Well, it’s 7.55pm and this is my last post of 2005! Which (unless something untoward happens in the next 4 hours – touch wood) the reports of an asteroid hitting the Earth and killing us all in 2005 have been slightly exaggerated.
Anyway, I’ll have to finish this in 2006 as it’s now 11.19pm (got called away for games) and no time to write – cake to be ate and dancing to be done!
Dingly dell had her remaining wisdom teeth out today, so she’s eating baby food for dinner this evening, watching me enjoy my roast beef 
mwahahaha!
I had my own share of frustrations today though – I was making my cranberry sauce and poured the required amount of caster sugar into the pan. I couldn’t work out why it tasted utterly vile until Mum pointed out that the taste I couldn’t identify was in fact salt. Yes, someone (probably me) had filled the caster sugar jar with salt, not thinking that the two look remarkably similar.
So Dad was instructed to purchase some more cranberries and indeed some caster sugar on the way home, and cranberry sauce was made successfully.
Christmassy task list now stands as follows:
– christmas pudding – successful and cooked!
– 4 different flavoured butters – successful and chilled!
– spice for the butternut squash – milled and waiting!
– cranberry sauce – fraught but ultimately successful!
– flavoured butter for turkey – ready in its “piping bag” (aka sandwich bag)!
– chestnuts – roasted (yes I roasted my own) and awaiting stuffing!
My quest in the Christmas meal preparation has been eased by my (late) birthday present from my parents… the Kenwood FP698 Multi Pro Food Processor. To date it has made breadcrumbs, mixed butters, milled spices and made a smoothie for my babyfood eating sibling *snort*. Lurvely piece of kit.
I’m still not in a super Christmas mood and I’m not sure why – I have been totally overloaded with Christmas – it’s everywhere, so it’s not from not realising it’s happening… Ah well – on the 24th I need to prepare the rest of the food ready for cooking on the Big Day, so we’ll see if that helps.
Tomorrow I go to pick up my turkey and on more relevant news I’m also going to speak to a lady at college about becoming an intern next year. A tad scary – I’m not sure what to expect or what stage she expects me to be at. Or indeed if she’ll recognise me having discussed this meeting by email!
I made Christmas pudding today! I’m going to cook it tomorrow – takes 3 hours of steaming. I could do it on Christmas day (as was the plan) but it has raw milk and egg in it and the milk was best before today… so probably best to cook it sooner rather than later. Plus as my trusting sister suggested, if it goes to pot I still have time to buy a real one from the shop…
NB I have blacklisted the words “casino” and “poker” from my comments to save me having to continuously declare most of the comments on this blog to be spam – if you use those words or words containing those words (e.g. “strippoker” or “casinova” if you can’t spell) your comment will be cast into the bog of eternal stench, never to be seen by mortal eyes ever again.
The season of eating is upon us, and being an avid meat eater but tentative poultry and fish eater (due to less humane methods of killing) I am faced again with the conundrum… do we have the right to eat other animals? I’m a traditionalist, and support British agriculture, but am also too deep a thinker and let myself get bothered by things I perhaps should just accept blindly.
Also I’m not sure that if you think eating animals is wrong that not eating them is enough. If eating animals is wrong, then surely using leather, animal products, keeping them for eggs, milk, keeping them as pets is all wrong too. Layers and dairy cows die the same way as broilers and beef cattle – ok so they didn’t die to produce the foodstuff, but they wouldn’t have been born if the foodstuff wasn’t being produced. So, either you go all the way and adopt a way of life that doesn’t rely on the use of other lifeforms at all, or you continue the way of life that relies upon animal industry but endeavor to make the quality of life of those animals as optimal as possible.
This stems from Christmas turkey. I do have a problem with mass produced birds as they are processed so fast I don’t believe it’s possible to assume 100% of them are processed humanely. Therefore I wanted a turkey this year that was processed by hand and so much more likely to have been dealt with humanely. The other option is not to eat turkey at all, which is a cop out imo, as I’d eat beef or something instead, and an individually cared for turkey (like the one I’m getting) is as humane as beef anyway. That’s just let feelings of guilt get in the way instead.
Tis a puzzling one. I suppose it stems from my belief that humans have no moral superiority over other animals, we’re just another species, with another set of abilities. By chance, our abilities led us to become one of the dominant species of the planet, and also led us to question our place here. My cats don’t question their meal of illogical beef cat food (ever seen a cat kill a cow?). My rabbit doesn’t question her addiction to beef or bbq flavoured pringles. My tomcat doesn’t have moral doubts when he kills mice for fun and eats them.
Meh confusing. I don’t feel particularly guilty and I have no intention of becoming a vegetarian, and I have every intention of keeping my own chickens and lambs for food later in life (best way to ensure optimal welfare). I just question the right of our species to do so when we don’t technically have too. We could survive (just about) without relying on other species, however if we had done so throughout history we certainly wouldn’t have got where we are today. Perhaps that’s the ability that led us to be the top species… our ability to exploit other species.
Doesn’t explain ants farming aphids though…
There’s nothing like an environmental disaster to make for a lovely sunset. The actual sunset was gorgeous but I didn’t get to take a photo as I was standing in a petrol station at the time “panic buying” (wasn’t really panic buying – I use a tank every two days to get up and down from Cambridge and was filling up for today – although when I managed to fit 37 litres into what-I-thought-was-a 30 litre tank it did look a tad panicky).
Crikey – 10 day blog gap! Ok, what have I been up to… Last week I was doing large animal experience (my probably-last ever – weird) in Cambridge. It’s ok but now I’ve decided my life is smallies, I don’t have the enthusiasm I used to for largies. Like I chose to persue animals as a job and computing as a hobby, I plan to persue smallies as a job and largies as a hobby. I think my lack of enthusiasm may be a little obvious. So that was my week – didn’t see my house in daylight what with leaving at 7am, getting back at 7pm minimum. I can’t tell you the fun thing I did on Saturday with AnM (oo-er) though we can snigger about it until Christmas. On Sunday the tree went up (yay!). My camera has run out of batteries so instead of a photo of the tree of 2005 I shall show you a photo of the tree of 2004, which given that it’s the same tree (fake of course – fake all the way!) , the same decorations and the tinsel and chain in the yes I am in a rut same positions, it gives you a fairly accurate idea of the tree of 2005. The only difference is that this year we have dispensed with the slightly tasteless foil decs seen in the window (and previously also all over the house) and the new decs on the tree are the cute fimo stockings AnM made the whole family last year, and a glass bauble painted on the inside that was a late gift from Kay last year also. Plus I have a little rememberance thing to add for the “ancestors” later on. Oh and I haven’t put the purple baubles on this year – decided to stick to silver decs only.
My Dad just brought my car in from the road for me – that was sweet!
So today I was back in Cambridge, and I’ll continue there for another week. It’s so coooold. So coooooold. Blasted fens have no trees and hills, man! It’s unnatrual! Then it’s officially the CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS!!! woooo! Sleigh bells ring, are you list’ning, out in space, stars are glist’ning. A beautiful sight, now we’re in flight, flying in the Starship Enterprise!
The four letter F word is “foam” in this instance, although I did sadly miss Gordon Ramsay’s The F-Word yesterday *gripe*.
Anyway, this was the highlight of my day yesterday. New housemate returned home from the Early Learning Centre with bath foams – foam letters that stick to wet mirrors and tiles etc. Brilliant things! Anyway, Madam Witty here has amused herself for a good two days now with the following two items:
1) I wrote “FOAMS 4 U” on the mirror. Oh how witty!
2) The F kept falling off, leading me to exclaim loudly and repeatedly with joy “The F in FOAMS won’t stick on the mirror!!! Geddit?! HA!” Hilarity ensued.
I have deviated from the rule! Firstly, new housemate of the foam fame has introduced me to Smallville, a totally ridiculous series based on Superman – the Younger Years concept, that is of course totally addictive. Lex Luthor is played by Michael Rosenbaum who is, let’s be honest, the main reason I am watching the show (On E4 every weekday at 6 btw – tonight’s episode was a brilliant Lex-based one). Why is this a deviation? He has no hair!!! Cue shock and horror! He has hair in other roles, but not to my usual standard. He is the bad guy though, who might be good, so not a total deviation on that side of things.
And the coinscidence? You may know of my slight Jason Isaacs obsession. Tis but a minor 24/7 hobby of mine. Well, Jason once played a rather odd roll (roll? role obviously) in Sweet November as a transvestite called Chaz/Cherry (don’t ask. Keanu’s acting was still worse) who’s girlfriend/boyfriend/whatever was none other than Michael Rosenbaum… Be afraid… be very afraid…
