Cooking With Richard

A quick snail update: N-sama found another one in the garden, so now we are back to having ニヒキ again. I don’t know if it’s the same snail that escaped before (I somehow doubt it), but I should probably mark them so I know which is which.

I cooked this squid/tomato/caper recipe and it showed a lot of potential. If only I hadn’t forgotten to put in the white wine and chilli, it would have been even better. Following the recipe more closely should bear fruit though.

Rachel is growing 30 shiso plants in her house, and very kindly she gave three of them to us. We’re going to give some to my brother, who has probably never tasted this delicious herb before.

What is the spider plant doing?

Update

One has ESCAPED!!

. . .

I captured two of them in the garden tonight. Hopefully I can get a few more after it rains. This one was wrapped around one of N-sama’s green beans, and eating it! But he seems to like celery as well, so …

How To Make A Burning Laser Flashlight

VideoJug is quite a fun website actually. One day I’ll have to make these fish fingers:

How To Make Homemade Fish Fingers

Finally we got a carpet in the second bedroom:

Bloke who fitted it did a good job actually.

Spitfire:

Vulcan bomber, recently restored at the cost of £7m by these guys:

Red Arrows:

My office is opposite Farnborough airport, and every two years there’s a very famous airshow. We went there last time, in 2006 and took lots of photos.

The company held a BBQ today at the office, because the 2008 airshow is on at the moment, so we got a free display.

In the UK there are laws which were passed after an accident at the 1952 Farnborough show which killed many spectators to say that airplanes cannot fly over or towards the crowd. Well, our BBQ isn’t in the crowd, so the planes were flying right over us!

More photos later, but in the meantime, the Royal Air Force Red Arrows display team at Farnborough today:

Higher quality version

Wow … & her blog

(Thanks M-kun for finding the bento porn pool on flickr)

Top Gear race across Japan [this link will only work if you’re in the UK] in a fast car versus a shinkansen (and other types of train).

Note: The interesting part starts at around 15 minutes in.

Click for programme

At a pet shop near Hemel Hamster:

おいしそう:

だいげーびる:

M-kun:

We went to Diwana by Euston Station with Rachel last night, and as usual it was delicious and cheap (£12 per head), an unbeatable combination:

A gratin dauphinois, roughly from this Heston Blumenthal recipe:

Vaguely cooking related video:

More PES …

GingerNinja has turned up in my inbound links, recycling garden snails as food. Now that’s what we like to see! … and eat …

Unfortunately all the snails in this house are being eaten by our song thrush, faster than I can collect them.

Boston beer:

A giant steak. Very nice:

I totally enjoyed the Japanese film Paprika on the plane, and then bought it for N-sama as an anniversary present on DVD:

The bathroom is vaguely finished, 4 days late (double the original estimate). At least one can now have a bath, although not a shower:

This is what I’m eating at the moment … Reheated curry, peas and bread:

There’s about another 3 days of work to go, if they pull their fingers out (ie. unlikely):

• finish off the grouting and miscellaneous work in the bathroom (½ day)
• put up a new ceiling in the kitchen and plaster the downstairs (1+ day, lots of disruption)
• some electrical work (½ day)
• new carpets everywhere (1 day, but not really disruptive)

The plan you see above is actually the very first time that anyone has written down a plan for the work.