Thursday, October 21, 2010

Things we say...Part 29

After a string of swearing from my Second Life partner leads to the following conversation.

V: What did you do?!
X: I squashed a mosquito. Like ninja.
V: With your hurt hand.

Monday, October 11, 2010

All roads lead to....Facebook? o.O

Every now and then when I'm bored out of my mind (or unable to sleep for whatever reason) I end up wandering the vacated corners of the internet. In my case, this corner tends to be made up out of random wikipedia entries (what? I like researching random things!), various blogs, and of course my rarely visited facebook (no, I don't actually look at it all that much, my Twitter is just linked to it, it's a clever trick to keep people from thinking I'm dead).

The other night I discovered to my shock and horror (actually it was delight) that one of my old middle school friends, dare I say one of my better friends, is making headway in the music industry and has released his first album. Now, I'm aware that this might be viewed as advertising, but meh! If you're into R&B/Soul Ben-Harpery kinda music you might just enjoy listening to Yufi's album. I downloaded 'Diamonds' off his facebook page (as suggested) and I was going "Wow, someone's come a long way since Mr. Gallagher's music class!". Suitably impressed I'll be grabbing the rest of the album off of iTunes when I get the chance; what are friends for after all? I'm getting ahead of myself: the album you want is 'The Red Light' by Yufi Zewdu (there, it's all hyperlinked for you so you don't have an excuse!).

Moving along from musical advertisment, however, this got me thinking. So many people from 'that time in my life' - I'm talking Mozambique, for those of you in the know - have come so far! My best friend Alison is doing great, she's married (I still can't believe that, even though it's been years!), most of the others have steady interesting jobs and fledgling careers. It's kind of crazy when you think about it! I'm really happy that they're all living their lives. It makes me wonder what all my teachers are up to. Is Mr. H still surfing? And what on earth could Mr. McCartey be up to? I'd really like to know where the Phillipses are. Why aren't they on Facebook! *growl!*

There...I went and said it: Facebook, for all it's stalkertastic capabilities is quite useful for the diplobrat regime, least this way I can keep track of who's having babies and who's got a new PhD running.

Clear Skies~V

Friday, October 8, 2010

Potatoes!

I'll skip the whole 'ooh, haven't posted in aages thing' to say: Sometimes potatoes are exciting!

Anyway. Circumstances have *really* come together to create awesome lunch today, so I decided to share. To start with: Dutch Cream Potatoes.

These are the best potatoes ever. (Argh, if I type 'potatoes' too many more times, it's gonna start lookin' really funny. Heh. Potatoes.) If you've never had 'em, I highly recommend you fix that ASAP. 'Cause potatoes are awesome, and Dutch Creams are the best.

Right. So. My realisation of the day: there's Greek-style yoghurt in our fridge, and heaps of chives & mint in the garden. These are actually easier circumstances to achieve than getting hold of Dutch Cream potatoes, so don't go gettin' intimidated - if you have room for a couple of pots, you have room to have both chives and mint. They both grow like nobody's business, and require very little by way of gardening skill or intervention. Just water 'em semi-regularly and they'll be fine.

Right, so. Clean and cook some potatoes (heh, potatoes. Apparently 'potatoes' looking funny taps into the same part of my brain as fart jokes. Go figure). You can peel 'em, or not - if you're using something like a Lady Christl, don't bother, but the skin on Dutch Creams can get a little flaky, so if you don't like that... well, make your own damn mind up. Anyway.

Stick some yoghurt in a bowl, and finely chop in some chives & mint - enough to make it pretty obvious that they're there. You can stir some honey through too, but I like the tangyness of the yoghurt with the fresh oniony-mintness of the greens, so whatever. Keep in the fridge til you need it; this keeps fine for several days. It's also pretty tasty as dip, or used instead of mayo for tuna sandwiches. The possibilities, they are endless!

Hard-boil some eggs (obviously, proportions for all of this depends on how much potato salad you wanna make).

Wait til everything's cool; peel & chop the eggs, and combine. If you're going all out, cook some bacon til it's nice'n crispy, and crumble that in too. Feel free to also add some snow peas, or corn kernels, or whatever. You can also season this with whatever you like; sometimes I want chili flakes, and sometimes ground pepper, or maybe freshly grated nutmeg, or parmesan, or sometimes no seasoning at all, or... you get the picture. Be creative, it makes for tastiness.