Steaming

Jon's sister Claire, Jon and I took our little nephew Archie (3) to see Father Christmas on the steam railway at Bitton last week. Although it's a close run thing as to who was most excited about it, Archie or his aunties!


Father Christmas played a blinder by giving Archie his most favourite thing in the world, no, not the biscuit the size of his head, but a set of cars. More photos over in the photo album on the right.

We handed Archie back to his Dad stuffed with biscuits and over-stimulated to the point of hysteria - well, what are aunties and uncles for anyway? We're hoping that Archie might take us on the train next year too, erm, I mean we might take him...

We had our usual nice quiet Christmas Day, just the two of us and a chicken, and were joined on Boxing Day by the outlaws and Claire. After a quick walk round the stones at Avebury we tucked into the left-overs, the ham and Claire's lovely chestnut stuffing and Marianne's great bubble and squeak.

The outlaws are now cruising round the Caribbean despite the best efforts of BA to stop them. Bet it's not pissing-down there...

Friday Fun 2

Strangely enough, remembering "Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle" did not help me when I was in the exam at the end of my OU philosophy course.

American beer, it's like making love in a canoe*...



* That's a bit rich coming from the "Aussies"

Chillies

I'm completely knackered after partaking of a cooking marathon this afternoon. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I think I've over-done it. We've now got enough tomato and pepper soup to float a small navy, there's a lamb tagine cooling in the oven, a chicken rogan josh marinating in the 'fridge alongside tomorrow night's dinner of stuffed peppers. Oh well, the tomatoes were going manky, so I did need to use them up, ditto the peppers and it's been a few weeks since I had a curry and I'm beginning to get withdrawal symptoms.

The idea was to freeze a lot of this (all the soup, the tagine and half the rogan josh) but I've just discovered that there's no room in the freezer 'cos it's taken up by the gammon joint I bought to cook for Boxing Day (a Gordon Ramsey [ugh, spit] recipe that ends up with it being baked in treacle - God it's tasty). Bugger. Some major re-arranging is going to have to be done once I can stand up again.

Anyway, chillies. Someone asked how I dry chillies, so I'm posting the answer here for future reference.

Method 1 - just freeze them instead

Method 2 - thread (or tie) them by the stalks onto a length of cotton and hang in a warm place - airing cupboard, above the cooker vent at the back of the hob, or just dangling prettily in the kitchen somewhere.

Method 3 - spread them on a baking tray and pop them into the oven every time you finish cooking and have turned the heat off. I've got a double oven, so I just leave them in the top oven/grill and the heat from the main oven below dries them out over a few weeks.

Method 4 - put them in the oven on the lowest light possible and keep a very careful eye on them. I'd say this is the most risky.

You can then either leave them whole and just use as normal, or put them through a blender and use them as crushed chillies - but be very careful not to breathe in the fine dust as you decant them into a jar.

Now, if you're really lucky, I'll post a picture of my new fairy lights that are shaped like chilli peppers - once we've put the Xmas tree up.

Friday fun

After dealing with a doctor's receptionist who was particularly stupid (doctor's receptionists will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes, I promise you), I need something amusing.

This should get the weekend off to a good start. Ignore the video and just listen to comic genius Jake Thackery at his best.

This song...is dirty...