Hot, hot chocolate

Hot chocolate? How boring some might say. How utterly conventional. Well yes, and then again, a very big no. What you do in this life and how you do it are two entirely different things.

Right, this is the promised recipe for hot chocolate with both style and alcohol. Before we begin, a question. Do you own a Cafetiere? A French press style coffee maker. One of those gadgets you can brew coffee in that has a grid and mesh style plunger? If you don’t have one lurking in the back of your kitchen cupboard, read no further. This recipe is not for you. I’ve tried it with frothers, steam and without froth, and believe me a cafetiere is an essential piece of kit. Nothing else gives quite the same result.

You will need;

• A cafetiere
• 200ml full cream milk
• Hot chocolate powder two to three teaspoons should do
• A measure of Jameson’s whiskey (Or any other blend. Not a single malt – what are you. a heathen?)

Method:

Heat milk in microwave, in a pan over the stove, over a camp fire, whatever, just heat your milk until it’s lightly boiling and frothing. Decant hot milk into cafetiere jug. Stir in chocolate powder. Add whiskey. Insert plunger and vigorously pump through mixture a couple of dozen times to produce a warm dense foam.

Now pour into drinking vessel of choice. Large mug with humorous motto, skull of your worst enemy, anything like that.

Enjoy, sipping gently, feeling the luxury of hot chocolate seducing your palate and the bite of whiskey in the throat.

Now tell me hot chocolate is boring and conventional.

Update; having just spent a couple of days stooging around Dubberlin, I was struck by the increase in hot chocolate emporiums. So by way of experiment I sampled their wares. Overall they were okay, but all had way, way too much sugar in the mix. At home I use a supermarket own brand powder which is nowhere near as sweet, but when prepared by the above method produces a rich and warming, very flavoursome drink (Nicer with a shot of whiskey of course) which I much prefer to that provided in Butlers, Bewleys, Cadbury’s, Starbucks or any of the other places serving this beverage and variants thereof.

Kitchen shenanighans

Mrs S and I are purchasing a new fridge / freezer. This is nothing startling or novel. Our old built in model, which came with the house, has failing door seals and probably keeps my electrickery bill higher than it should be, despite the Irish government giving us some of our tax money back in the form of an ‘energy rebate’ of 450 Euros through the high usage months of December January and March.

So in order to make the transition from old to new smoother, today I did a bit of rough carpentry which shifted my coffee and tea making gear into the space where the fridge / freezer used to live. Took a day to cut down the old unit on which the coffee and tea making kit used to live and fit it into the cupboard where the fridge once was. The new fridge freezer will occupy the space thus freed up.

Now this might sound like a lot of unnecessary effort. However, and this is a big ‘however’; our kitchen is in need of an upgrade. We have carcasing that was put in as fitted units back in the 20th century. Every time I go hunting for little used stuff I find odd bits of unhygienic detritus from beforthadawnatime. Well at least pre 1995, which is when our place underwent it’s last revamp. I’ve found little missives from that decade behind old wall units and under the stairs and where once was regency stripe wallpaper (Shudders-the horror, the horror).

The revamped kitchen is going to be, we have (finally) decided, an exercise in simplicity. Open shelving will replace MDF and veneer cabinets so I can take stock at a glance. Ten inch deep shelves will also give me more room to work. Shelving will be oak trimmed MDF with white painted wooden brackets. Worktops are going to be stainless steel. This will be a cooks kitchen. Work will begin on the upgrade proper sometime next year. Maybe.

The new fridge / freezer we have chosen is an American style two door with two freezer drawers below. Not a very big one as these things go, but certainly an upgrade on what we’ve got at the moment and far more energy efficient. Like our current new appliances it can be controlled by an ‘app’ but to be honest, I don’t see the need.

My current ‘smart’ phone gets used for various banking functions as a means of large transaction verification, but otherwise I use it so rarely I’m known to miss calls because I’ve left the intrusive bloody thing at home.

May I posit thusly; why I should run my life to the demands of a piece of technology whose chief function is purely communication? Sometimes I don’t feel like communicating. To be honest I’ve gotten into the habit of checking my pockets before I leave the house before deciding to leave my electronic leash behind. I’ve served my turn being at the beck and call of every eejit the Gods send my way, so the phone does what I tell it, when I tell it, and the rest of the time rests forlornly on charge. It also remains unconnected to the rest of our appliances.

You could make the argument that using an app saves time. My counter to that is; okay, you’ve saved some time, what are you going to do with it? Most people I’ve come across will choose to veg out in front of the telly, their brain cells gradually deprived of the elements of cogency. My TV is only used for playing DVD’s or streaming old TV and movies, the news channels remain unwatched, and to be candid I feel I am a better and happier person for it.

I’ll make an exception for watching Rugby internationals when I’m in the pub, but at home? No. There’s far too much to do, and apart from my increasingly reduced blog posts, there’s a nice warm fire to enjoy in the bar. The odd glass of whiskey and a good book. Or even a hot chocolate Latte (Will post the recipe- when I feel like it) with a shot of Jameson’s, which is a jolly nice way of relaxing after a full days DIY.

Blocking merrily away

YouTube isn’t very happy with my browser and it’s ad-blocker. Over the last week YT has been trying to circumvent my blocker, sticking up warnings about ‘Looks like you’re using an ad blocker’. Today when I logged on I got a ‘three video’s only’ warning. Okay. So I watched part of one and went off to do something more useful.

The bullet Youtube have shot from their little corporate gun is currently heading toward their little piggies. Because if people like me are put off using their platform by these demands, that means a decreased audience, and therefore less potential revenue from adverts which I have noted are getting ever more intrusive. Especially as they’re adverts for things I don’t use, and am never likely to need.

Advertising is only really good at letting people know your product is out there, and as far as the currently dire output of the diversity obsessed advertising industry is concerned, I belong to that group considered a ‘hard sell’. Thinking about it, I only recall a small number of adverts that even remotely made me even vaguely interested in a given product, and those date back to the 1980’s and 90’s. More recently even browsing sites with an insecure browser and no ad blocking brought up a resounding ‘not interested’ to every single multi-cultural, sexually diverse and ‘inclusive’ presentation designed to get my hand reaching into my bulging little pocket. To be honest I find just about all of modern advertising rather cringeworthy.

So YouTube will lose another set of eyeballs, despite having much useful content upon the platform, just because they can’t abide to let even the smallest, most disinterested fish through their data nets. Their clickthrough rates will drop, which will hurt the censorious bastards where it is most painful; on their bottom line. As for content; no biggie. There are other video sharing platforms out there who don’t mind ad blockers.

Fire is lit in the bar, tea is made, and we’re going to Dublin shortly. Walked outside this morning to witness a magnificent rainbow. Yes it’s raining. This is the wilder west of Ireland and contains no ‘stunning and brave’ or other such ‘diverse’ adverts.

Might even pop down to the pub later. We’re now known faces and have received the landlady’s official welcome, so we have increasingly less need of the virtual world.

Going nuts

Recently got handed a bag of Walnuts with the admonition: “Okay Bill, you’re not bad at growing stuff. Try these.” Oh, right. I was planning some tree planting for the end of the month, but Walnuts, Hmm.

Apparently you have to select the most viable nuts by dropping them into a bucket of water for forty eight hours. The ones that sink are the ones you want, those that are still floating can be thrown away. Then plant out into 6 inch pots in a mix of sand and peat. Water whenever the soil dries out, and wait.

So that’s what I’ve done. No idea if it will work or not, but even if only half of the selected nuts sprout, that will give me at least fifteen viable saplings. So all I’ve got to do is live ten more years, and there will be fifteen Walnut trees up the meadow cropping Walnuts.

I grew up with a Walnut tree at the end of my garden. It’s been there for a century, is still there (I checked), and will probably be there for a century more. Unless some eejit cuts it down.

So while the world is going nuts. So am I. But I feel in a far more constructive way.

A scientist speaks

Dr Angus Dalgleish MD, FRCP, FRCPA, FRCPath, FMedSci (Look him up) interviewed by Dr John Campbell (Dr of Bsc, Msc, PhD in Nursing), Nurse Educator.

An hour long, but what Dr Dalgleish has to say will confirm everything any cogent individual should understand about the COVID debacle, from the origins of the virus, the lab link theory to potential health effects. Dr Dalgleish has a long track record of success in virology and human immune response going back to HIV in the late 1980’s. He’s the real deal, a proper scientist, not just a data modeler.

Or you could believe everything that CNN and Breakfast TV tell you. Your choice.

Joke of the decade….

Two white lab rats meet in the pub after work.

“Evening Jeff. How’s life at the University?”

“Pretty good Larry. In another placebo group?”

“Yeah. Doing all right. You?”

“Life at Pfizer is nice. Great working conditions. You should come into the private sector. Much better deal.”

“I’m not so sure. What about all those dodgy vaccines they keep telling us about?”

“I wouldn’t worry if I were you.”

“Why not?”

“They haven’t finished testing them on humans yet.”

Aaand we’re…..Oh.

Back from Sunny France with an already fading tan and a need for my own comfy bed. We stayed in a really nice place, but the bed was too low and hard, so my back woke me up every morning with a morning twinge before I even thought about swinging my legs onto the floor.

Still, had a very pleasant time wandering around Brittany, visiting various walled cities. Vannes in particular is worth a trip, with the medieval killing zone below the old city walls transformed into some very pleasant formal gardens. Then there were the French street markets, which I really love visiting, and of course the restaurants. Even if they don’t open much before 12 before closing at 2:30 and not bothering to open again until 5pm. We even visited the French equivalent of McDonalds, the Buffalo Grill, and found it head and shoulders above any fast food available in the British Isles.

Nevertheless, I have come back a wiser man, having been taught a little more about French cuisine, and getting one of the local lifeboat crew to teach me how to splice an eye at a ropes end. Ropework being something I last did during my early deep sea fishing days. Splicing an eye was something I never quite got right until I was shown precisely where I was going wrong. Now I intend to use this skill to make a swinging chair hanging from one of the many Sycamore branches overhanging our garden.

As for the glorious sunshine we’ve had, the last October I can recall as sunny as this was back in the late 90’s, after Pinatubo (VEI-6) blew it’s stack. A Summer that despite a rocky start went on all through September to a warmish Winter and early Spring. Now after the VEI5 intensity eruption of Hunga Tonga in January 2023, a similar weather phenomenon appears to be emerging. Which goes to show that you can’t add a whopping extra ten percent of water vapour to the upper atmosphere and then expect the usual weather, no matter what the ‘climate models’ and the scaremonger media claim. Just to clarify, that’s an extra ten percent on top of the usual water vapour content of the atmosphere. And what goes up…. No wonder the weather is a bit out of the usual run.

So yes, we’ve had a wet Summer and a dryish Autumn (so far). Nothing to do with CO2. Just the usual mild nuisances of day to day weather. Like the hot weather bringing out all the eejits.

Any old road up, we’re back home at the Barn, the house is warm and despite the recent rain, nice and dry. Lit a fire in the grate yesterday and enjoyed the cosiness while recovering from a thirty six hour ferry and road trip. Plus the usual pre-trip loss of sleep the previous day. Then of course you need another twenty four hours for the wheels to stop spinning. Well I certainly do. Mrs S on the other hand, is fretting, having forgotten where she put our spare keys ‘for safe keeping’. No doubt they’ll turn up when she comes down to earth.

Now I’m back to my list of jobs to do and the sense that we ate far too much French cuisine. Yes, we had a pleasant time, the sunshine was fabulous, but on our way home north of Finisterre we could see a solid bank of cloud and gloom. Which turned into fog, then a solid Irish rainstorm passing through on it’s way to give the Welsh and English a thorough sousing.

Speaking of doom and gloom, I see the Palestinians in the shape of Hamas have been prodding the Israeli bear yet again. Idiots. If Nettanyahu does go medieval on their arses, which considering the atrocities (Abductions, Murders, Rapes, video evidence all posted online, by Hamas members) recently visited upon Israeli civilians he may well do. Don’t these people ever learn? They’ve been fighting the same damn war periodically for millennia now, since cave men were throwing sticks and rocks at each other. Biting the hand that feeds them, then whining that it’s so unfair that they lose the ensuing fight.

The Egyptians are wisely staying out of it. Smart play. The current US Administration not so much, with their fingers in everybody’s pie, as usual. Seeing as much of the Palestinians war materiel comes from the stuff the Yanks sent to Ukraine, doubly so.

Oh well, it will, as my parents used to say, all come out in the wash. These things generally do if you let them. Unless the current US administration get us into some really deep shit. Which regrettably seems likely given their recent track record.

Good job I filled the car with cheap booze on our way back. Should last us until our next trip in that direction sometime early next year. And while I’m on that topic, isn’t it funny how the French get by so well without all the ‘sin’ taxes on alcohol etc? No nonsense like ‘minimum pricing’ as recently brought in here in the Emerald Isle and Scotland.

Hmmm.