon more than makes up for the lack of an initial charge.

TROOPS,

Five man Assault Squad, Melta, Rhino.

Five man Scout Squad, Sniper rifles, Missile.

FAST ATTACK

Baal Predator, Assault Cannons.

The Liberian hitches a lift with the Assault Squad and they Melta and Fear anything from the table as a clean up crew at the end. The Baal, thanks to its scout and fast vehicle status takes command of the centre and pours its fire where needed. The scouts suck cover and hold objective and the Dreadnought drops down and causes havoc.

So I'm sure your all itching to know how it went, well I came fifth, with a lot of dispute over fourth. Actually turns out I should of placed fourth(I knew Necrons couldn't stand back up when fleeing). Still fifth out of fourteen in my first official tournament is an excellent starting point. It now leaves me ranked 380^th in the country at Warhammer 40k, how 'bout that?

Heritage and Parsnips

Well After working on my garden for a few days i feel like progress is being made and I its time to think about what to grow, oh what fun! The possibilities are very nearly endless, there a lot of veg out there, but also a lot of different varieties. One thing i want to try growing however is parsnips, I really, Really love parsnips, no other vegetable can even hope to compete with the mighty Parsnip.

They a very British plant, growing well in our colder climate (in fact the taste better after a frost) and are very under estimated. Many people are familiar with them at Christmas, but i believe no dinner is a roast without a whole dish of these sweet roots. Apparently the French only used them for cattle fodder, further proof that Franks are not the be all end all of food.

This year in my garden I'm heavily considering growing a lot of heritage fruit, not only will this be keeping alive olde English traditions, you'll also invariably get more interesting produce. So up above you'll see the first purchased seeds for my spring garden. Until next time.

Three days in..

Ah just noticed its actually four. But lets begin, (actually on a side note, my pissing space bar is playing up, you reading this have absolutely no idea how irritating this is getting.) This is the time of the year when people start making outlandish claims as to what they are going to give up, but won't. This leaves two options.

1- Give up something you don't do, i.e. I know I'll quit smoking as I don't smoke.

2- Really, really try.

Now we all know which is the easy option, but lets try shall we? And lets pick something good, I personally like the idea of choosing to do something rather than cutting something out. The obvious being to get into shape, loose weight etc....BORING. You won't do it, not even till February.
My resolution is to have a go at forging my small concrete jungle into something life sustaining. Last year I didn't grow a thing and with spring just around the corner (unless there have been some rather serious changes that I don't know about) now is a good time to start planning.

Firstly, reclaim and clean. I need to take back the land, this will be a protracted campaign involving tools and bin bags. Its a little shocking how quickly junk can accumulate. Once all the rubbish has been cleared its time to take stock of what we have to work with. Really not much indeed. I have one actual patch of earth two metres by point five and several 50cm2 containers. Not a lot.

Not in previous years I have produced staples, such as potatoes, carrots, but really considering size restraints I can't afford to grow these ready available and cheap foods, so the plan is to grow more interesting fare. One thing we will definitely grow is leeks. Leeks are really nice, and astonishingly, to me at least, expensive to grow. Squashes and sweet potatoes, things I love but my GF won't touch and chillies. So in the coming weeks regeneration will start and magic will be sown. That's the idea at least.

Also, my last post concerned a rather curious book, that's fallen by the wayside due to lots of very interesting books (something Christmas hasn't helped at all) anyway, that will be back. Eventually.

The Complete Self Educator

I'm addicted to books, barely a week goes past when I don't pick another two or three. It's amazing how many you can pick up for so cheap. Most charity shops have bins full of paper and hardbacks all going for a pound or less, many in multi buy deals.

Markets, especially the flea variety. Can be brilliant, however the quality can be patchy. There's a distinct lack of quality control when people are selling their old junk off a wallpaper paste table than compared to a shop. Some of my best books have come form flea markets, including a second copy of Mikhail Bulgakov's 'The Master and the Margarita' (a book so fantastic I had to buy a second copy, and then several others of his books.) and a quite eclectic mix of fiction and fact. However the best little find has to be 'The Complete Self Educator'.

It's a good two inch's thick, very heavy and bound in something that could either be fake leather, actual leather or human skin. I'm not quite sure which. It's old that much is plain, but lacks a print date. What really sold it too me is four little words scrawled in red ink on the inside cover. 'Study all this book' is the sage advice that somebody in the past had to offer Janet Crowe (the faded pencil on the opposite page.

Essentially 'The Complete Self Educator' is a book of facts and information, not a text book nor a school book but something else entirely. It has fifteen chapters all on different subjects (rather endearingly Janet has ticked off chapters with a pencil, only two however, I don't think she took her advice too seriously) each of the chapters broken down into several subcategories,

English

French

Arithmetic

Biology

Medicine

Physics

Chemistry

Geography

English History

World History

Economics

Psychology

Philosophy

Logic

Intelligence Tests and Problems

Now I have no doubt that most of the information contained within is outdated and obsolete, especially in the case of medicine and psychology. But I have always been enraptured about the idea of a Polymath (polymath n somebody who has a wide range of knowledge), so I've decided to read a chapter a week to broaden my knowledge of the world. I'll be posting my findings up to share the cream of the crop with you. Now if you'll excuse me a number of cats are vying for my attention.