attimes_bracing

It's not very often an author has me grinning like an idiot but a new one has.  To the short list of Terry Pratchett, Robert Galbraith and Lois McMaster Bujold, I now add Jodi Taylor.

Seriously, try a sample chapter from the first of the 4, soon to be 5 books in the series The Chronicles of St Mary's.  The first one is called Just one dammned thing after another.  It's accessible, fun, has swearing, sex, a quirky institution and chunks of history.

Yes the time travel is slghtly glossed over and there are some holes in the plots but they are immense fun.

Edited to add link to Google Play where a free sample can be found: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Jodi_Taylor_Just_One_Damned_Thing_After_Another?id=twKkBQAAQBAJ&hl=en_GB ;

At the weekend coth reminded me that I had not done my Blackberry vs Iphone post.  I had hoped that a few months after having the Crapberry, I would have something erudite to say.

I have a Blackberry Touch.  I can securely read work emails on it and reply to them.  Compared to how much I use it, it has mediocre battery life.  It occasionally burps and forgets what day it is but a few taps and it comes back to life.  I can see a limited view of my diary.

I have an Iphone 5S - It does everything but my employers give us the Crapberry and route our emails to it on the grounds of security.

The good thing about this is that it keeps two parts of my life seperate.

I don't think WhatPC will be beating down my door to give me a job...

Well further to this where I got lots of helpful  advice here's what happened.



I bought this from a company based locally (Stoke) through amazon for the buyer protection.  I paid for a decent graphics card an Asus something it bumped the price by £55.00.  The case is pretty big and it looks like a dalek with purple accents.

I bought an Asus 27" monitor which is pretty and good quality.

Firsty they set the delivery for after 1pm at my request and offered me hourly slots.  I was out n the morning so of course hte courier called at 11 to say he was at the door and it was a timed delivery before 12.  I 'discussed' this with company and it was delivered at 3pm.  When it arived it was dead power wise.  Given they had put the graphic card in and said they'd tested it we guessed they used their own lead.  Borrowed new lead and it now works.  There is a dent in one of the drive bay covers.  I will be getting a new cover and a new lead or my toys will be out of the pram.  Have already named it Little Bastard.

It's currently installing Office 13. I am trying to 'understand' Windows 8.1.

My keyboard and mouse have decals and light up blue - wonder if I could get the same colour under car lighting for the mini?  The keyboard came with the warning:  'Killing the soul behead' and emphasised it has drainage holes in case of accidents.

Whilst I have probably saved about £300-£400 from just buying a top of the range HP envy - we shall see how it behaves over time.  

A healthkick has been declared chez us.  We have not dived into the realm of low fat ready meals and weight watchers products which always seem to include chemicals in the ingredient list rather than, y'know, things recognisable as foods.

Nope.  I succumbed to the River Cottage Light and Easy book because I dream of a small holding where the nearest neightbours are at least 100 metres away and can't hear you sneeze through the wall.  Honestly when my neighbour opens her mug cupboard (springy hinge), I hear it.  But there I digress.  Anyway it's Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's new book which aims for gluten free and dairy free.  That is not to say we will become staunchly either of those because I adore dairy far too much.  You can call me dairy free when you pry the Jersey milk container and Lescure butter wrapper from my cold dead hands.

My Ocado order (yep back with Ocado after a brief flirt with Tesco), is littered with flaxseed, various flours which are not wheat, malt rice syrup, seeds and nuts and other such stuff.  And as I now have Fridays off thanks to working four ten hour days, I will be heading to the markets to buy fish and then coming home to bake: Granola, Oatcakes, Chilli seedy bars and Castagnaccio to keep us going throught the week on the nibbly side.  Having a baking day feels quite traditional.

And the coming week's evening menu looks like this:
Chicken with lentils and rosemary and broadbeans
Trout Chermoulata with rice and cashews
Broadbean fish rizo with rice and kale
Parships, chorizo, kale and lentils
Fish and tomato curry
Vegetable and nut risotto.

There will also be fruit in abundance and nuts to scoff.

We shall see if this works. It is possible that I may end up with a cupboard full of languishing unusual flours/nuts.  That said I have already ordered the appropriate tupperware to neatly store them in (with labels).   And if I do fail I have a feeling that purpletigron could take a good deal of it off my hands.

Does anyone have any gluten free favourites for week day dinners?  Nothing too faffy please.

This week I have tried two things to be green.  One hasn't worked and one might.

I agree it's time for me to stop throwing away one costa cup every working day.  It's just a shame that their machines of which there are two between me and my bus, aren't designed to take their own reusable cups.  This one will need more thought.  The manned coffee shops are not on my route to work. The one at work is manned by an individual who is not a person who I want a daily conversation with as it would just bring me down before I even log on.

And secondly we throw away a lot of 2 litre milk cartons - about 3-4 per week.  We have bought a JUG IT which cost £2.00 and started buying milk bags.  However they are slightly more expensive than cartons but we will give it a go for a while.  It will also give us more space in the fridge.

And that's my environmental contribution for the week.

I have only ever recommended a few cookbooks; the last being Peyton and Byrne British Baking because all the recipes I tried came out really well, even when I deviated.  I was looking around for a general cook book which was for standard dinner cooking, simple, quick and not extravagant or needing powdered hamster toe nail clippings or dirtying twenty pieces of kit in the process.  I had had a few failures with the Waitrose magazine where it seemed that certain ingredients just seemed to have been missed out.

So what is the repository of simple dinners? It's Good Housekeeping's Family meals for a fiver. It's currently in WH Smith's for £4.99.

My colleague's 12 year was set question 5.  The external square does not count and everything must be a square.  We tried overlapping and about 20 different permutations but could not get 9 squares.  I said I'd post it here because there are smart people on LJ.

Any thoughts?

Not being a parent and having recently had a cat with 'digestive issues' I have been delighted by the existence of the automated litter tray although we have not yet got to that stage.  I got to thinking about something I will never do:  nappy changing.

Take one child with a dirty nappy. Imagine if you could clean it without seeing or smelling the nappy contents?

Why could there not be a plumed in piece of equipment in a bathroom about the size of a linen basket.  A ring gently closes round and supports the child above the waist and lets the feet and legs hang loose.  The machine releases the nappy and gently removes it.  A tepid jet wash cleans the child from the waist down and directional jets spray a lotion in mist form to the appropriate areas (depending on gender).  It could use a slightly anti-bacterial wash as well.

You don't see a dirty nappy as it comes out in a sealed packet which you bin or open and examine if you must do this.  Being a non-parent I understand that the colour and smell of the kid's poop is acceptable water cooler discussion.

Out comes a clean child which you can then nappy.  The importance of checking a child's skin health means that having the machine nappy the child may miss early signs of nappy rash.

The components exist. We have dishwashers and car washers.

Anyone got James Dyson's number?

I have spent today being a victim of my mother's shopping habits from years back and more than five counties away.  She would make marmalade in February and whenever she saw Seville oranges, which have a very short season, she would buy almost every net of them she could find.  I did the same this year and ended up with 6 kilos.

I use a lot of different jam recipes and don't have a particular formulae in my head about fruit to sugar rates or the pectin level of every fruit.  So when I got home and worked out that I needed for every 1.3KG of oranges, 2.6KG of sugar to counteract the bitterness of the Seville oranges.  In general and a fact I have now committed to remember, is that the jam/sugar ratio is about even.

I managed to palm off 2 * 1kg boxes of oranges on to understanding friends and very soon the final batch of seville marmalade will be jarred.

Next year I will buy 3kg.  I blame this year's over purchasing on the fact they were labelled as one of my favourite Waitrose brands -  'cooks ingredients' which if I buy them, makes me a cook.  Stands to reason.

Jar of marmalade anyone?