3rd best reds

Well Done Man U,

Still only half as good as Liverpool and no way near as mighty as the Tykes!!! But beating Chelsea is always good ;)

Green Wednesday?

That's tasty
These chaps on these marvellous machines harvested my tea. I had some excellent English asparagus and the last of the granita how flash am I? It’s good to know where your snap comes from, here in fact.

Blue Wednesday!

Stella Nonsense

There was an old school Chelsea fan on the train just now, you know bald head, thick neck, footy shirt, tatts and Sov rings. He was being obnoxiously loud on the train having an expletive thick boorish phone call with his mate. He got off and as I followed him I could see his plastic bag of booze was starting bulge dangerous. I should have said something but before I could say owt it split and all his Stella, every last bottle bit the dust in a foamy explosion. Cue more swearing and over top dramatics tee hee. I probably saved him from another drunken tatt and anyway if his club wasn’t awash with money stolen from the poor of Russia I might have had some sympathy; what am I saying, no one has ever liked Chelsea, I do hope they loose. oh and Man U have just scored.

Mear nonsense: the Bear facts

Warning Testosterone corner:
Tee hee Rays Mears has tried to slap down his channel 4 competitor Teddy "Bear" Gryll. The papers has tried to settle the debate as to who's hardest and had come down on the the side of Teddy.

Stiff Grylling:
This proves 2 things firstly this doffing the forelock to toffs is getting out hand as t'old Teddy is the son of some high ranking Tory and that with the best will in world they shouldn't have got women to decide on this. Firstly she's impressed by Teddy's SAS credentials well if everyone who say's he was in SAS was in SAS it wouldn't be a squadron it be an entire army in itself. It's like every scouser over age 50 saw the Beatles anyone over 40 saw the Pistols at the 100 club. She's also impressed by his name which as we've seen is really quite soft/posh he's called Edward .

It's not a shame about Ray

Lastly she's fooled by Mears slightly chubby plain looks into thinking he's ironically the cuddly animal of pair. But when the chips are down (which is handy for Ray as he should lay off them!) Ray's ya man, he can light a fire at the bottom the sea, make a sort of porridge out of things growing through the cracks in the pavement and would do that joke where you get someone to pull your finger and then do a fart.

T'old Teddy would be off to his mum the moment the poor boys nicked his sweets.
It's hardly a question Ray's the king of the mountains,and bogs, and outback, and forests and desert and cosy woodlands in Surrey.

ps I bet Teddy doesn't even sh*t in woods.
pps. Also Ray had that slightly mad Botany Professor on his last show who used eat weeds like a small mammal and was slightly loopy.

I've run out of Orange juice song title puns

To quote evan dando "what if there's something good on tv and it's never shown again" but this time it is ,
oh shut up and get to the point....the excellent edwyn collins bbc documentary is on I player I missed it the first time and on BBC2 last night but hurrah it's appeared in webspace.

I don't want to go to Chelsea...

Wot no Gaye Search?
Why go west when you can go east? Why go to the Chelsea Flower show when we can have one here in SE London, all that was lacking was tasteful tv coverage with an even more tasteful indie soundtrack, so I made a film. Gorilla Gardeners of the world unite you have nothing to lose but your bananas plants!

Late night update: the music is by the unlikely named "speck mountain" who i like great deal, i heard it in q record shop and bought it there then, the tracks called "summer above" . I really like them they are a touch scandnavian but from the states I think

Bitter sweet endings

I went out to eat the other day and had some very good food; well the starter and the main course were good. Unusually I had a pudding and as usual I was disappointed. The desert was so ridiculously sweet it could have come with squirty cream, 100’s and 1000’s, white chocolate buttons and in a sugar bowl and you wouldn’t have noticed. So I decided to try something a bit more grown up or perhaps just not as sweet.

Campari & Grapefruit Granita.
Campari like anchovies, olives, capers et al is one of those tastes you grow into but once you get it you can’t go back, maybe you do get bitter in your old age after all!

I’m not sure I actually made a granita as it was closer to sorbet but it was jolly nice and crucially not too sweet, I think even people who don’t like Campari might like it. Its wonderfully pink and sharp tasting. Its best eaten on the day but can be frozen for few days and left to melt a little and broken up with a fork before eating.

Weights and measures:
I got the basic recipe from here, I’ve never bothered to find the conversion table for American cups so I just used a mug. It made about enough for 6-8 to have a tasteful amount, I would just treat the amounts as proportions. I use boxed juice as I couldn’t be bothered to clean my juicer after squeezing a few grapefruits, I’m sure it would even better made from fresh. Using blood grapefruit would add to the pinkness!

Ingredients:
1/2 mug sugar
3 &1/2 mugs of Grapefruit juice
1/3 mug Campari (depending on how strong you like it)
Flat plastic box with lid

Method and changes:
The difference I made to the recipe was to use all juice, I didn’t heat up the liquid just stirred the sugar till it dissolved. Then pour in the Campari. I tasted it before freezing and added a splash more Campari for good measure. Bear in mind that it will taste sweeter before freezing, as cold food in general needs more seasoning; don’t add too much booze as the alcohol may stop the thing freezing at all! Then after 40 mins. you stir it to break up the ice crystals, keep doing this until it looks like frozen rice or grains hence the name.

Timings:
As to prep time it took 10 mins. to make and about 4-5 hrs in fridge to freeze to the loose texture I needed, I used a deep dish for space reasons; use a shallow bowl and it will take less time.

Enjoy!