Cooking With Richard

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

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.

This blog needs a new category.

Forget best, we need worst …

Anyway, this is for Lady E.

In case you were wondering, it’s our bedroom:

.. And the worst thing of all is I haven’t seen my wife for days.

Photos from the Boston Skywalk, stitched together into a panorama using hugin in Fedora:

Click to enlarge

Click to supersize me (TIFF image)

Red Hat Summit in Boston:

Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox:

Bagels for breakfast:

Da boyz:

I was a bit confused by this one, he keeps on saying “shika shika“?

And for the main finale:

Our crazy driving holiday around Scotland is now over. I drove 1,104 miles. Here are some photos:

Troooon

Booooat

♫♬listen to the song ♪♫♬

Arran and Lamlash

Home of the worst pub on Arran …

Lunch

Castles and shika

Shikatetsu …

The Lamb and Whisky

The Array Whisky distillery, home of some rather pleasant spirits.

Loch

Maggie the moggie

It’s my bro’s moggie:

I so want this game …

MEAT! Or more precisely, 11lbs (5kg) of pork shoulder down to the loin. This cost me under £20 and should feed about 15-20 people, so it’s actually very good value (if you have 20 people that need feeding).

If Justin gets his act together and calls me then I may well cook this for his party tomorrow afternoon.

Update

Not bad, a bit dry. Crackling was excellent.

I photographed a sparrowhawk catching, killing and eating a starling in the garden today. Well, the killing and the eating kind of overlapped. As you can imagine the starling was not too happy about this situation and made a lot of noise.

Click photos for larger versions.

I’m afraid that the ducks eggs and nest has gone. Something dug under the fence from the next door garden and swiped all the eggs. Only 2 days to go before they hatched as well :-(

Update

The neighbour thinks it was a fox, although maybe it was the neighbour’s dog. You can see the hole and the broken nest here:

and from the other side of the fence:

There was no sign of any eggs or even egg shells.

Mother was OK, but shaken. She sat in the garden for about half an hour like this, just doing nothing:

And that was that.

ガーコ is still sitting on her nest. We’re expecting ducklings towards the end of this week. Here’s the latest photo of (an) egg, she covers them up before she goes out each time.

While you’re waiting, here’s a photo of our lovely long-tailed tits:

Here is M-kun playing Mario Kart Wii, which is bloody good fun:

I was in the middle of making this recipe described as “Bubble and Squeak” when I came to the sudden realization that it is really コロッケ, so I quickly covered it in honey panko and shallow fried it. Success!

But in Japan, mere potato isn’t enough carbohydrate on its own, so they wrap it in bread (can you believe?) to make a kind of potato sandwich. Mmm carbs!

Looking at the duck’s arse:

The meat is from a great little butchers called JTB Butchers out in the back of beyond:

View Larger Map

Previously: Uncanny valley of the dolls …

Our duck (N-sama is calling her “ガー子”) has now laid a full clutch of at least 10 eggs, see the photo below. N-sama bravely took this photo.

Here she is sitting on the fence and flying off:

N-sama was very brave yesterday and today and went out and took photos of the eggs, while mama-Duck-san was off flying around and eating seaweed and whatever else they do:

Mother duck, taking off: