Monthly Archives: Dec 2010

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My Life in Song

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I stole this from Maggi Dawn’s blog, but she stole it from someone else so I guess it’s OK, she is an Anglican priest after all and if she can steal ideas so can I, I hope.

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST OR BAND, answer these questions; be as clever as you can. You can’t use the artist I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It’s harder than you think…”

This is my attempt

Pick your Artist:  Bruce Cockburn

Describe yourself:    Child of the Wind

How do you feel: Open

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:    Tokyo

Your favourite form of transportation:   Mighty Trucks of Midnight

Your best friend is a:   Life’s Mistress

You and your best friends are: Beautiful Creatures

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called: Pacing the Cage

What is life to you:   World of Wonders

Your current relationship:   Great Big Love

Your fear:   The trouble with Normal

What is the best advice you have to give:    Don’t forget about delight

I would like to die… When the Sun Goes Nova

Time of day:  Last Night of the world

My motto:   Listen for the Laugh

I’ve included links to the tracks on Spotify so you can listen to them if you feel so inclined.

Share and enjoy and copy your lists into a comment.

Cooking, Food

Porridge

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As London grinds to a halt under the effects of a major 10cm snowfall, thoughts shift. People realize that corn flakes are not quite what is needed for breakfast. I should add that I appreciate other parts of the UK may have had more snow than us in London. However, what you don’t appreciate is the fact that if it hasn’t happened in London, then it hasn’t really happened.

This is the season for porridge for breakfast. Besides all the well touted benefits of eating porridge for breakfast, making and eating a bowl of porridge is also satisfying. It does take slightly longer than pouring out a bowl of Rice Krispies. But believe me, you will be a better person, or at least feel like one, for making the effort.

The first piece of advice I will give you is do not make your porridge in the microwave.

Shortly after I was diagnosed as diabetic, I had a session with a Dietician. During our discussion about good food choices for blood glucose control, she mentioned that porridge was probably one of the best things I could eat for breakfast. She also mentioned that it could be made in the microwave. However, she forgot to tell me the most important thing about making porridge in a microwave. My immediate thought was ‘that will save washing up’. The next morning I proceeded to make my porridge in the microwave.

I measured out my usual recipe;

  • For 1
  • ½ a cup of rolled oats
  • 1 ¼ cups of water
  • a generous pinch of salt

I put it all into my porridge bowl. Then, I stuck it into the microwave and pushed start. After that, I went back to drinking my coffee and reading the newspaper. About five minutes later the microwave went ping. I wandered across the kitchen to retrieve my no effort, no washing up porridge. I discovered that the bowl was empty. The microwave was generously coated with porridge. I also discovered that removing porridge from the walls of a microwave is much harder. It is easier to remove it from a pan.

What my Dietician forgot to mention is that porridge made in a microwave foams up and boils over. Use a bowl that is at least five times the volume of the liquid. If you don’t consider this, do not make your porridge in the microwave. do not make your porridge in the microwave.

I now always make mine in a saucepan. It is just as quick and I think tastes better. Using the recipe above, put all the ingredients into a pan. Bring it to the boil. Then, turn it down to a low heat and allow it to ‘plop’ away happily for about five minutes. Give it a stir now and then. Traditionally, you should use a tapered stick called a spurtle. This stick usually has a thistle as a handle. We made them this way in woodwork class when I was at school. Stir it clockwise with this tool. I find that stirring it with a wooden spoon anti-clockwise also works. I put the salt in at the start. Some people like to cook the porridge then add salt to taste. All I will say is do not neglect the salt. It doesn’t need much, but porridge does need some salt.

For Saturday mornings, porridge made with oatmeal has a unique quality. If you are a traditionalist, it does have something that porridge made with rolled oats does not have.

The recipe is fairly similar but here are a couple of variations.

For 2

  • 600ml/1pint water
  • 100g 4 oz medium oatmeal
  • Salt
  • Bring the water to the boil, add the oatmeal slowly, stirring all the time.
  • Reduce the heat and allow it to cook slowly. Just give the occasional ‘plop’.
  • Let it cook for up to 30 minutes, depending on how solid you like your porridge.
  • Give it a stir every now and again, add salt to taste and serve.

Again traditionally, you should eat your porridge by dipping a spoon of hot porridge into a bowl of cold milk. This is to keep your porridge hot, as adding cold milk to the bowl of porridge will cool it down. Nice though that is I think there are more interesting things to add to porridge.

Here are some of my favourites.

  • Honey
  • Thick natural plain yoghurt
  • Fruit compote
  • A tot of whisky and honey
  • Cinnamon and chopped and toasted nuts
  • Cream

Or of course any combination of them.

Should you make too much porridge, let it go cold and set solid. It is absolutely delicious sliced, fried in a little butter and served with runny honey.

As for washing up the pan, don’t, fill it with cold water and let it soak for a few hours. The porridge sticking to the pan will have come off as a sort of skin. This skin can be scooped up and discarded. This process leaves a clean and shiny pan behind.

Politics

Telling white lies to children

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While I was working in a dental surgery yesterday I noticed that on the walls there were numerous posters encouraging children to brush their teeth and to eat non-sugary snacks. Three in particular caught my attention.

The first one was of Pippin the Dog, from the children’s TV programme ‘Come Outside’. Beneath the drawing of Pippin it said

Pippin the dog eats fruit and vegetables to keep his teeth healthy.

I don’t really know what kind of dog Pippin is, but from the drawing I would say some kind of mongrel. So he may be a very unusual dog, but I have never come across a dog that eats fruit and veg.

The second one was of Winnie the Pooh and some of his friends. Beneath the drawing it said

Pooh Bear and his friends only* eat fruit and vegetables between meals. (* my emphasis)

My knowledge of Winnie the Pooh is about fifty years old and my memory may be faulty, but my recollection is that Pooh’s favourite between meals snack was a honey (or Hunny)  sandwich, not fruit and veg.

The third one was of Snow White and beneath that drawing it said

Snow White only eats apples

I don’t know if Snow White only ate apples, but she definitely ate one, and a lot of good that did her.

I fully understand that the purpose of these posters is to encourage young children to eat healthier snacks rather than sweets, but is telling lies to children justified in the greater cause of healthy teeth?

Should we tell children that Father Christmas doesn’t exist, even though the fantasy doesn’t seem to do any harm, and most kids do not seem to be too traumatized when they find out for themselves?

Are any lies justified?  The current Wikileaks data dump seems to show that governments in general think that certain lies, or obfuscations of the truth are justified. I am in two minds about the disclosure, because I do think that there are certain things that it is legitimate for governments, private  organisations, or even families and individuals to keep secret. On the other hand a lot of the material that has been released is embarrassing , The Duke of Pork’s foul-mouthed rant for example, rather than threatening national or international security. And how secret can the data be when it is posted to an Intranet that about three million people, including a Private First Class, have access to?

Ultimately, I do believe that in private life, and government and corporate life, there are things that should only be shared within a small circle, kept secret in fact. However, the bias should always be to openness  and transparency, especially where the information is merely embarrassing. Strangely enough I feel that in the end concealment of embarrassing material ultimately leads to  more embarrassment than transparency. I think that last year’s M.P.’s expenses scandal is a case in point. A fully open and transparent system of expense claims would have never allowed the scandal to occur in the first place, but we did not have that in place and probably still don’t.  The thing that made the release of the documents worse, for the M.P.s involved, was the long and hard rearguard action that they put up in the attempt to prevent the release of material they knew was going to show them in a bad light.

Keep secret only what really needs to be kept secret, and make sure that if it has to be kept secret only the people who need to know have access, otherwise release it all into the public domain, most of it is probably pretty banal anyway. I don’t think that I have read anything on the Wikileaks release that either surprised or shocked me. Sorry I was mildly surprised at the extent of the Duke of York’s vocabulary, but then his father has previous.