A brief word about some very cheeky composers

WARNING: The following blog contains material of an extremely geeky nature, which some readers may find incredibly sad.

Greetings all! I'm working on another blog post at the moment which will hopefully go up at the end of the week, but in the meantime I wanted to share an observation I made yesterday. Now in order for you to understand this fully, you need to listen to the first couple of minutes or so of this, which is taken from the Battlestar Galactica Season 2 soundtrack by Bear McCreary.

Better yet, listen to it a couple of times. Then follow this link for a program on the BBC iPlayer called "Nature's Great Events: The Great Tide". I was watching this last night and noticed around 39-40 minutes in that the background music sounded strangely familiar. Have a listen for yourself and see what you think. (By the way, the link probably won't work after Saturday 18th, as the program won't be available on iPlayer after that date.)

Incidentally, I had a look in the credits to see if Bear McCreary had been acknowledged at least as a creative influence, but alas his name was nowhere to be seen. I just wanted to put this out there to see if anyone else reckons their soundtrack writers cut a couple of corners. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

I'm sure I don't even need to say this, but I'm not responsible for the content of anything I link to in my blog, unless of course I've created it myself, which in this case I haven't. Please don't sue me.

RUM: A few home hacks

Hello again! This is a story all about rum - how a bunch of us drank it and had some fun - so I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there and I'll tell you how to make some effing gorgeous alcoholic beverages!

Needless to say, this idea started out (as many great ideas do) under the influence of alcohol. There was a rum-tasting event at the Saint James Tavern on Tuesday, my friends and I had a couple of shots of some rum infused on the premises with a special concoction of yummy things and the words "how hard could it be" may well have been uttered.

Needless to say, once the words "how hard can it be" have been uttered, life simply cannot continue until an answer has been found, so the next day we dragged our aching heads up to ASDA and bought the following:

• Rum (Morgan's Spiced)
• 2 Coconuts
• 1 Pineapple

On returning home, we proceeded to hollow out the coconuts and the pineapple (saving the coconut juice in a glass), and stuff the little pieces of fruit and nut we were left with into a spare 2 litre Coke bottle. Having made a bottle of fruit, we poured in the coconut milk and the rum, shook it all up and left it overnight.

The following morning, we awoke bright-eyed and excited like young children on Christmas morning, eager to taste the fruits of our labours.

IT. WAS. AWESOME.

Needless to say, the bottle didn't last us very long.

So, we bought another bottle of rum and refilled our fruit bottle, reasoning that much like a teabag it was good for more than one use.

It was. On our second attempt we decided to filter the fruit-infused rum using coffee filters, as our previous batch had a tendency to settle after a while. The result, dear friends, was an amber nectar that was sweet and refreshing and damned tasty to boot.

Then someone discovered a recipe for making rum liqueurs.

How hard could it be?

We mixed 8oz (225g) of sugar into half a pint of water over a low heat. Once it started to take on a slightly syrupy texture we removed the heat and added half a pint of our fruit rum, left it to cool and decanted the whole thing into a bottle and left it in a safe place, where it shall stay for the next calendar month (or until next week, if we get bored). We tried a little bit of the cooled rum-sugar-water mixture before laying it to rest and it was GODLIKE. I shall let you know how the finished version turns out.

On a sidenote, I tried to repeat the liqueur experiment today by mixing dark rum and coffee to make a coffee rum liqueur.

It's not gone well.

I may have gone a little overboard with the coffee, so the stuff we have at the moment is not something I'm particularly fond of.

My girlfriend likes it though.

Fucking miracles.

'Til next time then, toodle pip!

Disclaimer: Some of the facts in the above account have been altered to make the story more interesting, and to protect the innocent. Messing about with alcohol is almost certainly not a good idea, and has been linked to speech deformities, bladder weakness, domestic violence, the spread of STI's, cancer, the Watergate scandal and Jedward. Don't say I didn't warn you.

(EDIT: I made some extra syrup and added it to the coffee rum yesterday evening. It tastes better now.)

Brownies in a mug: update!

Well, as promised in the last blog I did try out the proper recipe for brownies in a mug and the results were as follows:

Awesome.

Here's a picture:

So once again, many thanks to http://community.livejournal.com/picturing_food/4200173.html for the recipe.

Til next time folks!

Brownies in a mug. I sense obesity coming on...

I've heard from a couple of different people at a couple of different points that it's possible to make brownies in the microwave. In a mug.

Well, wouldn't you?

A quick Google search turned up the following recipe, which I include below for your delight and delectation:


Microwave Brownie in a Mug

4 T flour (I used whole wheat pastry flour, but any will do)
4 T sugar (I used powdered, but again, any sugar will suffice)
2 T unsweetened baking cocoa (I used Hershey's Special Dark)
1/2 t baking powder (if you prefer fudgey brownies, leave this out)
dash of salt
1 T vegetable oil
3 T water
1/4 t vanilla extract
1 T mini chocolate chips

In a large coffee mug, mix flour, sugar, cocoa powder, salt, and baking powder (if using) with a fork or whisk.

Add wet ingredients and mix well. It will look like mud. Stir in chocolate chips.

Place in microwave and cook on high for 1 minute 30 seconds.


I decided to give it a bash, but there was one slight problem:

MY KITCHEN HAS BUGGER ALL IN THE WAY OF INGREDIENTS!

Out of all the ingredients listed for the above recipe, I could find (and I also had a cheeky search through my housemates' cupboards, just to check):

• Flour
• Water
• Vegetable oil

Bugger.

I decided to improvise. I figured that since hot chocolate powder is basically cocoa powder and sugar anyway I could use that instead of the two ingredients. My recipe was as follows:

Put 4T flour and 6T hot chocolate powder in a mug. Mix them together. Add 1T vegetable oil and 3T water. Mix it all together til it looks like mud (I needed to add more water to dissolve all the powder, you might too). Stick it in the microwave on full for 90 seconds, and enjoy.

I'm going shopping tomorrow, so will be picking up the ingredients I need to try out the proper recipe (including chocolate chips, yum). I'll let you know how it goes.

For the sake of fair play, here's the link to the blog where I obtained the recipe. Many thanks for putting this out there:
http://community.livejournal.com/picturing_food/4200173.html


Disclaimer: Brownies will be hot when first removed from the microwave. If you burn yourself eating or handling them after following advice from my blog, it's your own damn fault for being a numpty, and don't come crying to me. Also, I may or may not remember to let you know how my recipe goes, depending on how busy I am.

Dear 16-year-old Chris

I read a brilliant little note on Facebook today, where one of my friends had been reading through some old blogs and decided to write a letter to her 18-year-old self, describing how she'd change in the future. This intrigued me, so I fired up my old blog from years back and had a leaf through some truly epic amounts of teenage angst.

Once I'd managed to stop myself crying, turned off the Linkin Park and washed off the eye makeup I decided to write one of these notes for my 16-year-old self, the body of which now follows:


Dear 16-year-old Chris,

1) You're allowed to swear on the Intern*t.
2) Subtlety is not your strong suit. We all knew who "Amy" was, especially after you pointed out you sat next to her in English. This will take you a worryingly long time to figure out, but you'll get there in the end.
3) You're not Frankenstein's monster. Stop hiding every time you see a camera, you'll only live to regret it.
4) You won't get any better at revising.
5) Fortunately, you don't need to have read Persuasion to ace the exam on it.
6) One day, you'll be self-deprecating for comic effect, not because you actually mean it.
7) One day, you will enjoy wearing a suit. Honestly.
8) The things you give yourself a hard time for now, won't even phase you in a couple of years' time.
9) One day, you will learn to like beer (and wonder why you ever didn't).
10) Being sweet and sappy is something you'll learn to despise.
11) Your sense of humour will lose all its boundaries, and I do mean all of them.
12) If you were to make a list of all the people you'll still be close to in three years' time, you'd be wrong on almost every single count.
13) Your self-confidence will only improve from now onwards.
14) You won't get any better at money management.
15) There really are plenty more fish in the sea, and you'll have better luck with several of them.
16) There are tougher times ahead of you than behind, but you'll be strong enough to deal with them.
17) You're going to look back on how puritannical you used to be (even though you don't think you are) and laugh your arse off.
18) One day you will learn to enjoy watching rugby (though don't worry, you'll never support Wales)
19) You'll look back on sixth form as two of the best years of your life. Even the bad times will be overshadowed by the good ones, and uni will be even better.
20) One day, you will go out in public with a grand total of one other person, both dressed as pirates, completely sober, and not think it's even remotely weird. That's how awesome you will be.


Yes indeed, I was a very different creature back then! Anyhoo, I'm working on a very ranty blog at the moment, but I want to give it the time and attention it deserves, so it may not be making an appearance for a while yet. 'Til next time then, happy trails!

Separated at birth? Caine/O'Grady