Saturday, May 28, 2011

Braised Peas with Lettuce and Fresh Onions



I know it may be a pain to some, but to me, there's something so relaxing about shelling peas-- just sitting there in front of my laptop , watching useless youtube videos and mindlessly popping peas from their pods while the sun slowly sets behind me. No, I wasn't putting off schoolwork, I just had to shell them then. Priorities. With fresh peas, you have to use them up as soon as possible, because their flavour deteriorates so quickly (so if you can't get them REALLY fresh i.e. direct from the farmers or better still, from your garden, then go for those that are frozen straight).


As usual, I got a whole load of spring vegetables at the farmers' market. And because my fridge was running out of space, I decided to use up three of these in one dish for dinner right away, in my take on the French classic braised peas. Braising is a really popular technique in Chinese cooking too, but usually with meat, so I was curious to see how it'd work out for vegetables.

Braised Peas with Lettuce and Fresh Onions
Ingredients (serves 2-3 as a side)
about 1 cup of shelled peas (about a brown bag worth of peas in pod)
handful of roughly shredded lollo rosso lettuce leaves (it's usually romaine or little gem lettuce but that was what I got that day. anyway I like the deep purple colour for some contrast)


1 onion (I decided to give fresh onions a try. Sliced it all up, green stalks too)
generous knob of butter (Peas love butter! So do I.) + 1 tsp evoo
about 1/4 cup of homemade chicken stock
sea salt, white pepper
juice of half lemon
a bit of dill (mint is a classic combination, but I had dill at hand and thought the freshness of the dill would work well too)

Method
1. Melt butter with evoo over medium heat in a pan.
2. Add the sliced onions (white part) and cook till soft and translucent, before adding the peas, stir to combine, about 1-2 min.
3. Add the lettuce and sliced onions (green part), stir to combine.
4. Then in with the stock and seasoning, bring to a simmer and then cover and cook for 2-3 min.
5. Uncover, let simmer to reduce for just a while, before removing from the heat and adding the fresh dill and lemon juice.


The peas were just bursting with natural sweetness, really quite different from their frozen brothers and sisters! Oh and the fresh onions I was so intrigued with were great-- really powerful sweetness but with less of a bite (think the best of both regular onions and spring onions). As much as I love peas simply cooked in butter, braising them with onions and lettuce will now be a new favourite (:

This is part of Mangia Monday.

Thanks


Click for bigger.

Wakey wakey


YouTube link.

Goodbye cruel world


YouTube link.

Deer gives dog a bit of a shock


LiveLeak link.

Authorities shut down bar's illegal mouse racing operation

Sheriffs are fighting their way through the seedy underbelly of Danville, Iowa, taking aim at the unregulated gambling world of mouse racing. Officers raided the Bucktail Lodge last week in search of code violations and shut down the popular races.

The owners said the censure is as silly as their pastime. "We don't consider it gambling at all, it's just people having fun. The money goes back to them. If you win, you win; if you lose, you lose," said Scott Beach, owner of the Bucktail Lodge.



When the mice aren't competing, they are adored as pets in the family's apartment above the bar. "It's not like they are getting ate, 'If you're a loser you die.' It's not like that," said Beach.

For now, the races are on hold, but the mice racers said they will be in court to fight for the right to their rodent-race night. They said the incident makes it clear that the local police have little to do. "There's no meth heads or makers around here, you just gotta mess with the mouse racers," said Beach.

With news video.

Man's backyard tigers and leopards upset neighbours

Steve Salton, 61, of Mayfield, New York, currently keeps several fully-grown tigers, leopards and jaguars in his back garden.

Salton is inspected regularly by state and federal authorities and issued licences to have the animals. He's obliged to exhibit them, which he does, by appointment.



That hardly satisfies his neighbour Rich Travis, who has no affection for the wild animals caged next door and wants them gone. "I don't think anyone in their right mind would want to live next to something like this," said Travis.

Town Supervisor Richard Argotsinger says the big cat exhibit may qualify as a home occupation or hobby, which is an allowed use. "I'm all legal and everything," Salton says.

Embarrassment over Wicked cocaine tourist magazine ad

A New Zealand publishing company is hanging its head in shame after an ad by Wicked Campers went to print in a tourism magazine showing what appears to be a man snorting cocaine overlooking New Zealand's snow-capped mountains.

People Media's Arrival magazine, which is distributed at Auckland Airport, caused quite a stir by featuring the ad and are now spending thousands to individually rip the offending page out of each copy from the 100,000 copies that were due to be circulated.



Mike Taillie, managing director at People Media, said the ad went into the magazine during the last hours before publication and that the first time he saw it was after it was published.

“It’s not what I want international people seeing as a welcome to New Zealand,” says Mr Taillie. A spokesman for Wicked Campers said: “There's a s**tstorm brewing over in NZ at the moment over our latest ad.”

There's a news video here.

Slain 'Grandma Bandit' turns out to have been a man

An elderly-looking gun-toting robber nicknamed “Grandma Bandit,” blamed for a string of heists of several Atlanta-area drugstores, was actually a man. The revelation was made by police on Friday evening, hours after the suspect was fatally shot after a police chase.



“Positive identification has been made on the person involved in today’s incident on North Druid Hills. After further investigation detectives have determined the person believed to be a female suspect in fact is a male,” DeKalb County police spokeswoman Mekka Parish said. “His name is Roxanne Taylor, a 57-year-old man.”

Taylor was shot multiple times after leading police on a chase. Taylor had been pointed out by someone who noticed that he matched the description of the "Grandma Bandit." Parish said officers opened fire on the vehicle after hearing a gunshot. It was unclear if Taylor killed himself or died from police gunfire.

Filmed before 'Grandma Bandit' was revealed to be a man.

LiveLeak link.

The "Grandma Bandit" was wanted in at least four robberies of Atlanta-area drugstores in the past two weeks. The most recent hold-up was at a Rite Aid on Tuesday. Taylor had been having financial problems. The company that owned the building where he lived began the process of evicting him, saying in court papers he owed $2,133.

Man's $1 million rare coin collection flies out car window

A Florida man travelling to a coin show with his $1 million rare coin collection blew a tyre on his car, causing it to flip over as many as five times and send his precious change flying across the highway.

The unidentified man initially refused to leave the scene, despite injuries and a heart condition. "He was in pain, but he was more worried about the money," Highway Patrol Trooper Darryl Haywood Jr. said.



The man contacted a network of fellow collectors in the area to help recover the coins and about eight to nine turned out with metal detectors. Police helped as well and a tow truck driver found $46,000 in bills in the trees.

However, it was not immediately clear how much of the total was recovered. The man and his wife had been en route from their home in Boca Raton to a coin show in Jacksonville when the accident occurred on Thursday night on Interstate highway 95.

With news video.

Indian inventor develops clothes to heat or cool wearer

An Indian inventor is developing clothes which keep the wearer comfortable in extreme temperatures. Kranthi Kiran Vistakula started with a jacket and is now applying his idea to shoes, scarves and even dinner plates. The clothes use Peltier light-weight plastic plates with a thermo electric device.



The device is powered by rechargeable batteries which can be topped up by vehicles or even solar panels. They can last up to eight hours on one charge. A Peltier plate consists of a junction between two metals. When an electric current passes through the junction, metal on one side heats up and on the other side it cools down.

The climate-controlled jacket, which weighs a little more than 1kg, has been successfully tested by the Indian army in Siachen glacier where temperatures are as low as -40C in winter. Mr Vistakula's company, Dhama Innovations, is now developing a range of other products using the same technology.


YouTube link.

Mr Vistakula is now setting up a manufacturing facility near Hyderabad for the mass production of his products, which include jackets, shoes, scarves, gloves and ear muffs. He is even considering a special jacket for cows. "Basically when the cow is cooled, it gives more milk in summer," he explained. "So we're working on a jacket like that - a huge one."

Chef gets saucepan stuck on head during brawl in Chinese restaurant kitchen

A chef at a Chinese restaurant was left with a pan stuck on his head after a brawl broke out in the kitchen.

Shocked diners looked on as six furious kitchen workers attacked other with woks and saucepans. Manager Terence Pan tried to break them up but eventually had to call police.



Diner Clive Griggs, 41, said: “All of a sudden there was crashing and shouting. Six people burst out and started hitting each other with a variety of implements. The chef ended up with a saucepan stuck over his head and one of the guys was using a wok to defend himself.”

Three men aged between 30 and 50 were arrested at the Tai Tung ­restaurant in Croydon, South London, and bailed until next month. Two men were taken to hospital with head injuries.

Safari park visitors warned after meerkats develop fetish for human feet

Warning signs have been put up at a new attraction where meerkats mingle with visitors after the little creatures developed a fetish for human feet.



The small mammals have taken a liking to painted toenails and colourful sandals and jump all over them given the chance.


YouTube link.

Staff at the new Jungle Kingdom enclosure at Longleat Safari Park, Wiltshire, have had to put up signs to warn female guests.



The new enclosure is the first place in Britain where people can interact directly with meerkats.

Animal rescues cost UK fire services £3.5m in last three years

UK fire services spent at least £3.5m rescuing 17,000 animals in the last three years. Firefighters got a cow out of a tree, removed a snail from a wall and reunited a duckling with its mother.

Anton Phillips, animal rescue specialist at Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service, said: "If we don't rescue that animal somebody else will or will try to. I've seen people have their arms trapped in drains trying to rescue ducklings and we've actually had to dig the road up to get the person out." But others were more trivial, with ducklings rescued from a drain, a pigeon released from a tree and a squirrel up a lamppost.



The most common animals that were rescued were cats, dogs, birds and horses, but other animals involved included snakes, seals, bats, chinchillas, iguanas, a raccoon, badgers and a chameleon. Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service were called out to remove a snail stuck halfway up a wall after being contacted by a distressed elderly lady.

Jim Green, an animal rescue specialist said: "The cost attributed to sending a couple of blokes down the road to help the lady and to reassure her, that was merited, and the actual problem, the snail, might seem ridiculous but it was that lady that they were going to help."

Couple who kept animals crammed in filthy cellar face jail

A couple are facing jail after admitting keeping 11 dogs, nine geese, a pony, two goats and a cat in the dark, filthy cellar of their south Wales home. RSPCA inspectors said they had never previously come across the sort of stench and dirt they found at Eric and Doreen Buckley's home in High Street, Gilfach Goch, Pontypridd. When asked why he was keeping so many animals in such terrible conditions, Mr Buckley said: "Why not?"



The couple had already been banned for life from keeping animals in 1993 for earlier breaches of welfare regulations. Speaking after a brief hearing at Pontypridd magistrates court, RSPCA inspector Nicola Johnston said: "I have never seen anything like it before in my life. Even before going inside the house, you could sniff the air outside and realise something was wrong.



"Inside, it was beyond anything I have ever seen, or hope ever to see again." She said the cellar was unlit and covered in a thick layer of animal waste. "You stood there in complete blackness, squishing and squashing underfoot as you walked," she said. "To think that somebody thought it was a fit place to keep animals was incredible."



The couple, aged 56 and 46, both admitted seven charges – two for breaching previously imposed banning orders and five for causing unnecessary suffering and failing to meet welfare needs of the animals. District judge Jill Watkins said: "You should understand that I believe that this case merits a custodial sentence." The couple will be sentenced next month.

School bans hugs and handshakes

A secondary school in south London has banned students from all physical contact with each other, including hugging, high-fives and handshakes. The Quest Academy in South Croydon has enforced the new policy since September last year.

The school's principal, Andy Croft, said the rules helped combat bullying. He said: "Physical contact between students is not allowed at the academy because it is often associated with poor behaviour or bullying and can lead to fighting."



Anita Chong, whose 15-year-old daughter was given a detention for hugging a friend, called the rules "crazy". Ms Chong said the school had taken its rules too far.

"We live in a society where we use touch and we use terms of endearment," she said. "My daughter is one of those that is having exams and she is being taken out of lessons for something so trivial. I find it diabolical really."

With news video.

Praying To The Government

There's a bigger point here, but I just wanted to share a link, an excerpt and a video with you and suggest that the Greeks have passed back into the world of mythology, only this time the gods they worship are politicians.

Indignant Protests
The mass rallies by the “Indignant” that were held on Wednesday and Thursday night in almost every major Greek city represent a new parameter in political developments. This is a new phenomenon, which in form mimics the initiative by Spain’s youth, but in essence is stoked by the impending local economic crash. The movement is spontaneous, ideologically multicolored and politically astray. Its demographics and the symbols used to represent it represent a great departure from the usual stuff seen in protests. Here we don’t see a configuration of many small, tight-knit groups -- or blocs -- and the “professional” protesters of the left; you see people who are novices at protests. Instead of banners and red flags, you see Greek flags and hear the national anthem. Moreover, there is no fire missing from the chanted slogans, which sweep aside political correctness in favor of a morally accusatory tone.
Protest Video


General Odds and Ends

Here, I'm using Chesterton's definition of mythology - mysticism without philosophy or logic. That is, the crowd can't tell you how anything is supposed to happen, only that they want something to occur. In essence, they're praying to Zeus and Hermes. There's no end point here, no evidence that their gods have any power at all. They are simply crying out for mercy.

THE GIRL IN THE POLKA-DOT DRESS

Beryl Bainbridge,
Little,Brown - NZ $39.99

This from The Guardian:

"It is a pleasure to record that The Girl in the Polka-dot Dress ranks among the finest of Bainbridge's fine works of fiction. The narrative is by turns sombre, terrifying and hilarious." Paul Bailey in the Independent argued that Beryl Bainbridge's posthumously published "road novel", set on the freeways of America in 1968, "reads like a summation" of her art: "It is carefully constructed, as always, but there is a sense in which the author is returning to her roots." For AN Wilson in the Spectator, the novel is "very gripping, very funny and deeply mysterious. She has abandoned the oblique historical miniatures with which her last decade had been occupied . . . and she has returned to that vein of comedy in which a self-projection becomes caught up in a series of grotesque, fantastical events . . . Beryl Bainbridge is an immortal." Derwent May in the Times agreed the "atmosphere of Bainbridge's early books returns in this last novel. What conclusion did Beryl intend? . . . We are left with a fascinating book that is like a new Mystery of Edwin Drood – and will no doubt offer as much work to imaginative scholars as Dickens's unfinished novel has done."


Footnote:
This is my current fiction read, I should finish it today, and I must say I find it a remarkable piece of writing.

The book contains the following statement:

Beryl Bainbridge was in the process of finishing The Girl in the Polka-dot Dress when she died on 2 July 2010. Her long-time friend and editor, Brendan King, prepared the text for publication from her working manuscript, taking into account suggestions Beryl had made at the end of her life. No additional material has been included.

A Bigger Digger

Story by Brett Avison, Illustrated by Craig Smith
First time author scores international book deal!

Aucklander Brett Avison has always been able to tell a good story, but had never considered turning his talents into a book. Until one day, while watching his 3-year-old great-nephew Bryn playing with his digger 'the words just started to flow'. By the end of the day Brett had written a story- about Bryn, his dog Oscar, and what they found in the back yard. Unsure whether it was any good he turned to someone in the know - his wife Lorain Day, who at the time was publishing manager at HarperCollins Publishers NZ. 

'I was nervous about reading it' remembers Lorain, ' in case I had to break the news to him it was unpublishable'. But she was very pleasantly surprised. Brett's talent for words had turned Bryn's fascination for diggers into a colourful, unputdownable adventure for boys.

The story was offered to international publisher Five Mile who realised it was pitched to exactly the market that has been missing out over the last few years - young boys. They offered Brett a two book-deal, with A Bigger Digger being published in Australia and New Zealand from April/May this year, and the next book, Stuck in the Mud, being published in time for Christmas.The book is also to be published in the UK.

File Mile paired up Brett's words with Australian children's book illustrator Craig Smith's sensational drawings, and the result is a book tailor-made for boys and their love of diggers, dogs - and tall stories.

Since 1983, Craig Smith's witty artwork has been enormously popular with children. His wonderful sense of the absurd and terrific eye for detail has brought this delightful story of two little adventurers and what they find in the backyard to life, with a parade of diggers and a big surprise at the end. 

Martin Amis: My father's English language

How should 'controversy' be pronounced? How are 'refute' and 'decimate' misused? Kingsley Amis's guide, The King's English, revealed all. Martin Amis celebrates his father's interest in language


A way with words... Kingsley and Martin Amis in the 1990s. Photograph: Dave M Benett/Getty Images

Kingsley Amis was a lenient father. His paternal style, in the early years, can best be described as amiably minimalist – in other words, my mother did it all. It should be noted, though, that if I did come across him (before he slipped back into his study), he always said something that made me laugh or smile. This went a long way. And the humour usually derived from the originality of his phrasing. When I was 16 or 17, and started reading books for grown-ups, I became, in his eyes, worth talking to. And when, six or seven years later, I started using the English language in the literary pages of the newspapers, I became worth correcting. I was in my early-middle 20s; my father was still amiable, but he was lenient no longer.

"Has your enormity in the Observer been pointed out to you?" he asked with enthusiasm over breakfast one Sunday morning (I had left home by then, but I still spent about every other weekend at his house). "My enormity?"
 I knew he was applying the word in its proper sense – "something very bad", and not "something very big in size". And my mistake was certainly atrocious: I had used martial as a verb.
Later, while continuing to avoid hopefully (a favourite with politicians, as he insists), I pooh-poohed his reprimand about my harmless use of the dangling thankfully. I also took it in good part when, to dramatise my discipleship, as he saw it, of Clive James (a very striking new voice in the 1970s), Kingsley started reading out my reviews in an Australian accent. But there was one conversation that I still recall with a sincere moan of shame: it concerned the word infamous.

In a piece about the "Two Cultures" debate, I referred to FR Leavis's "infamous crucifixion of CP Snow". "You leave us in no doubt," said Kingsley watchfully, "that you disapproved of it." I remained silent. I didn't say, "Actually, Dad, I thought infamous was just a cool new way of saying controversial."
Infamous will in fact now serve as the reigning shibboleth (or "test word", or giveaway). Anyone who uses it loosely, as I did, is making the following announcement: I write without much care and without much feeling. I just write like other people write. As Kingsley puts it in The King's English (and "the King", by the way, was a nickname he tolerated):

Both adjective and noun [infamous and infamy] used to be terms of extreme moral disapproval, equivalent in depth of feeling to 'abominable' and 'wickedness'. Then quite recently . . . the adjective weakened in severity to something on the level of 'notorious' [or, he might have added, simply 'famous'] . . . The noun infamy, although seemingly out of use, retains its former meaning, but infamous is now unusable through ambiguity.
Full story at The Guardian.

Rob Lowe brings Hollywood glamour to Hay Festival

Hollywood came to Hay-on-Wye on Saturday night as actor Rob Lowe arrived at the festival to shrieks of "I love you Rob"


American actor Rob Lowe and journalist Mariella Frostrup on day three of The Telegraph Hay Festival in Hay-on-Wye 

The biggest cheer came when he admitted that he would consider pursuing a career in politics - having been asked if he intended to follow in Arnold Schwarzenegger's footsteps.

Lowe said: "People have started to ask me about that and I do have an interest in service.
"I love my country, and at some point in my life, I would like to serve. My experience of politicians is that people who serve are doing it for the right reasons. There are, however, idiots in both parties [Democrats and Republicans]."


Lowe, the star of films including The Outsiders and St Elmo's Fire, discussed his career and his new autobiography, Stories I Only Tell My Friends.
He said that his role as the White House spin doctor Sam Seaborn in the hit television show The West Wing, starring opposite Martin Sheen from 1999 to 2003, had given him a taste for politics.


More at The Telegraph.
And an interview at The Telegraph

Footnote:
Coincidentally Random House released this title in NZ on Friday (Bantam Press - $39.99) and I have just started reading it.
I see it is currently at #4 on the US best-seller non-fiction list.

Amazon.com Reveals the Most Well-Read Cities in America


Cambridge, Mass., tops the list with the most books, magazines and newspapers purchased per capita of any city in the United States


Just in time for the summer reading season, Amazon.com announced its list of the Top 20 Most Well-Read Cities in America. After compiling sales data of all book, magazine and newspaper sales in both print and Kindle format since Jan. 1, 2011, on a per capita basis in cities with more than 100,000 residents, the Top 20 Most Well-Read Cities are:


1. Cambridge, Mass. 11. Knoxville, Tenn.
2. Alexandria, Va. 12. Orlando, Fla.
3. Berkeley, Calif.
13. Pittsburgh
4. Ann Arbor, Mich. 14. Washington, D.C.
5. Boulder, Colo. 15. Bellevue, Wash.
6. Miami 16. Columbia, S.C.
7. Salt Lake City 17. St. Louis, Mo.
8. Gainesville, Fla. 18. Cincinnati
9. Seattle 19. Portland, Ore.
10. Arlington, Va. 20. Atlanta
In taking a closer look at the data, Amazon.com also found that:

  • Not only do they like to read, but they like to know the facts: Cambridge, Mass.--home to the prestigious Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology--also topped the list of cities that ordered the most nonfiction books.
  • Boulder, Colo., lives up to its reputation as a healthy city by topping the list of cities that order the most books in the Cooking, Food & Wine category.
  • Alexandria, Va., residents must be reading a lot of bedtime stories - they topped the list of the city that orders the most children's books.
  • Summer reading weather all year long? Florida was the state with the most cities in the Top 20, with Miami, Gainesville and Orlando making the list.

"In anticipation of the summer reading season--one of our favorite times to catch up on pleasure reading and unwind with the new titles being published this season--we're excited to reveal the Most Well-Read City list," said Mari Malcolm, managing editor of Books, Amazon.com. "We hope book lovers across the country enjoy this fun look at where the most voracious readers reside, and that everyone gets the chance to relax with some great summer reads."

Borrowing Dollars And Returning Paper

I just read Ellen Brown's column, Japan shows how to defuse debt time-bomb. If the title wasn't enough to blow your mind, dig the the closer:
We have been frightened into believing that government debt is a bad thing...

The public debt is the people's money, and today the people are coming up short. Shrinking the public debt means shrinking more than just the services the government is expected to provide. It means shrinking the money supply itself, along with the ability to provide the jobs, wages and purchasing power necessary for a thriving economy.
The public debt is the people's money? Huh? Does that make your credit card debt your kids' money? It's like she has lost all contact with reality here. She thinks we should borrow money and pay back our creditors with paper which is worth less than what we borrowed. I wonder if that works in her life.

When you deposit money in the bank, they, in turn, lend it to someone. That's how they make money. In essence, you're lending money to the bank. Well, by her logic, isn't that then the bankers' money? Why do they need to pay that back? Why should there be any results from that loan at all? When Ellen wants to make a withdrawal, the bank should just shrug and say, "It's the people's money, now, Ellen!" Maybe they could give her twenty cents on the dollar. I wonder if she'd like that.

Borrowing money is predicated on your ability to pay it back. Otherwise it's just stealing.

John Dillinger, banker.

I Just Installed IE 9

... and immediately moved to Firefox as my browser. I have no idea what IE 9 does for me. All I know is that I wanted to surf the web and I had to fight with the stupid thing just to get started. It wanted to show me all of it's new features and then gave me a wave of warnings about content on my own blog.

I'm done. Microsoft just lost another customer.