It's Saturday.
I'm going shopping.
Much as I love boobies and kissing girls, there's a side of me that fills the house with Tiffany lamps and paintings and that loves to shop.
Go figure …
In the meantime, here is one of the most beautiful songs ever written, Tom Waits' classic and übercool weepie, Burma Shave.
Enjoy.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Friday, August 22, 2008
What's Cooking With Dive? Kare Kare
Right! Get your flabby arse off that bloody sofa, switch off that stupid fucking television and come and join me in the kitchen.
We're still with Pinoy cuisine and today we'll be making smooth, creamy kare kare.
Squee!
Yup; yet another cute little local organic piggy has fallen to the slavering maw of Dive.
Watch your fingers on that knife; it's bloody sharp. Use it on the piggy instead and cut it into nice chunky pieces.
You'll be needing some of this stuff to make kare kare. Plus the wibbly-wobbly worm string beans from last week and an aubergine.
Anchovies … What a fucking mess …
Delicious, but messy. Getting the little blighters out of the oil and attacking them with my little ninja Japanese ceramic knife is a good excuse to suck yummy, fishy olive oil off your fingers before washing it off.
I used to be able to pick these in the garden in Portugal but now I'm stuck here in England it's tinned banana blossom only, dammit.
If you can get fresh banana blossoms, blanch them beforehand.
Rinse and separate them out and then slice up the petals into bite-size or julienne pieces. They're a little like artichokes but without so much flavour, though they do absorb and enrich other flavours and they have a lovely texture so use them if you can get them.
First up … same as always … brown off your meat and set it aside, then soften a nice strong organic onion and some yummy garlic.
So far, so "same as last week".
Oh, yes. There'll be enough here for two hungry people.
You'll want about a pint of really good stock. Veggie will do if you've not been boiling up trotters and other porcine miscellanea.
Do not ever, EVER use stock cubes or "bouillon powder"; it is just salt with chemical flavourings. If you have any of that crap in your cupboards, go look at the ingredients then use it for killing slugs … It's all it's good for.
If you can't make good fish, meat, veggie and chicken stocks and freeze them for when you need them then fucking learn!
Right … I used a casserole with a lid, but you can use whatever you want.
Put in your browned meat, onion and garlic, then pour over the stock. While you're bringing it to the boil put in most of that jar of organic, crunchy peanut butter, the aubergine, chopped into bite-sized pieces and the anchovies, together with a few dry-fried and pounded to dust annatto seeds that I forgot to tell you about.
Okay … Now turn it down to simmer, pop a lid on and go wash up all that mess you've made.
Don't forget to keep an eye on this as it will need stirring as it thickens to stop it sticking and burning. Add more water if necessary.
When the meat is just about done, give it a taste and add as much organic dark soy as you feel like (and - if you're Joy and have a sweet tooth that would shame an American child - add sugar … just don't do it while I'm around).
Now throw in the wibbly-wobbly worm beans (cut to finger length like last week) and the banana flowers and keep on stirring for a couple more minutes while you panic and realise the rice is ready to dish up.
Open the rice steamer to find some Thai jasmine rice as last week (and the week before). Put some in a nice bowl and then dash back to your kare kare and hurl a rough-chopped pak choi in there.
One more swirl of the spoon before the pak choi has the time to scream and it's ready to dish up.
The stuff on the side of the plate is Bagoong (shrimp paste). Warm some up in the microwave and use it as a relish for kare kare if you want authenticity. It is yummy!.
Your kare kare should be creamy and mild and semi-sweet with a glorious combination of textures, and no excuse for poo jokes like last week's sinigang.
While you're eating that, enjoy this little video that Joy sent me.
It's the "Oblation Run", the traditional enrollment procedure at Manila's top university.
Unfortunately the ladies don't have the same tradition.
We're still with Pinoy cuisine and today we'll be making smooth, creamy kare kare.
Squee!Yup; yet another cute little local organic piggy has fallen to the slavering maw of Dive.
Watch your fingers on that knife; it's bloody sharp. Use it on the piggy instead and cut it into nice chunky pieces.
You'll be needing some of this stuff to make kare kare. Plus the wibbly-wobbly worm string beans from last week and an aubergine.Anchovies … What a fucking mess …
Delicious, but messy. Getting the little blighters out of the oil and attacking them with my little ninja Japanese ceramic knife is a good excuse to suck yummy, fishy olive oil off your fingers before washing it off.
I used to be able to pick these in the garden in Portugal but now I'm stuck here in England it's tinned banana blossom only, dammit.
If you can get fresh banana blossoms, blanch them beforehand.
Rinse and separate them out and then slice up the petals into bite-size or julienne pieces. They're a little like artichokes but without so much flavour, though they do absorb and enrich other flavours and they have a lovely texture so use them if you can get them.
First up … same as always … brown off your meat and set it aside, then soften a nice strong organic onion and some yummy garlic.
So far, so "same as last week".
Oh, yes. There'll be enough here for two hungry people.
You'll want about a pint of really good stock. Veggie will do if you've not been boiling up trotters and other porcine miscellanea.
Do not ever, EVER use stock cubes or "bouillon powder"; it is just salt with chemical flavourings. If you have any of that crap in your cupboards, go look at the ingredients then use it for killing slugs … It's all it's good for.
If you can't make good fish, meat, veggie and chicken stocks and freeze them for when you need them then fucking learn!
Right … I used a casserole with a lid, but you can use whatever you want.
Put in your browned meat, onion and garlic, then pour over the stock. While you're bringing it to the boil put in most of that jar of organic, crunchy peanut butter, the aubergine, chopped into bite-sized pieces and the anchovies, together with a few dry-fried and pounded to dust annatto seeds that I forgot to tell you about.
Okay … Now turn it down to simmer, pop a lid on and go wash up all that mess you've made.
Don't forget to keep an eye on this as it will need stirring as it thickens to stop it sticking and burning. Add more water if necessary.
When the meat is just about done, give it a taste and add as much organic dark soy as you feel like (and - if you're Joy and have a sweet tooth that would shame an American child - add sugar … just don't do it while I'm around).
Now throw in the wibbly-wobbly worm beans (cut to finger length like last week) and the banana flowers and keep on stirring for a couple more minutes while you panic and realise the rice is ready to dish up.
Open the rice steamer to find some Thai jasmine rice as last week (and the week before). Put some in a nice bowl and then dash back to your kare kare and hurl a rough-chopped pak choi in there.
One more swirl of the spoon before the pak choi has the time to scream and it's ready to dish up.
The stuff on the side of the plate is Bagoong (shrimp paste). Warm some up in the microwave and use it as a relish for kare kare if you want authenticity. It is yummy!.Your kare kare should be creamy and mild and semi-sweet with a glorious combination of textures, and no excuse for poo jokes like last week's sinigang.
While you're eating that, enjoy this little video that Joy sent me.
It's the "Oblation Run", the traditional enrollment procedure at Manila's top university.
Unfortunately the ladies don't have the same tradition.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Let's Make A Racket - XXI
Sheesh! Thursdays roll round real fast as you get older.
I'm running out of crappy photos of me playing guitar, so here's one of my school bands from the mid seventies, laying around in a graveyard.
This mob were a very short-lived prog/punk cum experimental art/noise trio called The Wendy Bankers Experience but it's the only photo I have of any of my school bands so that's what you're stuck with.
Hey ho.
Today's racket is another song from a stand-in gig I did as guest guitar player with the Dave Thomas Band many years ago. We play Robert Cray's "Phonebooth" rather badly.
Dave plays the first solo (it's his band, I was just guesting) but there are a couple of Dive solos in there somewhere. I'm sure you know my playing well enough by now to recognise my rackety style.
Dave is playing his Strat and I'm playing my PRS.
I'm running out of crappy photos of me playing guitar, so here's one of my school bands from the mid seventies, laying around in a graveyard.
This mob were a very short-lived prog/punk cum experimental art/noise trio called The Wendy Bankers Experience but it's the only photo I have of any of my school bands so that's what you're stuck with.Hey ho.
Today's racket is another song from a stand-in gig I did as guest guitar player with the Dave Thomas Band many years ago. We play Robert Cray's "Phonebooth" rather badly.
Dave plays the first solo (it's his band, I was just guesting) but there are a couple of Dive solos in there somewhere. I'm sure you know my playing well enough by now to recognise my rackety style.
Dave is playing his Strat and I'm playing my PRS.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Fess up: First Car
Yay for Katie once again!
This morning I found she had posted a photo of her first car; to English eyes a behemoth straight out of Dukes of Hazzard. Woohoo!
So …
Everyone dive for your old photo collection and dig out your very first car.
For people my age this is gonna be embarrassing, but hey.
Meet Betsy! My 1965 Ford Anglia.
The same model and colour as the one in the Harry Potter books (so I'm told), except mine only flew over humpback bridges and the occasional kerb.
Those are my old college buds Sarah and Paul standing drunk next to it, outside one of our favourite pubs on Heydon village green way back in nineteen-seventy-something.
C'mon! Dig 'em up and post 'em! Let's see who had the coolest wheels (I have to admit, so far it is Katie).
This morning I found she had posted a photo of her first car; to English eyes a behemoth straight out of Dukes of Hazzard. Woohoo!
So …
Everyone dive for your old photo collection and dig out your very first car.
For people my age this is gonna be embarrassing, but hey.
Meet Betsy! My 1965 Ford Anglia.The same model and colour as the one in the Harry Potter books (so I'm told), except mine only flew over humpback bridges and the occasional kerb.
Those are my old college buds Sarah and Paul standing drunk next to it, outside one of our favourite pubs on Heydon village green way back in nineteen-seventy-something.
C'mon! Dig 'em up and post 'em! Let's see who had the coolest wheels (I have to admit, so far it is Katie).
Invectile Dysfunction
I have received a complaint.
Our Rich writes from the lovely city of Boston, Mass. over the pond in the US of A:
"I don't know what's happened to you, Dive. You seem to be getting like an old softy. NOT the Dive of old who used to be cynical and amuse us all with your bitching and ranting. No wonder old knudsen doesn't read your blog anymore.
jeez!!"
To which I can only concur …
Sorry, Rich, I don't know what's wrong with me, either. Try as I might, I just cannot seem to get it up these days. I've been sitting here all morning, desperately straining to work up a rant and there's nothing there.
I'm so ashamed.
This has never happened before … Honest!
I've always been able to get a rant up at a moment's notice, but just lately it appears that I have become rant-impotent.
Invectile dysfunction: The inability to produce invective, spleen, vitriol, or even a plain and simple fit of incoherent rage.
Bummer!
The closest I can get today is to rail pathetically against myself and my total inability to chat up weemen.
Let's go back to last Saturday and the Festival of Cultures (cue wibbly "flashback" music).
I am setting out all the food when this stunningly pretty girl walks up and looks lost.
I turn on my smile and reach for my not inconsiderable reservoir of wit and charm and …
… and I manage to have a long and detailed conversation with her about scones.
After which she - understandably - keeps at least ten yards away from me all afternoon.
A little later and one of the most truly beautiful women I can ever remember seeing approaches me, smiling and starts up a conversation.
Woah! Result!
Yeah, right …
What happens?
Mister intelligent, funny, charming, confident Dive returns the smile and …
Bang!
My brain totally seizes …
She is talking to me and asking me personal things and the only word in my brain is "Duh" … and I cannot even articulate that as my mouth is flapping like a fish in the bottom of a boat and I hear myself stutter and freeze.
After a while, she wanders off, looking confused.
Joy introduces us later in the day and leaves us together and exactly the same thing happens again.
Pathetic.
Shoot me now.
If I believed in God I could go join a monastery, but I don't, so fuck it.
Hey, ho … Back to masturbation.
Our Rich writes from the lovely city of Boston, Mass. over the pond in the US of A:
"I don't know what's happened to you, Dive. You seem to be getting like an old softy. NOT the Dive of old who used to be cynical and amuse us all with your bitching and ranting. No wonder old knudsen doesn't read your blog anymore.
jeez!!"
To which I can only concur …
Sorry, Rich, I don't know what's wrong with me, either. Try as I might, I just cannot seem to get it up these days. I've been sitting here all morning, desperately straining to work up a rant and there's nothing there.
I'm so ashamed.
This has never happened before … Honest!
I've always been able to get a rant up at a moment's notice, but just lately it appears that I have become rant-impotent.
Invectile dysfunction: The inability to produce invective, spleen, vitriol, or even a plain and simple fit of incoherent rage.
Bummer!
The closest I can get today is to rail pathetically against myself and my total inability to chat up weemen.
Let's go back to last Saturday and the Festival of Cultures (cue wibbly "flashback" music).
I am setting out all the food when this stunningly pretty girl walks up and looks lost.
I turn on my smile and reach for my not inconsiderable reservoir of wit and charm and …
… and I manage to have a long and detailed conversation with her about scones.
After which she - understandably - keeps at least ten yards away from me all afternoon.
A little later and one of the most truly beautiful women I can ever remember seeing approaches me, smiling and starts up a conversation.
Woah! Result!
Yeah, right …
What happens?
Mister intelligent, funny, charming, confident Dive returns the smile and …
Bang!
My brain totally seizes …
She is talking to me and asking me personal things and the only word in my brain is "Duh" … and I cannot even articulate that as my mouth is flapping like a fish in the bottom of a boat and I hear myself stutter and freeze.
After a while, she wanders off, looking confused.
Joy introduces us later in the day and leaves us together and exactly the same thing happens again.
Pathetic.
Shoot me now.
If I believed in God I could go join a monastery, but I don't, so fuck it.
Hey, ho … Back to masturbation.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Crapola
Crapola.
Today is a Semen Hour day.
While I'm incarcerated in the boardroom, silently screaming as my brain is sucked out through my ears and my soul seared from my body by the infernal dæmons of tedium, I'll set you a compact and bijou taskette.
Some time over the next couple of weeks I'd like you to post recipes for your very favourite dishes your mothers used to make for you when you were little.
Photos would be good.
And memories.
Next time I'm over at mum's we'll be making tiddy oggy and I'll post the results.
Now, however, I must dose myself up with enough espressos to keep shaking myself awake for the rest of the day and head down into the infernal depths of Semen Hour.
Today is a Semen Hour day.
While I'm incarcerated in the boardroom, silently screaming as my brain is sucked out through my ears and my soul seared from my body by the infernal dæmons of tedium, I'll set you a compact and bijou taskette.
Some time over the next couple of weeks I'd like you to post recipes for your very favourite dishes your mothers used to make for you when you were little.
Photos would be good.
And memories.
Next time I'm over at mum's we'll be making tiddy oggy and I'll post the results.
Now, however, I must dose myself up with enough espressos to keep shaking myself awake for the rest of the day and head down into the infernal depths of Semen Hour.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Birthday Girl
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Festival of Cultures
Well, after all the rushing around to get things ready, the 2008 Norwich Festival of Cultures was a roaring success.
Having been rained on as they put up the tents, nerves were frayed, but as soon as people started turning up the sun came out and stayed out all day.
So … Just a few snapshots from the hundreds that I took.
Here's our own one-woman tornado and organiser of the whole shebang, Joy, with Norwich's Mayor taking refuge in the food tent before the start.
This is what I was rushing around doing last night. Trying to make finger food from English ingredients … me the man who never makes English food at home.
The sarnies were:
- Organic local roast beef (rare) with horseradish from Colmans of Norwich;
- Wild British smoked salmon with English cream cheese and chives from my patio;
- the quintessentially English cucumber sandwich (white bread with the crusts cut off).
Together with local organic lettuce and tomatoes and mum's own cheese straws and sausage rolls (thanks, mum)!
Followed by local organic strawberries and Devon clotted cream.
This lot disappeared in minutes.
Before the Mayor opened the event, nobody was supposed to eat the food but our Thom seemingly couldn't resist one of my cucumber sarnies.
There was food from all over Europe and the Middle East, plus Japan, China and of course the wonderful Jong with his Pinoy cooking (I made sure and got loads of that before it was all snaffled up).
Two of the lovely Lithuanian girls who helped set stuff up and very kindly did the washing up.
The Lithuanian food was excellent!
Jong dishes out the goodies to ladies from Japan and China.
Two thirds of Jong's beautiful and well-behaved brood. How cute are they? I love getting kisses for "Uncle Dive". Hee hee.
Here is some of the marvellous entertainment Joy had laid on for us from around the globe:
First up came Thunderbolt.
Beautiful, talented … Remember you heard it here first. If this girl doesn't make it big then I'm an American Christian Right-winger.
Australia's own (brilliantly named) "Librarian Girls", singing their own stuff intermingled with Aussie folk tales and aboriginal rights songs.
Wonderful! Even with a broken arm.
This little guy just had to join in the drum workshop.
Walk Like an Egyptian …
Henna Hands.
A fantastic guitar player from Argentina whose name I didn't catch (Joy? Can you help here?) but who was very chatty afterwards. A lovely guy.
I love flamenco and this group were red hot!
So there you have it. A tiny snapshot of what was a lovely day out, getting chatty with some beautiful people from all over the planet who have made our cosmopolitan little city their home … and eating ourselves silly.
Huge thanks to Joy for working herself into a frenzy organising a fantastically successful day.
Having been rained on as they put up the tents, nerves were frayed, but as soon as people started turning up the sun came out and stayed out all day.
So … Just a few snapshots from the hundreds that I took.
Here's our own one-woman tornado and organiser of the whole shebang, Joy, with Norwich's Mayor taking refuge in the food tent before the start.
This is what I was rushing around doing last night. Trying to make finger food from English ingredients … me the man who never makes English food at home.The sarnies were:
- Organic local roast beef (rare) with horseradish from Colmans of Norwich;
- Wild British smoked salmon with English cream cheese and chives from my patio;
- the quintessentially English cucumber sandwich (white bread with the crusts cut off).
Together with local organic lettuce and tomatoes and mum's own cheese straws and sausage rolls (thanks, mum)!
Followed by local organic strawberries and Devon clotted cream.
This lot disappeared in minutes.
Before the Mayor opened the event, nobody was supposed to eat the food but our Thom seemingly couldn't resist one of my cucumber sarnies.There was food from all over Europe and the Middle East, plus Japan, China and of course the wonderful Jong with his Pinoy cooking (I made sure and got loads of that before it was all snaffled up).
Two of the lovely Lithuanian girls who helped set stuff up and very kindly did the washing up.The Lithuanian food was excellent!
Jong dishes out the goodies to ladies from Japan and China.
Two thirds of Jong's beautiful and well-behaved brood. How cute are they? I love getting kisses for "Uncle Dive". Hee hee.Here is some of the marvellous entertainment Joy had laid on for us from around the globe:
First up came Thunderbolt.Beautiful, talented … Remember you heard it here first. If this girl doesn't make it big then I'm an American Christian Right-winger.
Australia's own (brilliantly named) "Librarian Girls", singing their own stuff intermingled with Aussie folk tales and aboriginal rights songs.Wonderful! Even with a broken arm.
This little guy just had to join in the drum workshop.
Walk Like an Egyptian …
Henna Hands.
A fantastic guitar player from Argentina whose name I didn't catch (Joy? Can you help here?) but who was very chatty afterwards. A lovely guy.
I love flamenco and this group were red hot!So there you have it. A tiny snapshot of what was a lovely day out, getting chatty with some beautiful people from all over the planet who have made our cosmopolitan little city their home … and eating ourselves silly.
Huge thanks to Joy for working herself into a frenzy organising a fantastically successful day.
Feeling Snarky
Sheesh!
I'm up at six, slaving in front of a hot stove, getting ready to represent England and our glorious cuisine at the Norwich Festival of Cultures (don't ask).
I hate English cuisine. I NEVER cook it at home.
If anyone asks me to tell them about England I'll just point to the ground and tell them "You're standing on it."
I've been looking forward to this for weeks and then the trains were so crappy yesterday that I ended up running really late and suddenly all the enthusiasm evaporated and I really don't feel like doing it at all. I hate it when that happens.
Hey ho. Back to the kitchen.
Work work busy busy chop chop bang bang …
I'm up at six, slaving in front of a hot stove, getting ready to represent England and our glorious cuisine at the Norwich Festival of Cultures (don't ask).
I hate English cuisine. I NEVER cook it at home.
If anyone asks me to tell them about England I'll just point to the ground and tell them "You're standing on it."
I've been looking forward to this for weeks and then the trains were so crappy yesterday that I ended up running really late and suddenly all the enthusiasm evaporated and I really don't feel like doing it at all. I hate it when that happens.
Hey ho. Back to the kitchen.
Work work busy busy chop chop bang bang …
Friday, August 15, 2008
Two Years Before The Mast
Dammit! I missed my own Blog-Birthday!
Sigh … Yet another sign of advancing senility.
Not that anyone's remotely interested but the Small Glass Planet was officially two years old last Thursday (7th August).
Two whole years of utter drivel: rants, moans, whinges, spuffle, twattery, swear-fests, Godbothering, boring photographs, boring videos, boring music, twaddle, crap cookery, insults (I'll admit some of those were pretty good), balderdash, piffle, pedantry beyond all reason and general, self-obsessed, opinionated wank.
Including this post, that's seven-hundred and thirty-two (count 'em) chunkettes of all of our lives completely and utterly wasted. Lost to time forever.
Let's say you spend a couple of minutes reading and commenting on each one, that means the more doggedly persistent among you may have wasted a little over twenty-four hours of your lives reading this trash.
That's a whole day gone! Think what you could have done with that time! You won't get it back now, not even if you kept the receipt.
And as for all the time I wasted writing them …
Holy fuck!
I could have done so many more productive things … masturbated myself into a coma, drunk myself into a coma, drugged myself into a coma, watched daytime TV … well, maybe not that last one, but shit; what a totally futile thing blogging is … just filling in time, waiting for death.
Has it made me a better person?
Has it earned me money?
Has it brought me eternal happiness?
Has it got me laid?
Has it fuck!
BASTA!
(Italian's so much more expressive than English when it comes to shouting "Enough!") …
It's time things changed around here.
It's time I stopped all this crap and got myself a life.
Goodbye, Blogville! I'm off down the Mississippi on a raft …
Yeah, right …
Like I'd ever do anything that sensible.
See you tomorrow for more senseless futility.
P.S.
… and a belated Happy Blog-Birthday to my oldest and bestest blog-neighbour, Robyn; two years old last Friday!
P.P.S.
Of course, I could go off on a mawkish sob-fest about how much I owe you guys and your wonderful blogs/comments for keeping me relatively sane these past two years, but that would spoil a perfectly good rant, so I won't.
Blogging?
Bollocks!
Sigh … Yet another sign of advancing senility.
Not that anyone's remotely interested but the Small Glass Planet was officially two years old last Thursday (7th August).
Two whole years of utter drivel: rants, moans, whinges, spuffle, twattery, swear-fests, Godbothering, boring photographs, boring videos, boring music, twaddle, crap cookery, insults (I'll admit some of those were pretty good), balderdash, piffle, pedantry beyond all reason and general, self-obsessed, opinionated wank.
Including this post, that's seven-hundred and thirty-two (count 'em) chunkettes of all of our lives completely and utterly wasted. Lost to time forever.
Let's say you spend a couple of minutes reading and commenting on each one, that means the more doggedly persistent among you may have wasted a little over twenty-four hours of your lives reading this trash.
That's a whole day gone! Think what you could have done with that time! You won't get it back now, not even if you kept the receipt.
And as for all the time I wasted writing them …
Holy fuck!
I could have done so many more productive things … masturbated myself into a coma, drunk myself into a coma, drugged myself into a coma, watched daytime TV … well, maybe not that last one, but shit; what a totally futile thing blogging is … just filling in time, waiting for death.
Has it made me a better person?
Has it earned me money?
Has it brought me eternal happiness?
Has it got me laid?
Has it fuck!
BASTA!
(Italian's so much more expressive than English when it comes to shouting "Enough!") …
It's time things changed around here.
It's time I stopped all this crap and got myself a life.
Goodbye, Blogville! I'm off down the Mississippi on a raft …
Yeah, right …
Like I'd ever do anything that sensible.
See you tomorrow for more senseless futility.
P.S.
… and a belated Happy Blog-Birthday to my oldest and bestest blog-neighbour, Robyn; two years old last Friday!
P.P.S.
Of course, I could go off on a mawkish sob-fest about how much I owe you guys and your wonderful blogs/comments for keeping me relatively sane these past two years, but that would spoil a perfectly good rant, so I won't.
Blogging?
Bollocks!
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