Note to self, don't sun self in garden then fall up some steps with phone in hand:
On the Plus side new 30"
:-D
woo go team me!
woo go team me! ;-)
On the down side I have the wrong display connector lead so I get to enjoy all of 50% of my new monitor
:-D
My 'Command Center' while I was waiting for the 30" to arrive, Thought I'd try Portrait and enjoyed it a lot for coding... what a huge nerd I have become
Though I still got nothing on this guy:
And he's got nothing on this guy:
And here is a horse enjoying a helicopter ride in McGuyver:
Possibly the greatest thing I have ever witnessed on tv is McGuyver escaping on horse back and being air lifted mid stride
And while I'm in a random mood been watching StarTrek TNG from scratch as they re-released in HD:
And turns out my style choices or lack thereof have led me to become a perfect imitation of Inspector gadget
:-/
One has to be able to take the piss out of ones self *sips tea*
Great sadness, I dropped my bake well *sobs*
My Kitty likes the smell of Brioche it would seem, silly Sasha:
Also some truths
And screw the person who invented Menu Bar Icons and didn't set up a governing body to regulate it:
And why.. why so many tabs, what is wrong with me:
And lastly I made this graph of relative time scales, each pixels was something like 1000 years If I remember right. So for example you can see Fish and Plants in total have been around 4x longer than dinosaurs, and that the entire transformation it took from Lemurs to Modern Human beings was similar to the amount of time Dinosaurs evolved and were alive for entirely. And that for a huge chunk of time we just had single cell life, but that single cell life sprang up relatively quickly and it took AGES to get to multi cell, but once it had... everything got started then
:-)
Your entire life and that of everyone you have ever known is also on that graph, It's an invisible smudge too small for the naked eye to see though, like a mustard burp, momentarily tangy and then forgotten in the air
Ok it is apparent writing to this journal of randomness is not something I do often enough, in fact add that to the long list of things I don't do enough
Exercise, Travel, Work etc etc
And all the things I haven't done, checked off, got round to reading, watching, listening to and playing
Vast, easily 1000's of times greater than the usable years in a single life
Life very much is becoming more apparently stream like, where you dip in, versus a list of things you check off and 'achieve'
Still this realization helps me little, either in figuring out what I am to do tomorrow, or the equally bewildering question of what on earth it was I even did yesterday
Ah but how the last 12 months have been fun, so so fun
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LetterPress = TimeVampire
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Igloo is no more
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Aww my moms diet dinner on the right... very sad:
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Sadness ensued:
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It's official I have a drink problem... in that I have too many!
Just received delivery of some more spirits id been eyeing up online. And yesterday I received the first part of my shipment of spicy spicy hot sauces... liquid pleasures indeed
Slightly obsessive? hoardish?... probably, given the drinks are all quite expensive for what they are, but at the same time I blow more on a monthly basis on train travel and taxis easily... and that really is depressing... this however fills me with joy
Most of this is all exploratory, finding things I like, some I like some I don't, I will admit there is a disproportionate number of cherry brandy and baileys bottles there *grins* I love that stuff.
A couple of the hot sauces are really nice too, the 'Pain is Good' ones, lots of BBQ flavour and while they are spicy they are not instantly lethal like the other 3 I got at the same time... the Red one on in the far corner is insane, but interesting at the same time, it has a weird deep burn that starts in the throat then your tongue explodes and you start panicking -_-
I hate the word Gourmet, perhaps as it reeks of pretensive and elitist... anyone who can taste the difference of crap from good food and has the money and wisdom to choose the better stuff read on
I am no food expert but here I shall collect some of my findings of stuff I find particularly delicious
It doesn't inherently have to be expensive, I like simple foods, not everything has to be aged 100 years to pass my palate.. id rather eat at Pizzahut than a authentic Italian Restaurant, I'm not a big fan of nouvelle cuisine where they server you tiny ass amounts of food in some kind of sadist fashion of making you want it more... pseudo expensive I call it, where people try to make stuff seem expensive by either covering it in fake gold or just giving you hardly any of it in order to make you feel posh because you are that superficial.
Anyway I could rant on forever, to the food and drink!!
I will be paying special attention to things local to me in and around Birmingham
Restaurants
Nandos
Killer food, simple food, healthy (relatively) and spicy is always good in my book
PizzaHut
Good pizzas but always leaves me feeling like a fat bastard, a good treat now and then but for gods sake don't go regularly and go at a time when the kids are not around
La Tasca
Great great food, the Tapas are wonderful not as good as Mechu but pretty close
Red Peppers
Random Tapas Place by Canal
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Mechu in Birmingham
Very nice classy place, good prices, amazing Tapas
Carrots, Swede, Peas, Onion, Chinese Cabbage, Lamb Kebabs, Tomatoe
Spicy Ham and Chinese Cabbage, Onions, Tomatoe, Spicyness! (Learning to use various Indian spices I have)
Chicken Pasta Bake, Oat Bran and Cheese Topping = Yum (Sauce was Tuna Napol...)
Tofu, Chinese Leaves/Cabbage, Onion/Peas/Pepper, Rice
Chicken cooked into Garlic Nandos
Tofu and Leaves cooked in Soy and Chinese Herbs and Vegetable Stock, they soak up the flavour very well.
Noodles
Tofu and Chinese Leaves/Cabbage
Cooked in Soy, Herbs and Sweet/Sour Sauce
Gloriousness is a Costco Tiramisu
Failed Cake, just tasted too damn sweet, though it is meant to look like that.. mostly
Inedible sausage of forever cooked, not my fault or doing!
Chinese Leaves simmered in soy sauce
Thick noodles + Chicken in garlic black bean thingy thing sauce :-p I forget
Trifle I decorated with a Cherry Brandy moat ;-P
Alexs new invention, the double wrap... tasty!
Enchiladas - Pain is Good BBQ Flavas - Peas - Cheese and Ham fried in tomato chutney stuffed inside the enchiladas - Sundried Tomatoes and Chilis - Diced Tomato - Onions - Peppers
Sweedish Meatballs - Pasta - SunDried Tomato - ChilliPepper - Peas - Grilled Cheese
Yes most if not all the food I eat looks pretty disturbing, messy, mushy... but I tell you what, It smells good and tastes great and is simple to make
:-)
Fried ham in spice, Juicy Green Jalepeno Peppers, Boiled Potato mixed with Pataks Rogan Josh sauce and Heinz Beans with melted cheese on top and grilled
Variation on the same:
Thicks Noodles + Meatballs
Meatballs and Pasta
Pasta Bake with Soup andCheese grilled
Thick Noodles + Sauce + ham + Rice
Thick Noodles and cooked ham+sauce
Thicks Noodles plus tomato sauce plus spicy meatballs
Chicken
Red Thai Curry with.. stuff!
Real Mince complete with far too much fatty oil, learned to drain it in future and dab with paper towels or just use fake/Quorn Mince to save arteries!
Chorizo Sausage or Lincolnshire Sausage cooked in Barbados Mustard Pepper Sauce, with Onion Gravy and bubble and squeak (Cabbage/Mash)
Some restaurants I have visited
Sticky Chicken - Thai - Red Orchid Canal side Mailbox Birmingham
Tapas at Mechu - Birminhgam, best Tapas ever
2nd Visit to Mechu:
La Tascas - Good Tapas! = Fat
Indian in Manchester by River - East East Restaurant
Thai Restaurant Mailbox Birmingham
Good very spicy indian food aimed at indian people - StarCity Birmingham
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Favorite Ingredients and Meals
Tesco - Sundried Tomatoes (they look disgusting but dice them up and they taste delicious, add a lovely tart and rich flavour to almost anything)
Tesco - Merchant Gourmet Roquito Hot Sweet Chilli Peppers (amazing juicy sweet spicy nom!)
Star - Jalapeno Peppers - Juicy Spiceyness Lovely!!
Nandos - Hot Peri-Peri Sauce, lovely flavour, real taste, and good on spice/hotness too, comes in different strengths too along with a variety of flavours.
Chorizo Sausage, why buy normal sausages when you can have chorizo, spicy and rich flavored and no less healthy than normal sausages I believe.
I just recently bought some Chorizo & Pork sausages and the are fantastic. Too Strong to eat on there own you'll really want to put it with something else like Patas Bravas or what I had it with Bubble and Squeek
:-D
or just onion gravy and mashed potato or something. Such basic and simple food but it tastes really good. Slightly worrying how much fat /oil drips out of these things though, the Pork+Chorizo are not as bad as the full on chorizo and I think they taste better too.Thick Chinese Noodles
These are fantastic if you can find them, I get them from a chinese super market Sing Fat
They cook reeealy quick and go well with so many things.
Morrisons - Quorn - Mince - 1.99
Quorn Mince, looks pretty weird but tastes great and is essential if you like mince/meatballs etc as the real beef stuff is horrendously unhealthy you can just see it dripping with oil and fat
Quorn Italian Style Meat Balls - Very very nice
Quorn Chicken Style Pieces - need a fair bit of oil to soften them, doesn't taste much like chicken at all
Quorn - Peppered Steaks
Frozen rice and Frozen Diced Onions are a must if you do a lot of stir fry. It makes cooking effortlessly fast and simple.
Morrisions Own - Frozen Vegetable Rice (Mushrooms Peas Rice) - £1.29 - BUY
Baps Buns
Sainsburys - Frozen Diced Onions - 500g - 69p - BUY
Sliced Water Chesnuts
Great with noodles, they add a lovely lil crunch to what might ordinarily be a rather mushy blend of noodles. And they don't have much flavor really, try them!
Chilli Bean Sauce, this stuff is epicaly good, goes nice with:
Laksa Paste
Red Thai Curry Paste, I like to stir fry meat in it such as ham, gives the meat a brilliant spicy tang.
