Books that lie

I had considered buying this book when it first came out and decided that it would be too "sciency" for me. But a few weeks ago Jamie bought it in a second hand bookshop. As I have temporarily run out of Terry Pratchet books to read, I began reading this. At first I thought it was ok but last night I found myself getting slightly frustrated with it.

You see, the author promised, in his prologue, to answer all those questions that were never answered for you as a youngster in Science class; such as 'how do they know that?'. Well, while he provides an interesting insight into the, often weird, lives of the scientists who brought us the knowledge of our world, he also often creates more questions than he answers in explaining their life's works. For example, the angstrom is the smallest unit of measurement, and apparently is the distance you are separated from your chair when you sit on it! Now I don't doubt this but what my question is, is how do know? How did they absolutely, irrefutably prove that you do not physically touch the thing you are sitting on? In short, how is the angstrom measured?

This wasn't the first time in the book that he explained something that left me with more questions than it answered. So I feel slightly cheated by Mr Bryson. Before starting this book I was blissfully unaware of angstroms and the like, and now I feel lacking that I do not know how scientists discovered the gap or measured it's distance.

Disappointed and Confused, England

Adventures in cooking

Jamie says that not everyone puts the same effort into cooking that I do. He said this on Saturday night after a wonderful meal, cooked by me. He says alot of people just wouldn't bother doing the recipes that are too fiddly; I think that's rubbish.

Anyway, since I never seem to have anything to write on my blog I decided that I could tell you all about my cooking. I tend to do the more adventurous recipes at the weekend - I just don't have the time or energy during the week. So this blog is going to (hopefully) get a bit more foodie in the future; that or I'll go back to 'no posting' like some people.

Now when I say adventurous, I don't think I am; I find recipes online or in Waitrose or in some of the books I have and just do them. I have a tendancy to make most things only once and then get bored with it.

So this weekend...
Saturday:
Surfing the net on Friday afternoon at work (I know, tsk, tsk and all that) I found a recipe website. I was curious to see what I'd find under 'Irish' in the Cuisine section. Well I found this and I can tell you I never had this as a child - but it did turn out very nice. I was most impressed with the mash, which was creamy, obviously, and will probably cause a heart-attack in one or both of us (me and Jamie, that is) if I were to ever make it again.
I was very proud of dessert, which was this - foil baked strawberries with Pimms and clotted cream. As I only required a couple of cups of Pimms for the recipe and the smallest bottle I could find was 75cl, we ended up spending the rest of Saturday evening working our way through the bottle. Pimms and lemonade makes me very giggly :-)
We watched Serenity on DVD and then tottered off to bed.

Sunday:
Nothing too crazy here; I made Red Pepper risotto, which I got from a vegetarian cookbook I have. I underestimated how long it would take to grill the peppers and how fiddly it would be to peel them once cooled. Well we eventually got dinner at 9pm. I thought it was delicious but Jamie, it turns out, hates risotto. Apparently, he let me cook it because he knew I really wanted to. He's so sweet, he even emptied his plate.
Due to the lateness of dinner there was no dessert on Sunday.

The Date

You know, we haven't had many official dates. The sort where the boy comes up to you and sheepishly asks if you're free tonight and you make him sweat cos you know you won't have many opportunities in the rest of your life to have that kind of power over the man....
Anyway, my husband wandered into the kitchen the other night as I prepared curry (a lovely veggie korma) and asked if I would like to go to the cinema with him - he's so cute sometimes!! Well I said yes, cos I like spending quality time with my man - have I mentioned how cute he is?
[If this was anyone else I'd cynical and say honeymoon period.]

The plan in the became to scoff the curry at high speed (easier said than done) and then head down the road to the cinema (the one we have to pay for you know! Tsk!). The movie of choice was Marie Antoinette and for the first time in a long time we had to queue to get tickets. However, the nice thing about LeisureWorld in Southampton is that they have a Ben & Jerry's cafe :-) All I can say is 'Core Sundae' - well actually I'm going to say more than that. We had a large sundae to share. We got 3 scoops of ice-crean (we went for Chocolate Fudge Brownie, Phish Food and Fossil Fuel) filled will with hot chocolate sauce, covered in mini-maltesers and then topped with whipped cream. Yyyuuuummmmmmmmm!!!

At this point I have to say that for me the sundae was the high point of the evening. I was not that impressed by the movie, I found it slow and I'm not sure what the point was. Were they trying to show Marie Antoinette as completely vacuous or did I miss some underlying message? Anyway, I wouldn't be recommending it to anyone but the sundae was super!

All mine, my precious!

As of Monday my little car (Betty) is all mine! After 11 months of financial hardship all the repayments are done and I can claim her as my own - it is so cool! I don't think I;ve ever owned something so expensive. And we have had such good times together.

Betty has taken us on numerous treks into the New Forest, we've been shopping in Portsmouth, she took me to London in July for a trade show, she took us (and all our luggage) to Ireland to get married and then came on honeymoon with us and last weekend she took us to Bedfordshire for an airshow. She's like our little baby... OK that might be getting a bit weird, but you know, she's special and now she's mine!